Green Tharks and a Red Princess

This weekend I had a surprisingly good, couldn’t-put-down read—Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars. A year ago I had read for the first time Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes, and I really liked reading the fast action story that I thought I knew. So when I stumbled on A Princess of Mars, I decided to read this 1912 novel Burroughs wrote before his Tarzan series.

Burroughs explains in the introduction to A Princess of Mars, that his Great-uncle John Carter willed a manuscript to him with instructions that he not publish it for 21 years. Now Burroughs provides the manuscript for us to read. John Carter, a Civil War veteran, and his partner have struck gold in an Arizona mine in 1866. They are attacked by Indians, and as Carter seeks safety in a hidden cave, he unknowingly is overcome with fumes. When he wakes, he eventually discovers he is lying unclothed on the planet Mars. Because he is from the Earth, he has great strength and agility and can jump nearly 150 feet and hurl boulders.

Carter is captured by giant, ten- twelve foot green reptile-like nomadic Martian warriors called Tharks. Carter eventually develops a friendship with one of these four-armed, tusked war machines—a chieftan named Tars Tarkas. But this tribe of Tharks battles against other hostile, savage tribes. Carter helps Tars Tarkas recognize the abilities to trust and love.

The Tharks are also at war with human-like red people, and the Tharks capture the red princess Dejah Thoris from the Kingdom of Helium. The red people are responsible for the pumping stations that keep the dying planet Mars alive by filtering poisonous gases from the atmosphere.

Carter immediately falls in love with Dejah Thoris, and he must rescue her, assist in monstrous battles, save the planet, and just be a good guy.

James Cameron uses Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars as his inspiration for Avatar. Of course, there are significant changes such as blue rather than red people, but it’s good reading the original work.

The Romantic Exiles

After rereading Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, I needed to read E.H. Carr’s The Romanitic Exiles, the source that inspired Stoppard to write his trilogy.

Carr’s historical account, written in 1933, reads very much like a Russian novel, yet he relies heavily on primary sources, especially diaries and correspondence of the principal individual Alexander Herzen and his wife Natalie. Just in the seven months that Natalie was writing to her lover, George Herwegh, she sent him over 150 letters, most of which still exist. Carr also emphasizes the long, detailed interviews he had with Herzen and Natalie’s oldest daughter Tata and Herwegh and Emma’s son Marcel.

Carr provides immensely valuable explanations and historical context throughout. For instance, while reading The Coast of Utopia, I questioned the moral behavior of all the characters with their affairs and dysfunctional relationships. Carr demonstrates that Herzen’s background, for instance, contributes to his behavior. Herzen was an illegitimate son of the aristocratic, wealthy father and a serf woman. His father never married, yet he had numerous children by different serf mothers. Just prior to Herzen’s father’s death, he wanted to prevent his brother and other family members from taking over his land and wealth, so he named Alexander as his sole heir—Alexander inherited a fortune.

Alexander falls in love with his first cousin Natalie. Their fathers were brothers, and Natalie’s father also did not marry, yet he kept what he called a “harem” of serf women. However, once the children were born, he would move them into his estate homes while he kept the women in their separate rural villages. The children, essentially, did not have mothers and were cared for by servants.
When Natalie was young, her father’s sister who was a princess (she had married a Russian prince), wanted to raise the violet-eyed, fair-skinned, dark-haired Natalie. Natalie was raised in a home with every luxury, yet her aunt was cold and unapproachable. No wonder Natalie is always searching for love.

Carr provides many insights into Alexander’s and Natalie’s marriage and family life. They both wanted a strong family, and they worked hard towards it, but they both had affairs, yet always returned to each other. They had six children, three of whom died at birth. The three surviving children were Tata (Natalie), Sasha (Alexander), and Kolya who was a deaf mute tragically killed with his grandmother on a steamship that sank. Natalie has another child Olga who has Herzen’s last name, but is the child of Herwegh and Natalie.

After Kolya’s death, Natalie’s health soon fails, and she dies. The children are raised by a couple of German governesses until Natalie’s best friend Natalie (Natasha) Tuchov who is the mistress to Herzen’s best friend Nicholas Ogarev. Herzen and Natalie have an ongoing affair and have Liza and twins (a boy and a girl) who die of diptheria in Paris.

While the focus of The Romantic Exiles is on Alexander Herzen, there are equally interesting and involved stories of Alexander Bakunin and Nicholas Ogarev and their personal lives and affairs. And of course, equally detailed are accounts of these individuals’ political lives as they live in exile from their beloved Russia.

Carr’s book helps me to get even a more full portrait of these individuals and their real-to-life yet sad lives. At one point, I questioned whether I should continue to use The Coast of Utopia in my class because the reading is so difficult, but now, I want to help make it more accessible to my students as they get glimpses into these fascinating people’s lives.

Horace Robedaux

I’ve added a new person to my favorite character list—it’s Horace Robedaux. Over the last two weeks I’ve been able to read the nine plays in Horton Foote’s The Orphans’ Home Cycle. These plays begin in 1902 in Harrison, Texas when Horace is twelve years old and his father dies.

Although Horace isn’t an orphan, his parents were separated, and his mother remarries and leaves Horace on his own. He does have kind aunts, uncles, and grandparents, but Horton does not receive any breaks in life. He quits school in the sixth grade to support himself by running a rural country store for convicts. However, through it all, Horace remains steady and good. Through his own determination and resources he does complete a business course in Houston.

One of the most poignant moments in the entire cycle is when Horace finally saves enough money over the years to buy a tombstone for his father. His father seems to have been the only individual who expresses concern, love, and guidance for Horace—the rest of the time Horace seems to be on his own.

Yet, we see the maturing Horace fall in love with Elizabeth Vaughn, and these two unlikely pair develop a strong, loving, enduring relationship, and the two of them continue to struggle together. These two are the only two solid, stable, consistent characters in the entire cycle. They just continue to do their best and to be good no matter what heartache or challenge comes their way.

At one point in an interview, Horton Foote said, “I believe very deeply in the human spirit, and I have a sense of awe about it.”

The cycle ends in 1928, again in Harrison, Texas, at the death of Elizabeth’s father. This cycle bookends are the deaths of good fathers and the impact on Horace. Horace has grown from a lost, wandering son to be a strong, solid, loving father who has established with Elizabeth a home refuge to meet whatever storm comes their way. He is a good, good man.

The nine plays in the chronological cycle include the following:
Roots in a Parched Ground
Convicts
Lily Dale
The Widow Claire
Courtship
Valentine’s Day
1918
Cousins
The Death of Papa

Coast of Utopia

This week I’ve reread Tom Stoppard’s trilogy play The Coast of Utopia. This nine-hour play won a Tony award in 2007 for best drama, but it’s a very complicated play. There are over seventy characters, most with Russian names, so it’s very hard keeping everyone straight. Without a doubt, this play is the most challenging reading my students do all semester. It’s so tough that only a few make it through the plays.

However, upon rereading the plays, I’m recognizing more and more the power of these individuals and the message. The play focuses on real-life Russian intellectuals from 1830-1870. These well-educated, aristocratic, incredibly wealthy philosophers and doers rejected their privileged lives of czarist Russia to fight for political and economic freedom of enslaved serfs. Some of the characters came from families that owned 4,000 male serfs, but they gave it all up to fight these freedoms.

Most of these characters were imprisoned in work camps simply for speaking or writing against the czar. Because of their views, their writing weren’t allowed to be published, or if they did get published, they were banned. All of the characters in the play are exiled and find themselves still fighting for these freedoms in Germany, France, Italy, and England. From these hidings, they continued to write and influence both the landed class and laborers which eventually won freedom for the serfs in 1861 under Czar Alexander I.

Despite the noble intentions of these characters seeking the betterment of others, their own personal lives continued to spiral out of control. As they were seeking for others’ freedom, they did not found their own actions in personal morality—they used liberty as an excuse for any type of personal restraint. Their personal relationships were fluid and unhappy. They always were searching, but they failed to have a strong moral foundation.

They are trying to sail to an ideal, utopian existence, but because they don't have the moral direction, they just don't seem to reach happiness and peace.

Again and again, I’m reminded that through commandments and doing what’s right do we really find freedom and liberty and happiness.

So we need to keep doing the work that we’re doing and remember who we are. Our Heavenly Father has a great work for us, and we are preparing for that.

My Hands are Yours

This week I read Alan Paton’s powerful novel Cry, the Beloved Country. I’ve seen the movie numerous times when I would show it in my contemporary world literature class, but I had never read the book before.

The setting is 1946 apartheid South Africa. It is the story of two fathers: the black Anglican priest Stephen Kumalo and the white landowner James Jarvis. These two fathers struggle to understand their own sons whose lives have been tragically connected. It’s about two good, good fathers who love their sons, who suffer for the pains of fatherhood, and who find continued redemption through their sons.

I don’t want to reveal the plot, but rarely have fictional characters become so real and alive as Kumalo, Jarvis, and the other priest Theophilius Msimangu. Some critics have claimed that Cry, the Beloved County is every much a Christian allegory of suffering and redemption as Pilgrim’s Progress or as Dante’s Inferno. Just reading that book gives me renewed hope in others, in myself, and especially in the Savior and His cleansing and healing Atonement.

These families that Alan Paton creates are in sharp contrast to James Goldman’s family in The Lion in Winter. This is a play about King Henry II and his wife Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. It’s Christmas in 1183 England. It’s the one time of the year that King Henry allows Eleanor out of her imprisoned exile to be with their three sons, John, Geoffrey, and Richard. All three sons are vying and conniving and deceiving with their parents to inherit the kingdom at the expense of their brothers. It is a play of hatred, anger, deceit, and power.

Whereas, Cry the Beloved Country is only about love, forgiveness, sacrifice, and peace through suffering. A phrase that Msimangu speaks to Kumalo as they begin their journey to seek the lost son Absalom is, “My hands are yours.” This becomes an extended metaphor that by offering our own selves to others in service and love will we find what we’re searching for, including peace.

Also, repeated numerous times in the novel are the greetings, “Go well, stay well.”

So this week, may you go well and stay well.

Made to Prosper

I’ve never done much with the Pearl of Great Price, except for the last few weeks. It started when Elder Bednar came to stake conference and in a brief passing comment said we should study carefully Moses 6-7. So I did and was amazed at its fullness. I’ve also been reading Genesis and Exodus because I want to learn more about Adam and Eve; Abraham, Sarah and Hagar; Isaac and Rebekah; Jacob, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah; Joseph and Asenath; and Moses and Zipporah. So because of those readings, I’ve gone to the books of Moses and Abraham.

Of course, the Book of Mormon is my favorite, but I’m discovering the strength and power of these ancient prophets. Yesterday while I was looking for another book in the library, I stumbled on Hugh Nibley’s Enoch the Prophet. I’ve checked it out and look forward to reading.

Last night I finished reading Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer prize winning Gilead. I mentioned it a couple weeks ago when I was reading its sequel Home. The two novels parallel each other told from the two points of view of two aged ministers. In Gilead, the 73-year-old Reverend John Ames is writing a journal to his young 7-year-old son, so his son will remember him after what will soon be this good man’s death. It’s also the story of Reverend Ames’ forgiveness of John Ames Boughton, his best friend’s wayward son.

In one of the most touching scenes in all of the literature I’ve read, Reverend Ames sits on a bus stop bench to bless the troubled but good John Ames Boughton—his simple prayer: “The Lord make His face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. . . . Lord, bless John Ames Boughton, this beloved son and brother and husband and father.”

The 40+-year-old prodigal John Boughton has suffered so very much in his life, yet he always seems to fall far short. The aged Reverend Ames has learned over the years the power of the Savior’s Atonement. He explains that the Greek word sozo, which is usually translated “saved,” and also mean “healed” and “restored.” In Gilead, there is sense of being saved, and healed, and restored.

While reading about ancient Joseph this week, I was encouraged by the repeated statement: “Because the Lord was with [Joseph], and that which he did, the Lord made it to prosper” (Genesis 39:23).

So,we all need to be saved, healed, and restored. And that is only possible through the Savior’s atonement. And we are also given the same promise as Joseph’s: with Heavenly Father’s and the Savior’s love and help, our attempts will be made to prosper.

May we prosper this week.

General Prophets

I have recently read Milton’s Paradise Lost. I have never read the entire poem, only excerpts from my undergraduate years with Professor Waterstradt. I remember sensing the poem’s significance, but I’ve been so intimidated by it for all these years that I’ve not touched it since.

However, I’m grateful for this recent reading. It is a difficult read, but it is worth the effort. I read it in preparation for a class I’m teaching this fall on Creating Peace, and I wanted to use parts of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. So now I’m trying to determine what passages and what approaches to make this selection meaningful and workable in class.

Initially, when I thought about it, I would consider Satan’s dialogues which are very captivating and memorable, and I have suddenly realized that Satan’s intrigue is one of his tools. Satan can easily be seen as the hero or protagonist of Paradise Lost because of the focus he demands. However, the protagonists are Adam and Eve and their creation, fall, and redemption. It’s because of their actions, because of their faith, because of their submission to God that makes them the epic heroes with qualities for us to emulate.

What I’ve learned from Paradise Lost is that every mature person has lost paradise within. Everyone confronts temptation and choice; everyone falls, or loses innocence. Many also experience some kind of regeneration, through the Savior, through love for others, through families, and through service. Paradise Lost deepens our understanding of relationships between parent and child, husband and wife, individual and God. Through this poem I realize that as a father who watches his sons struggle, grow, assume responsibility, and make their own decisions, that at times they will fall, but that through the Savior’s love and Father’s great plan, all will work out for our good.

This poem is also powerful in its depiction of war, or eternal wars. The war is Satan against God and His plan, and Satan wants us to be the casualties—he’ll use every subtle and brazen tactic to destroy us. But as Paradise Lost shows us, God provides teachers, prophets, angels, and families to strengthen and heal us. The War in Heaven still continues in full force. But it wasn’t until just this morning I realized the real and symbolic image that reminds us of this battle and of our promise to succeed and win. That image is the Angel Moroni who stands atop nearly all the temples of the world. Moroni is both a prophet and a general who leads spiritual and temporal war against Satan. At times it may appear that Satan has won, but that glorious angel blowing his trumpet above the temples powerfully announces to the world that God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ are our leaders, and if we turn to Them, we will be successful and blessed and protected in this great war that will end at the Son’s Coming to usher in peace and righteousness.