The Pistol Shot of Truth

I have been reading ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ for homework and on another Word page I am writing my own version of Hyde’s encounter with the young girl who runs into him. Sometimes describing a person is not always about the physical dimensions of a person – that’s the ‘tell’ of the story. Sometimes it is what they do – the ‘show’, how they react perhaps to a young child running into them. And what he does says everything about his vicious nature.

I read in an analysis of the story that we are inclined to think of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as two different people and distinct from one another. But the writer of the article points out that there is no Mr Hyde at all. It is always Dr Jekyll. He, Jekyll, is always aware of Hyde’s actions and always in control of them. Victorian morality at the time did not want to acknowledge that people could be cruel. I don’t know how they reasoned it away when they had so much evidence of the inhumanity of humanity towards itself. They were faced with it. What Dr Jekyll had achieved was a way to allow the inhumanity within to act without restraint. The article goes on to say that what is frightening is the Mr Hyde unleashed in us all – except it’s just us choosing to be cruel and not a Mr Hyde at all.

One of the homework tasks is to come up with a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in other stories. Who has copied the concept of this dual personality and written it into their own setting and context? The Incredible Hulk came swiftly to mind. My husband, who likes to join in some of my homework assignments, came up with ‘The Portrait of Dorien Gray’. I used to tease him, my husband, not Dorian Gray, that he had a portrait in the attic as he never seemed to age. I also came up with Superman and Clark Kent – you can tell who reads the better quality books in our house.

‘Who Am I?’ is a poem written by Deitrich Bonhoeffer when he was imprisoned during the second World War, for his part in a plan to assassinate Hitler. A pacifist by nature, he had concluded that it was the right thing to do. Too much evil had been allowed free rein. He was executed just before the end of the war. His poem is about a question of identity.

‘Who am I? They often tell me

I would step from my cell's confinement

calmly, cheerfully, firmly,

like a country squire from his country house.

Who am I? They often tell me

I would talk to my warders

freely and friendly and clearly,

as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me

I would bear the days of misfortune

equably, smilingly, proudly,

like one accustomed to win.’

This is how he was seen by the prison guards. Did he set out to make them think that? Did he begin his day with a determination to be calm or to be cheerful, to smile or to be friendly? It seems to me that he had every reason to be miserable and to complain – but he chose not to. In the isolation of his cell though, he faced up to the reality of his thoughts.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?

Or am I only what I know of myself,

restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,

struggling for breath,

as though hands were compressing my throat,

yearning for colours, for flowers,

for the voices of birds,

thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,

trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation,

tossing in expectation of great events,

powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,

weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making;

What he sees of himself is something else. Whatever is being seen on the outside is not perhaps a reflection of what is on the inside. Or more specifically what is experienced in the presence of others is not the same as what a person feels away from a watching audience. What is real and what is a mask are not easily separated.

Probably not relevant, in a search for quotes on ‘integrity’ I cam across and old acquaintance from my Pol/UK poetry days – ‘In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.” (Czesław Miłosz, Polish poet).

Bonhoeffer could just have left it with the first few lines and allowed us to think that his faith was strong and saw him smiling through difficult days and yet his honesty compelled him to keep writing. He could have stayed silent and yet he chose the pistol shot of truth. He ended his poem (and be aware I have missed out a whole middle to end chunk of it) with a truth that undergirded all truth in him.

Who am I?

They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.

I was in a supermarket the other day and bumped into friends. Truth to tell, I had hoped the friends would offer me a lift home for me and my shopping bags, but that did not happen. It was that question, you know the one, ‘How are you doing?’ I was about to launch into the answer, you know the one. ‘I’m fine.’ I never got to say it though as I chose the pistol shot of truth. The winter blues, I explained, were making life difficult. Dark days, long nights, cold temperatures and the hedgehog hibernation gene had kicked in. It’s a real struggle and the little victories need to be celebrated.

Did they really need to know that I was not in a happy place? Yes, they did. If they were planning to pray for me, they can pray informed prayers. But more so, we can know that in our own difficult days we are not alone, and it’s OK to give those days voice, and it’s OK to draw others into our battles.