D
Della
Guest
Please forgive the length of this post, but I couldn’t write it any briefer without editing it a few times (which I just don’t have time to do):
CAROLOFTHEBELLS hit on the major themes, but with all due respect to her, there’s an element I think she missed that explains George’s depression going so low that he’d consider suicide. It was an underlying flaw in his character–a besetting sin, like so many of us have. He was resentful and bitter in his heart of hearts. Mr. Potter saw it when George came to him to beg for help. And who else would recognize it than another bitter, resentful person than Scrooge-like Mr. Potter?
Wounded pride can drive people to the most horrific acts. In George’s case he screams at his family–asking why did they have to have so many kids, telling his poor old uncle that he, not George was going to go to prison, calling him an old fool. Him turning on everyone with such cruelty tells us the story of years of pent up frustration and bitterness. But George has a golden thread of conscience that wouldn’t let him kill the people he sees as standing in his way and leave town–no, he turns his anger and bitterness inward, justifying it to himself that God and everyone has abandoned him and his only recourse is suicide.
He tells himself that will make everyone happy, but of course, what he’s really doing is feeling sorry for himself–he wants to punish everyone for keeping him from the life he had wanted to live. It takes seeing what the lives of all those he loves would have been like without him to shock him out of his bitter resentment and be thankful, probably for the first time, for the blessings he has been given and the life he made for himself and others, which were better than he thought and better than he had ever dreamed his life could have been with all his childhood longings.
It’s a story about accepting one’s duty out of love and not making oneself into a martyr, but seeing the hand of God in all our right choices, even if we think those choices thwarted our hopes and dreams. I think most people sense this when they see the film but wouldn’t think to put it in those terms, especially not these days when our culture tells us that in order to be happy we must instantaneously satisfy our every whim. Anyway, that’s how I see George’s life and the motivation for his actions in the story.
CAROLOFTHEBELLS hit on the major themes, but with all due respect to her, there’s an element I think she missed that explains George’s depression going so low that he’d consider suicide. It was an underlying flaw in his character–a besetting sin, like so many of us have. He was resentful and bitter in his heart of hearts. Mr. Potter saw it when George came to him to beg for help. And who else would recognize it than another bitter, resentful person than Scrooge-like Mr. Potter?
Wounded pride can drive people to the most horrific acts. In George’s case he screams at his family–asking why did they have to have so many kids, telling his poor old uncle that he, not George was going to go to prison, calling him an old fool. Him turning on everyone with such cruelty tells us the story of years of pent up frustration and bitterness. But George has a golden thread of conscience that wouldn’t let him kill the people he sees as standing in his way and leave town–no, he turns his anger and bitterness inward, justifying it to himself that God and everyone has abandoned him and his only recourse is suicide.
He tells himself that will make everyone happy, but of course, what he’s really doing is feeling sorry for himself–he wants to punish everyone for keeping him from the life he had wanted to live. It takes seeing what the lives of all those he loves would have been like without him to shock him out of his bitter resentment and be thankful, probably for the first time, for the blessings he has been given and the life he made for himself and others, which were better than he thought and better than he had ever dreamed his life could have been with all his childhood longings.
It’s a story about accepting one’s duty out of love and not making oneself into a martyr, but seeing the hand of God in all our right choices, even if we think those choices thwarted our hopes and dreams. I think most people sense this when they see the film but wouldn’t think to put it in those terms, especially not these days when our culture tells us that in order to be happy we must instantaneously satisfy our every whim. Anyway, that’s how I see George’s life and the motivation for his actions in the story.
