Lesson
45
The
humour in unfettered truth
“Well--Kawlin-da-bin--that’s
just weird, and that’s just a weird kid.”
“Funny, but honest” pretty well sums
up Carrier’s 1992 Leacock Medal winner, Prayers
of a Very Wise Child, a collection of questioning messages to God delivered
in the words of a boy in 1940s rural Quebec.[1]
Prayers like these have a lot of
potential. A conversation with Someone who knows all of your thoughts and deeds
invites candour and the discussion of difficult issues--a combination that
often feeds humour. With World War II, poverty, and religious constraints, the
times did not lack difficulties, and the boy’s prayers tap many of them.
Some humour comes from the interplay
between the Church and the child. When a local man hangs himself in the wake of
his wife’s infidelity and a fire that killed his children, the priest
determines that the body should be buried outside the graveyard with the dogs,
explaining that the man didn’t die like a Catholic, “he died like a dog.”
“God, I’ve never heard of a dog that
hanged itself. . . . Is our religion the best, God, because it’s the one where
you suffer the most?” the boy asks.
Carrier’s boy doesn’t sound authentic
all the time. He uses too many adult expressions, comparing a saint to “a
raving lunatic,” fearing that his “grandfather got screwed,” and quoting the
newspaper Action Catholique.
But Carrier did this intentionally and
had an impact mixing those references with thoughts like, “Sometimes I wish I
knew less about grammar and more about [bare] bums”; and even sillier stuff
from adults: “Our grandmother’s greatest hope for the War in Europe is that our
French Canadians [fighting there] don’t swear too much. Their bad words would
scandalize the French, who only know fancy words.”
In the end, the little boy sounds like
both adult and child, and his prayers mix self-interest with genuine concern
for others. In his outpouring over the plight of children in concentration
camps (“They look like skeletons, with only enough skin to hide their bones.
They have hollow eyes; they’re scared. They look like little dead children, but
they’re alive”), the boy pleads with God to “make a miracle to stop all that
suffering.”
Then, in the next breath, he announces
plans to head to the rink, asking, “Please, God, don’t forget me. I’d be really
glad if Your holy finger could push the puck into the net.”
Maybe he’s not that weird after all--just
honest and more like the rest of us and the hockey-sweater kid than we might
think.
Writing Exercise
Write a prayer about
the Montreal Canadiens, your favorite food, and Peace on Earth.
[1] Prières d’un enfant
très sage, rendered into Leacock Medal-eligible English by award-winning
translator Sheila Fischman.