I went for an old fashioned good news story today. Devon, UK: young boy falls into river whilst playing with dog, father jumps in to rescue him, both manage to grab on to some rocks until rescue services arrive... and both are pulled out and brought to safety. According to the rescuers, it was something of a 'miracle' that they both survived, in what were described as 'horrendous' conditions following significant rains. One imagines the water wasn't too warm either...
Monday, December 3, 2007
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This has all the simplicity of a moral fable. What we have is the exemplum, what’s missing is the moralitas. It is a ‘hopeful’ story in that the boy and his dad survive against all odds – the power of elemental forces cannot defeat a little lad and his dad (in his pyjamas).So what is the moral? Hang on to the bitter end? Never give up? There’s always a chance? In the short view, I suppose it’s something like that. In the long view, considering why things happen at all, the answer comes to mind that Coleridge gave to the question about the moral of The Ancient Mariner: "I told her that in my opinion the poem had too much [of a moral]…. It ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie starts up, and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant, because one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son." Now there’s an exemplum for you.
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