You Know What’s Interesting To Me?
Of course there are many things that are interesting to me.
But you know what I’ve been thinking about?
According to The Haunting Of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson, Fear and Guilt are sisters. They are a little sorority all their own, fear and guilt, and there is a terrifying strength to that.
Now, that in and of itself is interesting. But as an extension of that, what is interesting is that according to A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, Ignorance and Want are brother and sister, respectively.
Think about those four of all siblings of each other. That’s what I like to think of, at least. Half siblings, maybe, Fear and Guilt being full sisters and Ignorance being their half brother and then Want being his half sister, so they’re all connected, just not all in the same way. Think of them as siblings, as part of a family of the Loathing and the Pain that all of them embody. Maybe Loathing and Pain are the parents, or at least some of the parents. I could see that. Loathing and Weakness are the parents of the girls, of Fear and Guilt. Loathing and Pain are the parents of Ignorance. Pain and Hope are the parents of Want.
Think about that family, that fucked up, terrifying family.
Think about the twin girls who feel the omnipresent responsibility of being eldest siblings, one of whom is too scared to ever try anything on the off chance that it will go badly, the other never pausing to think before she acts but after, after feeling the deepest pit of despair in her stomach every time she realizes she made a mistake.
Think about the only boy, the middle child who feels forgotten although he is always around, more so than almost anyone else. He is always around and yelling at the tv and pretending not to see what he doesn’t want to see on the streets because it is so much easier, so much more peaceful to not see some things, to not know some things, to pretend that some things just don’t exist.
Think about the baby of the family, her constant desire to be just as good as everyone else, just as good as her siblings, just as good just as good just as good. She needs someone to play with her, have tea parties with her, tell her that she is smart and she is good and she is valid and she is real.
Isn’t that interesting? Isn’t that family, those siblings, those children, so purely interesting? Don’t you wish you could meet those children, could adopt them so that they would never again be with the parents who made them, could save them from their own terrible, desperate fate?
I know these stories aren’t connected, I am sure that neither of the authors ever intended such a connection to be made. After all, the two novels were published more than 100 years apart.
But it’s interesting, isn’t it? Interesting that both of them thought to make this connection, to find this sibling connection, between things that are so real, so raw, so vital to the human existence.
I know I’m putting too much thought into this, but I just wanted to say that I think it’s interesting.
