Survivor’s Guilt
I just finished A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O’Nan. I was taken aback at first because it’s written in the second person but I fell into it very quickly and the device works. It’s beautifully written.
The book is about a young man, a veteran of the Civil War, who lives in Friendship, Wisconsin with his wife and infant daughter where he acts as sheriff, undertaker, and pastor. He is a man of tremendous faith, living under a crippling burden of survivor’s guilt because of the war. A diptheria epidemic hits the town and he struggles to save those he loves from the disease and from the threat of a wildfire looming just beyond Friendship’s borders.
It’s a very, very disturbing book; just heart-wrenching. It’s a great book club book because it’s chockfull of symbolism. I’m going to try and get one of my friends to read it so that we can talk about it. Why the horses? How did the knife end up in his pocket? What about the elephants?
Here’s a clip from a more benign part:
You think of the night you first saw Marta — at a barn dance in Shawano — how, like now, you couldn’t sleep afterward, how it seemed that her grin and the cock of her slim hips threw your whole world in doubt. She danced herself into a sweat, and when you tried to take her by the waist — primly, oh, with the most noble intentions — she kicked you in the shin and whirled away laughing. Though you’d spoken only a few words to her, you felt — you hoped and feared both — that soon you’d be leaving behind everything you knew. It was exciting, and frightening, and while that’s not quite how it feels tonight, you recognize this new edge the two of you have stepped over.
But that was willful, you think. This is different.
Faith will always save you. In the dark you repeat the phrase to yourself, as if that will make you believe it. It’s a question, really, and you think the answer could make a good sermon. When won’t faith save you?
When you believe too much in this world. In yourself. In anything but God.
When you won’t let it. When you don’t want to be saved.
And why wouldn’t you want to be saved?
Because you don’t deserve to be.
It reminded me of one of my favorite books, This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski; the best depiction I have *ever* read of life in a concentration camp and survivor’s guilt.
That is so weird. My family had family friends in Friendship. It’s such a small town, I never thought I would hear about it again. hahahaha.