Famous Final Scene (A Twice-told Tale)

Maybe you don’t need a pep talk at this point.

Maybe you've seen too many of them lately.

I mean, who could put it better than William Wallace in Braveheart when he tells his battle-ready troops before heading off to war with the British: “Every man dies, but not every man lives.”

Of course, I guess he meant women too, but then, who knows what lurks in the heart of Mel?And then there’s Aragorn at the final battle in The Return of the King, leading his weary fellowship against Sauron’s fading might: “I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you, stand, Men of the West.”

Or, a couple of years ago, Mats Sundin to his battle-scarred Leafs on the night of the season’s last game: “There’s nothing left to say. We’ve got to just go out and play hard and try our best to win.” Of course, we know how that test turned out.

But then there’s the wise and magnificent, Yoda: “There is no try, only do or do not.”

Which brings me to me. What advice have I left? Do I even have it in me to say the words that you need. (Imagine me saying this with a half-smile on my face, while maintaining an air of earnestness.) What can I say at this point that will make a difference?

Let’s try some sports clichés, shall we? It’s do-or-die. Backs against the wall. No holds barred. There is no tomorrow.

Except there actually is a tomorrow. And nobody ever died from writing a mediocre exam. And your backs won’t be against the wall. Your seats just past the middle of the gymnasium, to the right, really. So, no, sports cliché’s won’t do. You’ll need something more.

The thing about English is this: just speak truth. Know your characters (or, in poetry, know your speaker), but know yourself first and how you respond to those characters and the truth that they represent.

That’s better, but not quite it.

How about this: when I was your age….no, no, no! Can’t say that. Can’t even think that.

Hmmm….If I was writing either of these exams tomorrow (either 1101 or 1080), I simply would know the novels, stories, and/or poems really well. You can pretty much guess what the questions will be, more or less.

Go through each character in each story and ask yourself what they stand for and how can you possibly prove it. Get inside the minds of these characters and ask yourself what they most want, what they most fear, and whether or not they get what they want. Or, as the Stones would sing, do they sometimes just get what they need? That goes for the good and the bad characters. In 1101, that's the Draper Doyles and the Aunt Phils, the Dr. Jekylls and the Mr. Uttersons and the Edward Hydes. In 1080, that's the Grandmothers and Misfits, the Elisas and the tinkers. And who are all those minor characters? The thieves in The Road and the Father Seymours? The Henry Clervals and the Elizabeth Frankensteins (1101), not to mention (in 1080) Mangan's sister and the Red Sammy Butt! What do they all desire, and do they get it? What do they each fear? I think, in the end, we all just want……truth?

No. Truth can hurt sometimes. We often can’t handle the truth.…could it be...freedom?

Maybe? Is it freedom we want more than anything? Freedom to do what? To be what? Freedom to choose, to be who we want to be, without restrictions, without anyone else playing the authority figure over us, telling us what to do and how to do it, or what to be. Freedom from persecution. Freedom from lies. Freedom to face the truth on our own terms and decide for ourselves how to deal with, what to do about it. That’s what these characters want, isn’t it? Self-determination! Freedom! Peace of mind! As elusive as it is. As impossible as it is.

It might even be that the thing we fear the most is freedom. Because that would mean we are also responsible for ourselves. We can blame no one for our state of being, whatever is, but ourselves. And yet we invent ways to give our freedom away. To a certain extent, as in Blake's "London," we are born into it--like the Harlot's Infant (or, appropriately, Draper Doyle in The Divine Ryans) in that poem--but we are also slaves to our mind-forg'd manacles, to our ideas of right and wrong, God and faith, good and bad.

Sometimes a character attempts to go beyond his boundaries (Young Goodman Brown and the boy in "Araby," or Victor Frankenstein and Henry Jekyll), and what they find is that there are no boundaries--no actual limits, but the transgression of percieved limits comes with consequences. Of course it's only a transgression if you think of such self-imposed or culture-prescribed limitations as moral boundaries. Freedom of thought and action comes with built-in responsibility--unless you're The Misfit or the bad guys in McCarthy's novel. But there still is freedom, if only you can see it. The manacles are forged by the mind, for sure, but when the institutions to whom we've entrusted our freedom fail us, where else can we look to for answers but ourselves? That's what most characters, of novel, of poetry, or of story, face: when you look into the deep, dark woods, who is looking back at you?

And if you see yourself looking back, judging, assessing: who are you, exactly? What does Gabriel Utterson see when he looks into the mirror, in the form of Henry Jekyll? Who does the Grandmother O'Connor's short story think she is? Who is the man in The Road, really, and why does Young Goodman Brown really go into those woods? They are seeking and yet all hiding, at the same time. What we all want most to be understood, but what we all fear most is to be understood. Even by ourselves. Do our thoughts decide who we are, or do our actions define us?

Speaking of which, tomorrow you'll be asked to illustrate comprehension about some stories and/or poems you've read, as well as about the human condition. Seize the opportunity. Carpe diem! Don’t be afraid to say something wrong. Say what’s in your heart to say. But say it in an intelligent, controlled, articulate way: otherwise, it’s like a king in the back row, a bullet that never gets fired, a staff that never gets taken—power that’s wasted. You’ve spent the last four months improving your powers of communication. So now’s the time to just say what you’ve been wanting to say all semester long about these pieces of literature. If you’ve got nothing to say, well, you’re just not trying (or "doing," as Yoda would say). You know these novels, stories, and poems by now. You’ve lived with them for weeks. You know who their characters are, what they want, what they fear, and how they live. So what do you have to say about them?

“This is no place for Hobbits,” Gandalf the Grey has said. And it’s true.

The exam is meant to offer you the chance to show what you know, not what you don’t know.

So write what you know.

See you tomorrow. Have some fun with it. And use your nervous energy to blaze truth, fork some lightning, and wager philosophy. Do not go gentle in that good exam room; rage, rage against the oncoming darkness. Mostly, though, rage against your darkest thoughts and reach for a sliver of greatness.

Don’t play defensively. Come fully armed and ready to wrestle truth to the ground. But then, I’m not much for speeches.

May the force...oh, never mind.

Gerard