A Terrible Sonnet, a Reflection on Giving and Taking

I. 

My two year old, Cecille, has taken to wanting to read Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree” for bedtime. A story that, frankly, I love (for reasons I don’t entirely understand). However, it is a bit of an odd book for young children. The story describes a boy’s relationship with an apple tree, a relationship that starts fairly reciprocal and kind to one that is usurious and transactional, the tree giving up everything for a young man chasing material goods. 

There’s a lot be said about the giving and taking nature of the characters in the book. Certainly there’s much to relate to in regards to the boy seeking some kind of satisfaction and contentment while also sympathizing with tree and her unfettered giving that leaves her as nothing more than a stump. These positions each of us has found ourselves in time and time again. So much so it is easy to reduce the stuff of existence down to these base bits, instances of demanding, taking and instances of giving. 

Then again, I’m probably most taken taken by the ending in which the tree and the boy are both utterly spent, worn out beyond comprehension, only left sitting in each other’s company. 

II.

Carrion Comfort

“Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man

In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me

Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan

With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,

O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.

Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,

Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.

Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród

Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year

Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.”

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

III. 

There’s an illustration in “The Giving Tree” I find to be quite striking. After the tree has given the boy her apples to be sold for money and her limbs to be lumber for a house, the boy, now an unrecognizable old man, returns asking again for more. The tree now is merely two vertical parallel lines reaching to the top of the page, hardly a tree at all. 

No matter who you look at in the picture, there’s no escaping that the years haven’t been kind to either character. For all the giving and all the taking, not much had come except fatigue and nakedness. The next step in the plot is all but predictable, but you wonder, how much further will this go. The answer is of course that the boy asks yet again for one more thing, hoping that a boat and sailing away, escaping from all that has been would finally lead to a bit of rest. He’s so desperate at this point that he’s given up the thought of happiness or joy. Mere rest is enough. 

In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more.

The tree acquiesces and the reduction is complete. The man returns to a stump, older, more tired, and more aged than ever, finally at a loss for anything else. 

IV. 

One of the cruel realities of trauma and suffering is that it has the capacity to anonymize us. It feels that the only thing left are the pockmarks and scars of what’s been taken, of what’s been given to survive. It leaves us asking what all of it was for and what of me is left? It leaves us asking what was I even before? 

Nothing but naked parallel lines stretching up to the top of the page, made distinguishable only by what was, by what’s been stripped from us. 

A hunched back and sad eyes staring on into the distance wondering if a boat could just take us away. 

I don’t have any grand notions or delusions of what redemption might mean at the end of a great suffering. Certainly there are sufferings greater than mine. But, I do think we often think of the resolution of our suffering as a kind of pining for the days when we’d not met that Carrion Comfort, a saving amnesia. I think we often call this pining hope, and I’m quite sure it’s wrong. If I pasted my branches back on would I still be me? As painful as it is, a real hope seems contradictory with a wish for a story that simply isn’t me. 

I often imagine Adam and Eve at the harrowing of hell; I always imagine them sober not joyful carrying with them the reality of the circumstance. That’s not to say they aren’t joyful or grateful, but it’s not effusive. The identity as the fallen first parents never really leaves them anymore than the identity as the God-who-died never really leaves the Christ. In short, I will never know a Jesus who wasn't crucified. Just as I cannot know a God who hasn't died, those around me cannot know a me that hasn't suffered. 

While the taking nature of suffering is cruel and ugly, as I get older, I’m slowly (and reluctantly) recognizing the giving side of suffering. Suffering as a constant companion reshapes and sharpens my eyes to see the small beauties daily living. The fullest picture of the boy and the tree's relationship is not the halcyon beginning but rather when both had been completely stripped of everything. This backwards reality of life is not meant as a pat, explain it away, "rejoice in your suffering" kind of placation. Rather, it's meant as a reorientation of what it means to be fully human. 

Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród

Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one?

The giving and the taking - it is all a stitching together of a terrible sonnet, a long, dark night of the soul and of the body, that is pocked and scarred, stripped and worn. Yet, in that stitching arises the one who suffered, the one who fought, the one who wrestles with his God. From it arises you and me and the sum of all the giving and taking and finally resting. 

From this terrible sonnet Gerard Manley Hopkins, after a life of unspeakable torment and crippling mental illness, was able to speak from his death, “I am so happy. I am so happy. I loved my life.”