Fighting Pandemic with the Compassion of Humanity
Abstract
Literature since ages has been a source of sharing and conveying experiences from one generation to another. It has been dealing with numerous subjects and issues such as love, relationships, war, diseases, calamity, social and ecological concerns. Various writers have shared common humanistic concerns while providing the deepest and insightful records of the event guiding humanity to survive and grow through unprecedented times. Their writings have attempted to touch each individual with compassion while providing a source of consolation at distressed times. This paper deals with such experiences of humankind where love, compassion, care and kindness prevail amongst the turbulences. The world, undeniably, is affected with the iniquitous energy but the will-power of human beings does not surrender to the villainous impact. It has been shown over ages that whenever humanity is hit with such havoc, there are moments of chaos and despair, humans undergo traumatic shock, suspicion for medics and laws exist and a sense of devastation by scapegoating outsiders happen, adding to the climate of fear and uncertainty for a while but humanity consistently surfaces the situation and emerges as a victor fighting with a visible or an invisible enemy. The paper is an attempt made to discuss these aspects of human endeavours in the exceptional times invoking solidarity and harmony facing the odds of life.
Keywords: pandemic, compassion, humanity, existence
Humankind has been dealing with the uncertain situation of pandemic diseases for years. They are certainly not a new occurrence in human history as cholera, bubonic plague (black death), smallpox, influenza have been considered the most brutal killers in human history. Some more diseases that hit the world are HIV/AIDS (2005-2012), the Hong Kong Flu (1968), Asian Flu (1956-1958), Flu Pandemic (1918), Sixth Cholera Pandemic (1910-1911), Asiatic Flu or Russian Flu (1889-1890), and Third Cholera Pandemic (1852-1860) ravaging humanity through its existence and eventually changing the course of history. The more civilized humans become with building world-class infrastructure and connecting with other cities, the more likely we get affected with the outbreak of diseases and as a result lower our immunity against a new virus. With the arising of such hesitant situations, there are unexpected and unanticipated accounts of human tales of violence and rebellion as well as compassion and kindness. This is what serves the purpose of literature where recording of such events accelerate a sense of solidarity and encourage mutual understanding.
Literature has been dealing with numerous subjects and issues such as love, relationships, war, diseases, calamity, social and ecological concerns. Various writers have shared common humanistic concerns while providing the deepest and insightful records of the event guiding humanity to survive and grow through unprecedented times. Their writings have attempted to touch each individual with compassion while providing a source of consolation at distressed times. As rightly said by Oscar Wilde, “Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it moulds it to its purpose.” (Quintus, 568) The world, undeniably, is affected with the iniquitous energy but the will-power of human beings does not surrender to the villainous impact. The experiences of the sufferers along with the analysis of the deplorable times are explicitly recorded in literature. In the poem Horseshoe Bat by Dan MacIsaac the stirring arrival of pandemic is stated in the following words: “This Hell-bent thing…/ like another plague out of Exodus/ carries a baleful load of virus/ in its trussed body for sale or barter.” The silence of its entering the body is described artistically: “no hell-flame struck from those matchstick / limbs,/ these orchid ears heard no infernal drums”. The plan of the virus with its fatal impact is stated: “Is there any horror in this skittish thing/ except in its unclean capture and killing?” The horrors of the pandemic are devilish, deadly and toxic because “the hospitals and morgues fill and fill”. The sanctity of human life is perturbed with loneliness, misery and isolation as the only companion is “the shadows on the walls” written by Cameron Alexander Lawrence in the poem From This Distance. The economy is badly hit with the pandemic and there is paucity of money to pay the last rites. What ultimately prevails are fraternity, sorority and compassion. Humanity realizes that the world can be brought together by gathering pieces and so the love flows from the heart. In the poem Financing the Burial by Lisa Ampleman, it is the voice of the soul that responds to the happenings around. The compassion for humanity is revealed “during Holy Week/ A city councilman/ calls for a relief fund/ So his working-class/ Constituents can afford/ to cremate or bury/ their dead.” The humanitarian love that shines for the “Bodega clerks, food-/delivery drivers,/ caretakers for/ the sick” during the unprecedented times uplift others “to treat justily/ in death those who,/ he says, are keeping/ the city alive.” The pandemic hits the human body and mind and the pain is boundless. Seamus Heaney writes in St. Kevin and the Blackbird that “agony” is all that is felt. The individual goes through a chain of painful events fighting it with all the might even if it does not attack. Sally Morgan writes in My Corona : It hasn’t infected me, mind you,/ but it has changed me-/ morphed into an/ odd, complex chimera.” He further writes: “I’ve developed a fly’s eyes/ to see danger on surfaces…I am Lady Macbeth at the sink.”
The pain of seclusion during the time of pandemic is hard to bear. The moment when one is quarantined turns out to be highly intricate with the bombardment of thoughts. The affected and the concerned are invaded with confusing thoughts of life and death. The near and dear ones can only pray and bless the enduring from a distance while themselves passing through a disconcerting phase of losing and wining. The tumult of emotions is well expressed in the poem Quarantine by Sonja Livingston. The son experiences the stillness to see his father dying who he thought “was Superman''. The realization of living alone haunts both of them as the son “stands beneath the window/ head tilted 45 degress,” talking “about bluebirds in the/ park, how the cats/ are doing” as the father can no longer move out of the four walls. The world is altered in strange ways. The “new normal”- with masks, sanitizers, closure signs, antiseptic smells, empty streets, stacks of coffins- trigger to question the perception of the world. The questions raised remain unanswered leading to the realization that uncertainty is the reality. It is in such a scenario that literature takes its lead and guides. It has been rightly said that “Literature may not explain away or fight off things such as pandemics, even as modern science sometimes can’t, but it does become a source of consolation, a way of sharing…deepest and most insightful record of the events.” (Ghosh, Web) I would also like to quote Virginia Woolf who says “Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, … what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness…it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature…literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind.”(Woolf, 68) This is indeed supported by the writers who try to evade darkness and evolve humanity to see the light within. They attempt to clear the misty despair and desolation of the time with hope and faith. Jane Kenyon in the poem Having it Out with Melancholy promises a respite. She writes “I am overcome/ by ordinary contentment.” She brings words of hope in the poem Otherwise where life is celebrated. She states: “I go out of bed/ On two strong legs./ It might have been/ otherwise.” Manley Hopkins poem Pied Beauty comforts and reminds the readers to look for beauty in a world that is imperfect and changing. The Dam Has Broken! by Susan Van de Bittner conveys an urge to look forward “ my new job is to capture the flow, in words/ by voice or writing/ To create new Rivers,/ New streams and/ New Joy!” Kitty O’Meara encouragingly expresses in the poem In the Time of Pandemic the compassion that heals the malicious affliction of pandemic:
And when the danger passed, and
the people joined together again,
they grieved their losses, and
made new choices, and dreamed
new images, and created new ways
to live and heal the earth fully, as
they had been healed.
Such emotions resonate and reverberate in literature where self-assurance and hope is regenerated. The writers inspire humankind to revitalize and replenish. Virginia Woolf in her essay “On Being Ill” states that “those great wars which wages by itself…in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever” go unrecorded and John Hatcher writes in The Black Death: An Intimate History that many lose “faith in their religion and …[abandon] themselves to fate” yet the writers remind that sense still exists somewhere. This is the role of literature that it“adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides (Holmer, 28) and “it is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression” (Whitehead, 106). The vibration of expression impinge all as “only the weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry” (Clare,56). The experience of disorientation engenders spiritual awakening where humanity binds into a thread of unison contending with reality that we are not masters of this world. The painful experiences of meeting with one’s shadow, the agony of losing loved ones and the dry and deserted moment of resilience and defiance inspire humanity to move ahead together. Such is the impact that even in the reign of xenophobia there is sunshine of xenophilia, even if there is a wave of misanthropy it is overpowered by philanthropy, even if world sinks to rock-bottom with the forces of regression and paranoia it heals with compassion and glocal outlook, where we think globally and act locally.
References:
*****
Dr. Bhavna Sharma, Assistant Professor, Amity School of Liberal Arts, Amity University Haryana