P. D. James: "Belief had its social uses. We haven't exactly found an effective substitute."

She's one of my favorite living novelists, and P. D. James's book Murder Room was televised on PBS the last couple weekends in the U.S. (I imagine in Britain it was shown earlier.) I was already into the book before I knew it was going to be on TV, so of course I couldn't watch the show.

Most of her novels touch at least lightly on religious belief. One of those sections in this one might be a good springboard for discussion.

The "Murder Room" after which the book is named is just that, a room in a London museum displaying the violent end of many British lives during the inter-war years. Tally, the caretaker, and James, the curator, are chatting in her cottage on the museum grounds as we enter this scene. He has just learned his cancer is out of remission, and his own death is looming. I quote here beginning on page 62 of the Knopf hardcover edition, copyright 2003:

******

Now he asked, "Does it depress you, cleaning and dusting the Murder Room, those dead eyes in dead photographs, the dead faces?"

She said, "I suppose I've got used to them . . . . When I first came I imagined what their victims suffered, or what they themselves suffered, but they don't depress me. It's all over for them, isn't it? They did what they did, they paid for it and they've gone. They aren't suffering now. . . . But I sometimes wonder where they've all gone--not just the murderers and their victims, but all the people photographed in the museum. Do you ever wonder that?"

"No, I don't wonder. That's because I know. We die like animals and from much the same causes, and except for the lucky few, in much the same pain."

"And that's the end?"

"Yes. It's a relief, isn't it?"

She said, "So what we do, how we act, doesn't matter except in this life?"

"Where else could it matter, Tally? I find it difficult enough to behave with reasonable decency here and now without agonizing to acquire celestial brownie points for some fabled hereafter."

. . . .

[They discuss the record of lives in heaven, which they had heard of in early religious lessons. Tally speaks next.] "When I was about eight I thought the book was very like the red account book which my uncle had for his business. It had Accounts written on the cover in black and the pages had red margins."

He said, "Well, belief had its social uses. We haven't exactly found an effective substitute. Now we construct our own morality. 'What I want is right and I'm entitled to have it.' The older generation may still be encumbered by some folk memory of Judeo-Christian guilt, but that will be gone by the next generation."

"I'm glad I shan't be here to live through it."

******

That's enough for our purposes here. It's your turn now. What do you think?

Posted: Wed - October 19, 2005 at 07:18 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

P. D. James: "Belief had its social uses. We haven't exactly found an effective substitute."

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson