The End of Suffering

        I, like most children, grew up as a very fussy eater. I didn’t like tomatoes, cucumbers, or most other vegetables. At dinner each night my parents never made much of a fuss for not putting the vegetables of the night on my plate. However I remember multiple occasions having dinner in other people’s homes with my parents. There is a level of anger a child can bring their parents too that most children would like to avoid. My refusal to eat what others had made for me was a sure fire way to bring my dad to this level of anger. I understood why he was mad, but I thought my tastes are my tastes and it’s not my fault I don’t like the taste and texture of certain foods. It wasn’t until I went away to college and had to start supporting myself and cooking for myself that I understood why I had made my father so angry. I realized I had always taken food for granted, that you could always have what you wanted to eat. Now when I sit in someone else’s house for dinner, much like the character Tom from Bessie Head’s novel A Question of Power, I eat up everything in sight. Once I had reframed my view of food I came to value and enjoy all types. A similar, but much more chaotic and profound, type of experience is felt by Bessie Head’s main character in the novel, Elizabeth.

        Throughout the novel Elizabeth is overcome with bouts of what most people might call madness, and others may see as necessary soul suffering of a prophet. The reader is brought along with Elizabeth as what she describes as being dragged through hell, and even as an objective reader you can’t help but feel that you are being tortured with her. Her journey through hell begins with soul persons (that live inside her), or Gods, who Elizabeth frames as Gods and spirits there to guide her and provide insight into human life. Dan, a soul spirit finally known as ‘Satan’, does the most damage to Elizabeth even though Elizabeth initial perceives him to be a great God. “He produced the sort of concentrated atmosphere that had made mystics fall to their feet in frightened awe and exclaim: ‘Woe is me. I have seen the glory of the Lord.’”(Head 103-104). He gained her trust and embraced Elizabeth and made her his puppet, as if he had “acquired Pavlov’s dog.”(Head 106). Once he is framed in Elizabeth’s mind and she trusts him, Dan begins to torture and attempt to push Elizabeth so far into insanity with visions of abused dead girls, 71 “nice-time girls” that Dan had his way with in the same bed that Elizabeth slept in every night for over a year. As the torture continues Elizabeth begins to feel that she is possibly being punished by God for something she may have done wrong. The whole time she is under the belief that Dan is a greater being, that is torturing her because he loves her and Elizabeth can not escape his hold over her. Elizabeth “could not grasp the darkness because at the same time [she] saw the light.”(Head 190). The only thing keeping Elizabeth from dropping dead are her few friends that provide a stable, familiar ground to rest on.

        The two biggest connections to the sane world are her son, Shorty, and an American Agriculturist named Tom. These two are the closest to Elizabeth because they are the only two people that are aware of her troubled soul journeys. They are also the only two people that don’t avoid her during her fits of exhaustion combined with Dan relentlessly abusing her brain. Shorty was not even aware of his support to his mother, and Elizabeth was un-aware of Shorty sharing in her trip through hell indirectly which is indicated by his poetry at the end of the novel. Shorty provided a constant reminder to Elizabeth that she had her motherly duties to attend to, and often this would lead to her continuing with her other daily routines of gardening at the local industry project and in her own personal garden. Tom was her connection to the adult world and brought Elizabeth comfort with his selfless actions and compassion towards others. He was generally a good human being, and the true meaning of a good human being is one the main theme Elizabeth learned about through her journey through hell. Because she recognized Tom’s goodness he was able to reflect her own compassion and love for everything back to her. When he did so Elizabeth’s “soul-death was really over in that instant,”(Head 188). It is her moments in time with Tom, Shorty and other friends that allow Elizabeth to collect her thoughts and provide a frame of reference on her path towards reframing her life and being free of Dan.

        Elizabeth finally receives her “lever out of hell” when Sello, a soul person who akin to God or Father Time, becomes fed up with witnessing Dan torture Elizabeth and says; “Elizabeth, love isn’t like that. Love is two people mutually feeing each other, not one living on the soul of the other a ghoul!” (Head 197). It is at this point that she is finally able to see the darkness, and as recognizing it as darkness Dan’s control over Elizabeth gave way. The revelation that Elizabeth came out with from her torture was that “There is only one God and his name is Man..” (Head 206). This was her new frame and it allowed her to go to bed understanding that when “people wanted everyone to be ordinary it was just another way of saying man loved man.” (Head 106). She slept that night and for the first time, with her new frame, she felt a sense of belonging.

        The novel is such a roller coaster ride of good and evil, coherent and incoherent, rational and irrational that it brings the reader into a deteriorated state of mind. I must say that if I didn’t have to write this blog that I may not have finished the novel. In the end I’m pleased that I did because in experiencing the weight being take off of Elizabeth I was swept with a feeling of a comfort and calmness as if I too had be set free from some form of torture. Like my experience with food, Elizabeth’s journeys through hell made everything in a normal day of life seem wonderful. An outsider looking at her life at this point might think Elizabeth lives a poor hard life, barely making ends meat and surviving. To Elizabeth it was her own life and it was the greatest anyone could ask for, and equal to all others.