Reflections on Ishiguro's The Buried Giant

I don't know that I ever read a story written in such simple form that could cover so many themes, and speak to me so intimately in my present state. This is a modern fable unlike anything you'd find on the shelves of contemporary book stalls. From the start, we meet our protagonists,Axl and Beatrice, an old man and his old wife, as he awakes on a cold foggy morning, bothered by some distant thought or another, lovingly moving about not wanting to disturb his sleeping wife. This will be their story, a quest to find a solution to their present situation where they are away from family, relegated to live in the dark at the end of a long warren without heat, to search for a son they have not seen in years, along memory's trails to find whom and what they have forgotten from their youth, each element of their lives lived together slowly becoming clear to themselves, and to the reader.

The setting is England after the Romans have left, and after the conquests of KingArthur and his Knights of Camelot. As our protagonists travel the land in search of their lost son, they encounter various characters, some amicable, some unpredictable, as cultural consequences of both the Roman conquests and the Arthurian wars that aimed to bring various factions, Britons and Saxons, warriors and clerics, myths and realities, under a common flag.

These are parallel journeys of remembrance, the personal story for each of the character, each on a quest to perfect or pursue his/her aim in life, to lift the fog of forgetfulness, to see the land and its inhabitants in a clear light, to right the wrong according to personal code, regardless of personal consequences. Each encounter reveals the status of institutions, and the connections each character has had to the same. These understandings reveal the ultimate dilemma: to remember is both a way to be cleansed of the fog, revel in the joy of lost memories, and a way to be hurt again, as the hurts that have been buried deep in one's psyche, deeply concealed, the way the buried giant conceals all the bones of those who were atrociously cut down in their prime because of King Arthur and his knights' crusades or some other national atrocity committed for a cause that was sold as good for all.

What an apt bedtime story of us old folks.

Let's all be like Scout!

My grandchild gifted me with a copy of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, intuiting that I would want to read it. She was right. I devoured the book, and the two of us will have so much to talk about when we meet next week. (Yes, she has her own copy and will be ready to discuss the book, even if she's not finished.)

Harper Lee was herself young and working in New York, and being exposed to a bigger view of the world when she wrote this book about a young lady returning home and discovering that what she thought of her father and of her uncle, what she had internalized all her life about how people behaved with other people, what people thought of each other, all those old ideas came crushing down.

Her beloved father, (yes, the one portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird, the lawyer who defended the black man accused of raping a young white female) the man she admired and held on a pedestal, her brilliant and kind, and benevolent father was just an ordinary Southerner who had participated in secret societies' thoughts and actions to keep the races separate and to maintain the old status quo.

How could that be, a now grown Scout asks. Most of the book is a quest to reconcile this tension,to find the key to understanding, to stand tall and deliberate at the crossroads of adulthood and ask the hard questions, prepared to lose her family, to leave her hometown and never return to a place of bigotry and tensions.

I want to ask my grandchild if she knew about this history of  race relations in America; if she had any idea of how whole towns, or states fought to suppress a whole race of people? How this tension is still with us in so many ways? How a certain group still feels superior and entitled to its privileged positions?

I'm an immigrant, and though I've lived in the West and in the South for decades, my understanding of American history is limited. A book like this sheds light on a long history of wounds and resentment; opens up conversations that are hard to have; sets the stage for parents and grandparents to search the thoughts and underlining biases their children have and begin to elaborate, to search, to confront, just like Scout did.

The conversation will not be easy between my grandchild and me. We'll discover biases we all hold, known and unknown; we'll defend our point of view with personal anecdotes. The book will help us bridge our divide a bit; the book will show us that talking and clearing the air is what we do when we disagree; that we can still love those who hold thoughts we abhor; that people are complex; that our personal history shapes us; that our circumstances may have shaped us to this moment. But, we, at any moment, knowing more history and getting more ideas, we can begin to clear wounds, declare our intentions to align our intention toward the truth that is superior and more  just.

Yes, a great conversation starter. Thank you, Harper Lee for this gift!