The Rabbit Hole of a Wandering Mind

Wikipedia's list of events for 6 May includes this entry:
"6 MAY 1940 – John Steinbeck is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath". That novel's title has always impressed me. Delving further into Wiki's store of knowledge I find that:

While writing the novel at his home.... Steinbeck had unusual difficulty devising a title. The Grapes of Wrath, suggested by his wife Carol Steinbeck, was deemed more suitable than anything by the author. The title is a reference to lyrics from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", by Julia Ward Howe:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored......

These lyrics refer, in turn, to the biblical passage Revelation 14:19–20, an apocalyptic appeal to divine justice and deliverance from oppression in the final judgment. This and other biblical passages had inspired a long tradition of imagery of Christ in the winepress in various media.

My mind wandered on, to other similar descriptive phrases from another book, a much older one: The Pilgrim's Progress: by John Bunyan

...the allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, written during Bunyan’s twelve-year imprisonment although not published until 1678 six years after his release, that made Bunyan’s name as an author with its immediate success. It remains the book for which Bunyan is best remembered. The images Bunyan uses in The Pilgrim's Progress are reflections of images from his own world; the strait gate is a version of the wicket gate at Elstow Abbey church, the Slough of Despond is a reflection of Squitch Fen, a wet and mossy area near his cottage in Harrowden, the Delectable Mountains are an image of the Chiltern Hills surrounding Bedfordshire. Even his characters, like the Evangelist as influenced by John Gifford, are reflections of real people.

There's a post in the archives expanding on such descriptive phrases...
.. Stops on a Mythical Journey.

While reading The White Monkey, one of John Galsworthy's continuation novels from his Forsyte Saga I noticed this lovely pair of descriptive phrases and jotted them down for an occasion such as this:

"The chrysalis of faint misgiving becomes so readily the butterfly of panic."

And ain't that the truth!

The mind wandered still further, into allegory and its history...the path became murky - too tangled for a simple blogger's blog post. Enough to say that allegory, as a concept, has been around since at least the days and philosophers of ancient Greece, and quite likely, undocumented, long before that. Its use and appreciation in matters religious, moral, political and general, seems to be another of our innate human characteristics.

One of the 20th century's most popular authors, J.R.R. Tolkien wasn't a fan of allegory (or so he said):

“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”

Personally, I don't care what an author intended as allegory. If I read a novel I see in it what I see in it, and if it's something different from the author's allegorical intention - tough! I'll be doing applicability.

Re-inventing the Wheel - or Ourselves?

The friends that have it I do wrong
When ever I remake a song,
Should know what issue is at stake:
It is myself that I remake.
( William Butler Yeats)

So....Walt Disney Studios have dredged up and dusted down the Lone Ranger and Tonto ? They have, quite rightly, faced some criticism for casting Johnny Depp as Tonto . If they'd wanted a big name star to "put bums on seats", why didn't they cast Depp as the Lone Ranger, for goodness sake, and choose from hundreds of available bona fide Native American actors to play Tonto?

I recall reading in a local newspaper, some time before the movie was released, that Johnny Depp had visited a town here in Oklahoma, about a half hour drive from us, and had met with some Comanche tribe leaders. They gave him, his makeup and costumes their approval, I understand. Whether they were being polite and kind as most Okies naturally are - and didn't want to upset their visitor isn't clear.

I wonder whether kids of today will enjoy the film as much as kids of yesteryear enjoyed the tales of Lone Ranger and Tonto? I somehow doubt it, but suspect many cinema seats will be filled by parents and grandparents enjoying a spot of nostalgia.

Remakes: love 'em or hate 'em, they're with us always. There's another on the horizon now : John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Stephen Spielberg is attempting to secure the rights to produce a remake of the 1940 movie, though he has said he would not be directing a remake. I'm not sure what to think about this. Part of me wants the old classic left alone, but part of me realises that younger generations, used to top class cinematography, CGI etc. may not wish to watch a creaky old film from 1940. It's a story which deserves - demands - telling and re-telling though.....as long as it's done properly, with the right actors. Unknown or little-known actors would be best, I think - big starry names could kill it, or worse, draw ridicule towards it.

No movie, however well-made could ever equal the pull of emotion found on the page in the words of John Steinbeck:

The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlarge of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate--"We lost our land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have none." If from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the movement has direction.

Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket - take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb.This is the beginning--from "I" to "we."

If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive.But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezesyou forever into "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we."

And

“A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath