This month the book review column is doing something quite different. Journalism Guild Chairman Kevin D. Sawyer and I read two classic novels. Sawyer read the first classic, Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, and I read Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. After reading them we have given our take on how the classics relate to the prison experience. We’re asking cellies to read them, swap them and send your comments to San Quentin News.
Robinson Crusoe is the story of a malcontent castaway who is seemingly impatient with life. Does this sound familiar to you?
The story is more than just one man’s misadventures on the open sea, exploring other countries, being kidnapped by pirates and forced into servitude, rescued, shipwrecked and marooned for 28 years on a remote island where he saves the “savage,” his man Friday, from cannibals somewhere in the Caribbean. Have you ever been in isolation, unsure of when you are getting out?
When Crusoe realizes the dire urgency and hopelessness of his circumstance, he contemplates a dark thought: “I had great reason to consider it as a determination of Heaven, that in this desolate place and in this desolate manner I should end my life…” Too many men have settled for such a finality because of this sentiment.
Contemplating life and the bleak outlook on his future, Crusoe reasons: “I learn’d to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted…”
In Sawyer’s analysis of Robinson Crusoe, he asks readers to consider what Defoe wrote about Crusoe’s mindset, “…we never see the true state of our condition ‘till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by want of it. Think freedom,” Sawyer suggests.
After the pathos in evaluating what led to his undoing, and questioning why he has been forsaken, Crusoe jettisons his self-pity, realizing that he should be thankful that he did not perish: His life was spared, and still has purpose.
Here, survival dictates resourcefulness, similar to what many castaways in prison embody. When a man is stripped of his best and his worst, something else remains; regret, penitence and the possibility for change.
In Journey to the Center of the Earth Verne carefully uses language to make specific points about life choices and consequences “Facts overcome all arguments,” Harry said to his uncle. “I made it a point to agree with the Professor in everything; but I envied the perfect indifference of Hans, who, without taking any such trouble about cause and effect, went blindly onwards wherever destiny chose to lead him.”
Calling the storyline a quest is a disservice. It is an expedition to a kind of darkness most convicts want to avoid—down a hole in the ground. “It must be that a man who shuts himself up between four walls must lose the faculty of associating ideas and words,” writes Verne.
Inmates could easily relate to “The Hole,” but who is willing to go there as a place of adventure? “How many persons condemned to the horrors of solitary confinement have gone mad—simply because the thinking faculties have lain dormant!”
Verne’s use of language painted a vivid picture of each scene. Sentences like, “It was a dark night, with a strong breeze and a rough sea, nothing being visible but the occasional fire on shore, with here and there a lighthouse,” filled this action-adventure with the descriptiveness that builds on a tension between the expedition leader, Hardwigg and his doubting nephew, Harry.
This standard tension builder was captivating for readers more than 100 years ago. I can understand how Hollywood has been motivated and put Verne’s fantasies on film with a language that still resonates in my mind long after reading it.
Both these classics force the convict to contemplate his or her place from an inward perspective, saying, “I only have myself to blame for my captivity.” This is an opportunity for cellies to have a conversation about emotions not typically expressed about what trajectory led to the calamity of their life.
As Crusoe aptly observed during his solitary state, people “cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them; because they see and covet something that He has not given them.” While Verne notes that, “Science has fallen into many errors—errors which have been fortunate and useful rather than otherwise, for they have been the stepping stones to truth.”
These authors teach us tough lessons about ourselves—how and why we should learn to live with gratitude, humility, contrition and restorative justice. Like Robinson Crusoe and Journey to the Center of the Earth, it’s a beginning and it’s how we start over.
Juan’s Book Review
