Something I realized

well, I had this ALMOST written and hit the wrong key and deleted it, and the "change" got saved before I could undo, so this probably won't be as good. Dangit.

 

Anyway, I found a thread on Bluesky yesterday by Marissa Lingen, about Puddleglum from the Narnia books, specifically "The Silver Chair"

And an admission: I used to tell people my favorite character in the books was Reepicheep -brave and dashing and gallant. But really, Puddleglum was my favorite. But when I was younger, having a depressive frogman as your favorite seemed....weird. 

And when I was a kid, I thought Puddleglum was my favorite merely because he was "sad," kind of like how Eeyore was my favorite. I had read somewhere that children supposedly liked "sad" characters because either we felt they gave us license to be sad when we were (it does children a disservice to do the "good vibes only" thing with them, or tell them they have nothing to be sad about) or that maybe we thought we could cheer them up, and yes, I can see that with Eeyore.

But Puddleglum - now after reading Lingen's thread, I wonder if I related to a deeper part of his personality because it was already within me and I saw myself in it, or maybe reading about him and what he did and believed, it allowed me to develop it, now, when I particularly need it.

Puddleglum is not a preposessing character. He has webbed hands and feet, he is tall and thin. The description of him sounds a bit like the stereotypical West Country farmer (I imagined him wearing one of those smocks with his funny hat and narrow trousers, and I imagined him as SPEAKING with that accent (imagine the stereotypical pirate from an old movie and you're close). His hair is described as being like reeds, and he has tanned skin...So he is an odd, humanoid character. 

And Lingen describes him a bit more: 

Puddleglum is a depressive muddy mess who drinks too much. And when push comes to shove he can't say he believes in better things. But he DOESN'T say that. He says he prefers to live like the world is better than a tiny dank cave with no hope to ever breathe free air EVEN IF IT ISN'T.

He is the hero of that part of the book - if you've read it, you know. The "queen" (actually a witch) has hypnotized the two children with some kind of drug in the fire that makes a very heavy smoke, and they are starting to yield, to deny that "aboveground" existed (they are in a cave) and denying that Aslan exists. And Puddleglum apparently feels HIMSELF starting to lose himself, and he goes over to the fire and stamps on it with his big, flat (bare) feet. He burns himself severely (self sacrifice) but putting out the fire (and as Lewis comments "the smell of burnt Marsh-Wiggle") snaps the children out of their stupor, and is the beginning of the end of their entrapment.

But before the denoument, he gets his speech, right after putting out the fire:

“One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”

(I got the quotation from this blog post, and the author also links in Sam Gamgee, who yes, famously comments there is still good worth fighting for in the world)

 And yes, one of the problems I have with the world today, is that it seems the people who do wrong, who don't operate by a moral code, who are cruel and selfish - they are the ones who prosper, and there is literally no reward for being "good"

I know I've said before I read too many of the old-style fairy tales as a child; and on some level I do expect that kindness and honesty and all that will be rewarded, and cheating and cruelty will wind up punished (or at the very least: the victims of it will see some recompense for what they suffered). 

And it's very hard to look at the world now and see people who do seem to have no moral compass at all, who shift with the winds and what they think will get them money or applause, are the ones that prosper, and a lot of us work in obscurity and never really see much of a benefit. 

(My frustration currently: I am working on upgrading all my teaching materials to try to be 100% compliant with the new "online accessibility" (mostly: helping people with low vision access them) standards, and it is TREMENDOUSLY frustrating, because I fix everything in the program where I composed it, and then when I upload it to Canvas (our LMS), it catches more things that are either harder to fix, or, worse, that it claims I did not fix when I actually did, and I was on the point today of just taking all my slide decks and making them plain white background, plain solid black text, boring and dull, and take most of the graphics out....because I couldn't GET to 100% compliance. I could get above 90% which we were told at one point was good enough, but (a) I don't believe it will still be seen as good enough later, I know how these things work, and (b) "it has to be perfect to make up for it being ME")

And it is very frustrating to deal with the "you could grind up the entire universe and not find one molecule of justice or mercy" (Terry Pratchett, and he put those words in Death's mouth). And yes, yes, I know: I am a person of faith but I also have my questions and my doubts and my, in a mirror of something Mary is said to have said, "but how can this BE?"

And I admit a lot of the time, trusting that I am doing what is right for whatever quixotic reason that matters to me is an awfully thin broth if both no one else really cares and if I won't see any thanks (and may even somehow be punished, I see how the world works) for trying to do right. 

And yet, I can't be otherwise. Even as I look at how the world operates on the debased version of the golden rule (either: "he who has the gold makes the rules" or "do unto the other guy before he can do unto you") and I say "well the RATIONAL thing would be to become as bad as those guys, because trying to be good means you lose," I can't do otherwise than try to be good.

As I said over there: 

Every day I get up and do what I "ought" and I go in to work and I work on my little research and I help the research students if they're around and I'm pleasant to my colleagues and I do things like strive to meet all the accessibility benchmarks with my class materials even though it takes a lot of my time and arguably it applies less to fully in-person classes than it does to online ones. So I behave as if there's some reason to be good, as if I were going to somehow be rewarded, but deep in a shadowy part of my heart, I suspect none of it actually matters But I do it anyway. And I don't KNOW. I don't even KNOW. On the bad days I ask myself "why" and yet I can't stop myself from doing things the way I do them. (I guess early training sticks with you). But yes: There may be no "aboveground," there may be no Aslan, there may be no point to kindness, everything may be rigged so only rich & powerful succeed, but dammit, I'm going to act as if it DID matter that I was kind to people & that the things I do actually help. Because I'd go mad otherwise.

But now I look at Puddleglum - sad and cynical and probably believing that the world WON'T be better, even though he can imagine how it COULD - and I see a side of my personality there. The disappointed idealist, I think, though I always thought disappointed idealists curdled into cynics. I don't think I am TOTALLY cynical yet; I still have a great capacity to be disappointed and distressed by what people do and say and that the world isn't better. 

But it is frustrating and maddening and yes, kind of depressing, that you can IMAGINE the world and people being better, and it isn't, it never seems to be able to be, and to not know what to do beyond keep on keepin' on yourself, and that can be a very lonely place to be. 

(I don't drink, though maybe now I kind of see why Puddleglum did....)

But I never thought of that before, the idea of the basically hopeful character who is nevertheless disappointed at how BAD everything can be, but...well, Puddleglum can STILL be heroic and is fundamentally kind to the children that somehow wind up his responsibility. He's not happy about it, of course, but he does the thing, because that's who he is.