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CHAPTER 4.4
∗
OF CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN
by CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG on 11/30/16. For personal use only.

Our five-year-old grandson Randall is swinging on a swing in the playground. He is

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thinking and we do not disturb his thoughts. After a while he announces his verdict,
“I think I would rather be an egg than a chicken”. Just at that moment a large fire-
truck approaches and the fire-crew attaches it to a hydrant. This is a novice crew,
with an instructor teaching them how to handle the equipment. They are not yet
ready to tackle a real fire. Quickly they roll out the fire-hoses and begin squirting
water into the neighboring woods. Randall and his brothers rush to join the action.
The opportunity to pursue further the philosophy of eggs and chickens is lost.
A year earlier, Randall is silent in the back of the car while my wife and I are
sitting in front. The grown-ups are talking about trivialities, about the groceries we
are on our way to buy and the probability of finding a convenient parking-space.
When there is a pause in our chatter, we hear the voice of the philosopher in the back
of the car. He says with a tone of triumph, “God is dead”. We ask what led him to this
conclusion and he has a logical answer prepared, “Well, we become spirits when we
are dead, and God is a spirit, so God must be dead”. Then we arrive at the grocery
store and trivial pursuits distract our attention. We do not have time to explore the
implications of God’s death. Only one thing is clear to us. Randall thought of this by
himself. He has not been reading Nietzsche. It is likely that his thought was guided
not so much by logical argument as by resentment against God’s intrusiveness. He
knows that he has a good side and a bad side and that in spite of good intentions the
bad side often prevails. He resents the fact that God spies on him all the time. God
is invading his privacy, and he needs to keep his thoughts private. It is hard enough
to be the oldest of three brothers, without having to deal with God in addition. With
a sense of relief and liberation, he declares God dead and regains his privacy.

∗ Contribution to the book Of Beauty and Consolation edited by Wim Kayzer.

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Some time earlier, Randall is sitting in the bathtub in our home. The bathtub
is a good place for thinking. After a long silence, he asks, “Does the devil have a
brother?” When my wife replies, “No, I don’t believe so”, Randall is quiet for a
while. Then he says, “That would be double trouble for the world”.
Beauty and consolation are the gifts that children bring into the lives of
parents and grandparents. People without children find other beauties and other
consolations. But children are the most universal sources of beauty and consolation,
available to educated and uneducated, to sophisticated and primitive, to rich and poor
alike. Human beings of all cultures and races have this in common. Our biological
heritage imposed on us an imperative, to love and nurture and educate our children.
Raising and educating children are the most important things that our evolution
by CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG on 11/30/16. For personal use only.

has designed us to do. To raise children is exhausting, to educate them is difficult.

Evolution has given us the reward of joy to help us endure the pain of child-rearing
and the tedium of education. We would not fulfill our roles as guardians of the young
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if the young did not fill our hearts with joy. It is no accident that we find their bodies
beautiful and their minds miraculous. It is no accident that we find consolation for
the sorrows of the world in watching their bodies grow and their minds unfold.
It is a curious paradox that the beauty and consolation provided by children play
such a large role in our lives and such a small role in our literature. The literature
that we consider great is mostly concerned with dramatic events and extraordinary
people. The growth of young children is, by contrast, ordinary. The intellectual
awakening of young children is a process as ordinary as the physical awakening
of woodland in springtime. Everyone loves the cute remarks of children just as
everyone loves the first flowers of spring. Flowers in spring also bring beauty and
consolation, but no great literature is written about flowers. Such ordinary things as
babies and flowers do not make themes for great books. Although the process by
which a child begins to understand and to ask questions is a deep mystery, perhaps
the deepest mystery of all that we see around us, we still consider babies ordinary
because we are so familiar with them.
There is one genre of literature in which great books about children can be
written. This is the genre of books written for children to read. In a book for
children, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. The beauty of the ordinary can be
honestly portrayed. The mystery of the ordinary is not hidden. Lewis Carroll was
one of the greatest writers for children, because he cared passionately for his child-
friend Alice and saw the world through her eyes. The world that he saw was absurd
and full of paradox because the world that every child sees is absurd and full of
paradox. Randall’s thought, that he would rather be an egg than a chicken, is a
thought that might easily have occurred to Alice. Humpty-Dumpty, the master of
logical paradox, was an egg. Carroll understood what every child understands, that
words are magic. He understood that eggs are also magic, their smooth round shape

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hiding the mysteries that give birth to chickens, turtles and dinosaurs. He gave to
Humpty-Dumpty the insight that words mean whatever you want them to mean.
Such an insight would not have occurred to a chicken.
Another great work of literature written for children is “Charlotte’s Web”. This
goes deeper than the Alice books. It deals directly with death. Charlotte dies. White
wrote a masterpiece because he was not afraid to look at death through the mind
of a child. At the end of tragedy comes consolation. After death comes rebirth.
Charlotte never sees her babies, and her babies never know their mother, but life
goes on. A child is able to accept death as a fact of life. Every child more than
three years old is aware of death, and most children can speak of it in matter-of-fact
words without fear. Two years ago, our little poodle died, and Randall sitting in his
by CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG on 11/30/16. For personal use only.

high-chair at the supper-table remarked, “My bones are feeling heavier and heavier
every day. I think I will be going to Heaven soon”. Every child to whom we have
read “Charlotte’s Web” aloud has loved it. The story is sad but it is also funny and
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joyful. Children know that life is like that, a mixture of sorrow and joy.
There are also works full of beauty and consolation written for adults about
children. Richard Hughes was a master of this genre. His best-known story, “A High
Wind in Jamaica” deals with murder. Emily is a resourceful little girl who finds
herself accidentally on board a pirate ship in the Caribbean. The pirates are friendly
souls who treat her well and mean her no harm. The pirate captain gives her a bed
in his own cabin. Then the captain of a Dutch merchant ship is captured and put
with Emily in the cabin. In a moment of panic she murders the Dutchman. Arriving
back in England, she easily pins the blame for the murder on the pirates. At the
court of enquiry, the accused men have no chance of prevailing against her evident
innocence. Insouciantly she walks free while they are led away to be hanged. Emily
shows us the dark side of childhood, the ruthlessness that nature gave us long ago to
help us survive the harsh struggle for existence, the cunning that hides ruthlessness
behind an innocent face. Every child has a dark side, though not every child commits
murder. Emily is true to her nature. She is lovable, because it is in our nature as
human beings to love children even when they do evil. Children must be ruthless
and parents must be forgiving, otherwise their genes will not survive.
Another great book about children is William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”.
Golding shows us an even darker side of childhood. The ruthlessness of a gang
is worse than the ruthlessness of a single child. The gang is the natural result of
competition for status and power, when children are left by themselves on an island
without adults to restrain them. The children need strong leadership to survive in a
tropical jungle, and the price of strong leadership is blind loyalty and terror. They
are trapped between the silence of the jungle and the brutality of the gang. Children
still obey the instincts of tribal cohesion that enabled a social animal to survive the
hazards of famines and ice-ages. Golding’s children are as individuals no worse

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than Emily. They are worse only when they are submerged in the gang. Golding’s
book tells us deep truths about our children and about ourselves. Even when we
do evil, we are not all bad. Golding’s children, in the depths of their degradation,
are lovable too. There is beauty and consolation in tragedy, not only in stories with
happy endings.
Tolstoy famously remarked that all happy families are alike but each unhappy
family is unhappy in its own way. That is why great books are written about unhappy
families. Unhappy families provide tension and drama, the stuff of literature, while
happy families provide a card-game for children. It seems to be only in the visual
arts that happy families are portrayed as central to the human condition. The holy
family, centered on the child Jesus, has inspired thousands of great paintings and
by CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG on 11/30/16. For personal use only.

sculptures. One does not need to be a Christian to feel the joy of the renaissance
painters and the beauty of the masterpieces that they produced. Their religion taught
them that this ordinary baby that they painted was the light of the world. Even for
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those of us to whom the religion is alien, the paintings and the light remain.

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