A child may ask, “What is the world’s story about?” And a grown man or woman may wonder, “what way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?”
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill? . . .
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
—John Steinbeck,
East of Eden (New York:
Penguin Books, 2002 Centennial Edition), pp. 412–413.
2 Comments:
Which makes me think that, unless our heroes die by the last page, they live on afterwards. For them, ‘happily ever after’ is not the promise there will be no more trials – there always will be – but the freedom from guilt, fear, and shame they can enjoy ‘happily ever after’ knowing they had done well. Those who think their accomplishments absolve them from further challenge have taken but the first step towards tragedy.
I agree, except to add that there are always some guilt, fear, and shame even when the hero has done well. They are part of the human condition even when we have done well, and we never know finally whether what we have done is done well or not. We are not and cannot be our own judge. Part of the trial is also dealing with guilt (we ought to have done better), fear (things may not be as they appear to us), and shame (at our inescapable weaknesses) even when we have done what we think is well. Short of heaven, there is no "happily ever after," and to assume one has won that condition is, as you say, the first step to tragedy. (Sophocles reminds us to "call no man happy until he is dead.") Steinbeck rather echoes Rabbi Tarfon: "It is not up to us to complete the work; neither are we permitted to abandon it."
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