Sources of Light in a Darkened World

As you enter a traditional Hindu temple, the room is enveloped in darkness.  You hand the priest beside you camphor that you have brought, which he lights.  As the light fills the room, you suddenly realize that a breathtaking idol is inside the temple and only now can you see it.  This ancient ritual symbolizes the cycle of life: the world around you is dark when you are born, but as you grow and learn, your ignorance dissipates, and you can finally see what life truly means.  Just like the camphor lit by the priest, we need the light to lift us out of the darkness we experience in our own lives.  The form of this light can come in many forms, such as friendship, love, and a feeling of purpose. 

As the main character in Bessie Head’s novel A Question of Power, Elizabeth goes through a harrowing experience.  She suffers from a mental breakdown that is the equivalent of a journey through hell and back.  Despite all of the mental and physical pain she endures during her illness, she emerges as a changed and enlightened person at the end.  Her traumatic experience shapes her personality and helps her find the strong and stable soul inside of her.  What lifts her out of her personal hell are foundations of hope that inspire her.  These sources of hope serve as anchors to the “normal” way of life and constantly remind her that true goodness exists in the world. 

One of these sources of hope is the garden in her town of Motabeng.  She works in the garden with a group of people growing fruits and vegetables in the arid African environment using sustainable methods.  In the garden she learns how to grow food for the people of the village, going back to what she feels as every human’s first purpose in life.  During her work in the garden, Elizabeth notes, “It is impossible to become a vegetable gardener without at the same time coming into contact with the wonderful strangeness of human nature” (72).  She feels a true sense of purpose working with her hands outside in the dirt, growing food to sustain life.  This kind of work inspires her.  One afternoon, her co-worker Birgette says, “‘isn’t it wonderful to know in advance that those small green bushes will eventually produce fruit for bottles and bottles of jam?’” (81).  The bushes Birgette mentions produce Cape Gooseberries, a fruit that Elizabeth will later harvest and make into jam.  The Gooseberries are a symbol of Elizabeth’s soul.  While the berries may not be provide anything good as they grow, they eventually become plentiful and nutritious, turning into jam that the people of Motabeng will eat and enjoy.  The villagers nickname Elizabeth “Gooseberry” because she is intensely associated with the fruit.  Just like the berries, Elizabeth’s soul must endure growing pains to finally mature into goodness. 

Another source of hope are the relationships she has with the “real” people in her life.  During her mental breakdown, she hallucinates countless people and beings that torture her daily.  However, there are real, living people in her life, and they give her a more positive perspective.  One of these people is a man named Tom from the Peace Corps and works with Elizabeth in the garden.  He is a young American man with an open, spontaneous way of life, who truly listens to and takes Elizabeth seriously.  Despite Tom’s personality seeming distracted and lacking depth, Elizabeth can see a hidden side of him.  She remarks, “He had the most beautiful expression of deep wisdom in his eyes” (122).  Elizabeth knows this is a man who can see into her true self, finding value within her, which is completely different than the way the people in her hallucinations treat her.  Tom helps Elizabeth recognize the moment she rises out of her mental breakdown.  She realizes that “He seemed to have, in an intangible way, seen her sitting inside that coffin, reached down and pulled her out.  The rest she did herself.” (188). Elizabeth lifted herself out of her tortured state of mind, but it was Tom who gave her the extra push. Tom was, in effect, the “lever” that pulled her out of her personal hell.  He helped her experience goodness and hope in a world that had been unraveling around her. 

Elizabeth had gone through an incredibly traumatizing journey into all of her fears and insecurities.  Through all of her suffering, she emerged a person with a stronger soul, and hope for her life.  It is incredible how she lived through all of this mental torture without succumbing to it forever like many people who have experienced intense breakdowns like she did.  While A Question of Power is fiction, it is an inspiring story of an individual who was falling apart from the inside out, yet persevered through their pain to become a more enlightened person than they ever had been before.