My students have been in Tale of Two Cities for a while now, Charles Dickens's epic historical novel about the French Revolution. My seniors started the book in January and finished before March; my AP kids have now been reading it for the past several weeks.
At one point, the seniors were researching the book's background, and came across a Dickens biography. They read about his father and reported back that he was a debtor, a father to ten children, a well-meaning man who ended up serving months in a debtor's prison and asking his children to work in factories. The biography described him, in a word, as "feckless"-- not fit to assume responsibility.
For whatever reason, that left a big impression on me. This is a man who tried and... failed. His whole life-- those nights of striving, and crying, and praying, and soul-searching, and talking with his wife, and watching his children's hungry eyes-- only to be summed up in some supposedly objective history book as... "feckless."
The historians dismiss an entire life in a word: feckless.
At what point, I wondered, does a life become classified as a failed one?
It's really been grating at me. I think of legacies all the time now. Looking just at the novel, for instance-- the novel's hero is a man named Sydney Carton who, for most of the book, is, indeed, "feckless." He is a brilliant drunk-- a man who has squandered all his potential in the bottom of his ale can, and alienated himself from people that would love him. However, in the end, he emerges as a hero. In one glorious moment, Carton switches places with a man who has been condemned to execution at the guillotine-- a man whom he bears an almost identical appearance to-- a man who is, in fact, the husband of the woman Carton himself loves. He sacrifices himself, his own misspent life, so that the woman he loves can live a happy life with his romantic rival.
Heroic-- it is a heroic legacy. A feckless life, followed by a glorious last moment... And his life is, ultimately, deemed a success.
His rival, Charles Darnay, spends most of the book as a noble, moral, responsible gentleman-- a loving husband and father, and a diligent provider. Yet Darnay makes one stupid mistake that gets him imprisoned, sentenced, and ultimately puts his entire family at risk as the chaos of the French revolution rage around them. And it is a passive Darnay that Carton sneaks to greet in a prison cell, a passive Darnay that Carton drugs with a sleep agent, a passive Darnay that is carried out by a bribed jailer, a passive Darnay that escapes the consequences of his mistake, to be remembered-- whether he asked to escape his sentence or not-- as the coward. A noble life, interrupted with a miserable mistake... And his life is, ultimately, deemed a disappointment.
I think about it when looking at non-fiction as well. Today, I read the biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge-- the brilliant poet who wrote "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." His life was a tragic one. He was bullied as a child, plagued with depression and loneliness, ended up getting addicted to laudanum, was estranged from his wife... Didn't make it through the University, didn't make it in the military... He was deeply unhappy and summed up his own life in an epitaph that partly reads, "O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C./ That he, who many a year with toil of breath,/ Found Death in Life, may here find Life in Death." Death in life-- his own words describing his experience in looking back at the span of his years.
Yet we read his poems and exclaim over his great "success."
You know what's weird? Instead of feeling concerned about how I'LL be remembered, in light of all these morbid considerations, I'm more concerned with how people I care about will be remembered.
I see people trying, so hard. I see people praying, and people hoping, and people's hopes falling through. And it kills me to think of any one of these lives being classified as "feckless" because of unlucky efforts. Kills me, to think of a life being considered a disappointment because of one STUPID mistake.
I think of people like the Apostle Paul or Dietrich Bonhoeffer who had ROUGH life circumstances, but who found a way to triumph over the situational mire, and continued to inspire others and experience joy themselves. They are remembered as heroes.
Is it in my power then, to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of difficult circumstances and go down in the books as a "good one"? Or will my chance life happenings prove my life to be a sad one, a disappointing one, a life that never really got going-- even though I TRIED to be good? How many triumphs do I need, to tip the scales in my favor? How many mistakes can I afford without upsetting the balance?
What will people say when they look at my expired life? What will the conclusion be, after all the flowery eulogies have been forgotten?
I remember a woman telling me once, "You'll be okay. You know what? You're just that type of person. You'll do well, whatever you decide to do with your life. You'll do well." I find myself thinking similar thoughts about some of my students. Whatever they decide to do-- they'll do well. They'll live well. They're just THAT sort of person.
But what about the others?
I want a magic stamp, a holy wand, some sovereign STICKER that I can plant on people's foreheads that will guarantee their lives be remembered as GOOD ones. I want to honor the people that I see trying. I want to tell them, "I KNOW you will have a happy story, because-- see?! The sticker! So just don't even worry!"
But I can't guarantee any of that. And the only One that can... seems so frustratingly elusive sometimes.
I don't have a glib resolution to offer at the end of these thoughts. Sometimes, after writing all my ideas out, I come up with a hopeful final thought. But nothing has arrived tonight.
Oh God, please bless them. Please let them be remembered well.
