☆☆☆☆☆
Finished, 2009.08.09
Lots in this book to think about.
And some curious examples of how language points to the meaning society has placed and places in things. For example, did you know that a mortgage is a death pledge? ('Mort' death, 'gage' pledge.)
And did you know that there are two (at least!) distinctly different versions of the Lord's Prayer? Until this book I absolutely did not know this, and the difference is puzzling. Here's how Atwood writes it:
... Among the things we memorized [in school] was the Lord's Prayer, which contained the line, 'Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.' However, my brother sang in an Anglican boys' choir, and the Anglicans had a different way of saying the same line: 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.' The word 'debt — blunt and to the point — was well fitted to the plain, grape-juice-drinking United Church, and 'trespasses' was an Anglican word, rustling and frilly, that would go well with wine-sipping for Communion and more ornate theology. But did these two words mean the same thing, really? I didn't see how they could. 'Trespassing' was stepping on other people's property, especially if there was a No Trespassing, and 'debt' was when you owed money. But somebody must have thought they were interchangeable. One thing was clear even to my religiously addled child mind, however: neither debts nor trespasses were desirable things to have (44-5).
[The Wikipedia has a quite interesting discussion on the several versions of the Lord's Prayer, which includes a version that uses 'sin' in place of 'debt/trespass'.]
Perhaps most interesting is that she looks at history in a way that fully discloses how limited is the thinking of our society — if a society can think. In my reading between Atwood's lines, I see her having reaffirmed C.P. Snow's caution that societies do not learn from history, as they fixate on current practices as unswerving truths of what has always been. Atwood's link between what is acceptable social practices and sin is most remarkable, and erudite. And her link between language and these sin/truths is delightful and powerful. For example, at one time lending was far more sinful than borrowing, and now lending is perhaps the cornerstone of the modern economic/social truth, i.e. of capitalism's supreme ultimate authority of truth-in-proper-society, and bad debt-management a sin.
For me this book re-emphasizes the 'truth' that, in general, the people least capable of leading us are our formally educated graduates of business and leaders of industry. Because generally, they have no history beyond numbers, these forward thinking leaders take as meaningful today's numbers for tomorrow's quarterly report with no eye to the rise and fall of civilizations.
I did find the closing ghost of the re-told Scrooge story a bit ... I am tempted to say sappy and perhaps a bit preachy. I hesitate writing this, even as I write it, because I am not sure how it could not be written 'preachily', given the story-line it is emulating, and its purpose. But ... I don't know. Perhaps I am reacting against its glimmer of hope, given that I am not hopeful. And that brings up a curious emotional wrestling match — is it because I am not in my nature hopeful that I, like many who watch Alistair Sim's Scrooge transform against all odds, feel tears of joy/relief well up in my eyes? Hmmmm.
But even this irritation does not take from it any ☆s. On the other hand, perhaps because it has pricked at my beliefs irritatingly, it is more than worthy of the five stars I have given it.
Thank you Ruth T., for lending me the book. It looks like I will now be going to buy my own copy to re-examine and mark-up.
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