“But the tears are necessary. Don’t you remember what Othello said? ‘if after every tempest came such calms, may the winds blow till they have wakened death.’ There’s a story one of the old Indians used to tell us, about the Girl of Mataski. The young men who wanted to marry her had to do a mornings hoeing in her garden. It seemed easy; but there were flies and mosquitoes, magic ones. Most of the young men simply couldn’t stand the biting and stinging. But the one that could-he got the girl.”
“Charming! But in civilized countries,” said the Controller,”you can have girls without hoeing for them; and there aren’t any flies or mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid of them centuries ago.”
The Savage nodded, frowing. “You got rid of them. Yes, that’s just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them. But you don’t do either. neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It’s too easy.”
.
.
“I like the inconveniences,” the savage continued.
“We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things confortably.”
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.
“In fact, then, you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“All right then, ” said the savage defiantly. “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.” There was a long silence.
“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.
1 Comment
June 6, 2008 at 7:03 pm
one of my favorite passages in one of my favorite books of all time. well done sir.