In all beginnings lies a force for guarding us and teaching us to live. —Hermann Hesse
I read Hesse’s words when as a newly divorced single mother I entered law school at the age of twenty-nine. However Hesse would define that force within beginnings, the optimism in the quote meant so much to me that I wrote it in green magic marker on the round-shouldered refrigerator.
January is a good month to consider Hesse’s words as they apply to modern fiction. I’ve spent the last six weeks recuperating from shoulder surgery, so have been reading even more than usual. Many compelling plots involve the business of trying out, starting over, beginning, or beginning again. In novels, beginnings often involve journeys: mental, spiritual and/or physical.
For example, Elizabeth Gilbert’s, The Signature of All Things, is the story of American Alma Whittaker, born in 1800 to a life of studying botany in affluent surroundings. Eventually, love-starved Alma seeks adventure and understanding of the world via a dangerous, solitary journey to Tahiti. From there, she travels to Amsterdam to join other brilliant pioneers in evolutionary theory. Her passion for both knowledge and human connection is the force that guards her and teaches her how to live.
In Adam Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Orphan Master’s Son, the title character Jun Do journeys through various strata of North Korean Society, often learning brutal lessons in how to live. He begins over and over until he grasps what freedom really is.
I begin a new journey with every novel I read, not to mention those I write. I wish us all good, well-guarded journeys.