Alan Paton’s Too Late, the Phalarope—“Scarlet Letters in the Modern Age”

By Karen E.B. Elliott

 

Alan Paton wrote only three novels—the first he destroyed; the second is his most famous (Cry, the Beloved Country), and then his third is ridiculously painful to read.  But it’s so amazingly good, and so apropos for our students, especially as we live in and confront the tempting, technological age.  Although this novel takes place in South Africa post-WWII, and although it’s about the other whites, the non-English Afrikaners—the Boers, original Dutch settlers of Africa’s cape—it’s about good, old fashioned sin and our human nature to give into it, to hide it, to indulge in it further, and then to ask God in perverted prayer, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Blameshifting, unfortunately, is nothing new.  Adam did it to Eve, and then Eve did it to the devil.  It seems that the first sin is Biblical self-indulgence (if eating of the fruit is metaphorical), and it’s the inability to want to be honest—not only with God, but each other (especially the ones we claim to love), and even ourselves.  What is new, however, is that due to technology, we don’t necessarily even need to blameshift.  With the click of a mouse or the subtle movement of our thumbs, we can open an icon, browse, and then for too many who are savvy, delete the evidence as best we can.  Personally, I think the internet is the devil’s playground. Our good intentions to use it wisely and for good quickly submit to distractions…and too often, dangerous rabbit holes that make Lewis Carroll’s world look more like “The Hundred Acre Wood.”  It’s the new realm where evil can work incredibly effectively as it lodges itself into our souls like a stubborn splinter—mostly because we’re hiding our indulgences with too-great-of-ease, and then we’re heading to our classrooms, our church pews, the pulpits, the board meetings, our dinner-dates, or T-ball games all in the name of the Lord, when all the while we’re headed toward destruction, and maybe even to our personal hells, while destroying our families and too often even the greater communities in which we strive to live and serve.

Whether you’re Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim or nothing at all, confession in the 21st century is not in our everyday vocabulary.  We don’t need it; after all, if you’re “born again,” baptized, circumcised or bowing upon your mat, we’re all set.  Plus, we’ve got Dr. Oz, Phil and of course Oprah and the Personal Growth section of Barnes and Noble, or worse, we’ve got those few family members or friends from prayer group who help us rationalize our sin because after all as an Evangelical, it’s very important to understand where the secular world is coming from. We’re just trying to live in the world, but most of the time, we are of it.  We have, or shall we say temptation has, convinced us that by understanding the other guy’s point of view, we’re really leading them to the Kingdom. But as the narrator of Too Late, the Phalarope declares, “because [he] did not entreat or repent, he was destroyed…[and we] were destroyed with him” (Paton 4).   This novel is a necessary read.  It convicts and re-convicts its reader.  Like the protagonist and anti-hero, Pieter, the reader can identify with the terror of being discovered when we know we’ve indulged too much in our sin, and when we pray, like Pieter, “it was another mercy that he sought, not to be saved from sin, but from its consequence” (157).

The novel is not like Cry, the Beloved Country which is characteristically Christian and accepted as such even at secular, liberal institutions due to its African and multi-cultural setting.  Too Late, the Phalarope is much harder to swallow.  It goes deeper into the faith where many Christians are frightened to go.  Paton’s characters are in fact deeply committed Christians.  Their questions are not about God’s existence, is He real, or whether or not He is in fact absolute truth.  No,

Ver todos los episodios