Liberation Day: Stories, George Saunders, author; Tina Fey, Michael McKean, Edi Patterson, Jenny Slate, Jack McBrayer, Melora Hardin, Stephen Root, narrators.
All of these stories seem to be variations of these same themes: loss, disappointment, grief, sadness, disillusionment, vengeance, pettiness, cruelty, hopelessness, and perhaps, just momentarily, a bit of hopefulness, gratitude, and the milk of human kindness.
In the first story, the longest one, the one that gives the book its title, we witness a world beyond our imagination. For those who have lost all hope of achieving their goals or of attaining success, there is a program that wipes their memories clean and gives them a fresh start. If they enter it, their families will be provided for, though they will no longer be part of their families. The life, as they had known it, would be erased. Their memories would be gone and their age would begin from that day forward, so although they were fully grown adults, they would believe they were only a few years old. They entered this program voluntarily. No one was coerced, though they would soon be slaves, of a kind.
Theirs would be an empty life, a programmed life, in which they would only be aware of information fed into them by means of a receptor. They would be fed by others. Most often they would be restrained. Each day they would be told how to proceed with specific instructions. They would live in the “listening room”, where like actors, they would perform for the entertainment of others by actually becoming the characters in the performance, using only the information fed into their thoughts by external means.
One day, a group stages a rebellion to free these “volunteers”, believing that they know what is right and are the virtuous ones; the accomplice who planned the liberation realizes too late, the error of his own ways. The group’s behavior turns out to be no better, and perhaps a bit worse, than the behavior of those they had condemned.
The story made me uncomfortable, which is a testament to the author’s genius, for as the “speakers/actors” in the listening room are about to make the audience experience the fear of the Battle of Little Big Horn, or Custer’s Last Stand, the reading audience, too, will grow afraid, as I did, afraid to find out what was going to transpire next.
Moving on, in another story, a writer throwing out various plots as she attempts to write, is obsessed with the safety of her son. She suddenly realizes that she does not know where he is, and when he does appear, she sees he is wounded. What has happened to him? Are her reactions or those of her husband rational? Do they become like those they condemn? This seems to be another story about people who thought they were the virtuous, only to discover that they are just as lacking in virtue as those they are judging.
In a letter to a grandchild, a grandparent offers advice with love and kindness, though his advice may not be compatible with your own offerings. To be involved or not to be involved in situations which may negatively affect you or your family and friends, is the question. What would you do?
When a young man and woman, with no particular stand-out or outstanding qualities, find each other, they somehow morph into things of beauty to each other, and others, which proves that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. Do your opinions often change because of the outward actions of people that you know? If others are accepting, do you follow suit? If they are judgmental, do you become a judge, as well? If a person appears confident, do you view them differently than someone who seems shy and retiring? Are both worthy of the same respect? Is the cover of the book more meaningful than the pages within it? Are you a follower or a leader?
The protagonists in each of the stories has ulterior motives and often, in order to compete or achieve a goal, manipulates and instigates others to do their bidding, even with a subtle form of bribery or blackmail. They justify the consequences of their behavior, on themselves and others, by their particular purpose or need. We witness this kind of behavior every day, in our own worlds, but it isn’t as obvious to us as it is in the worlds the author provides. We are in the forest and do not notice a single tree, but rather the multitude of them. We are simply used to the daily happenstance and seeming randomness of the events we witness regularly. We accept it all without question. The author has skillfully made it more obvious, by pointing out, and then illustrating, our human frailties, the very ones that we wish to avoid, the sins that we wish never to commit, but somehow, he makes it apparent that we all do exhibit poor behavior at times. Sometimes it is without thought. Sometimes it is very well thought out and planned. These are two different kinds of wrong doing, of evil behavior, but both are evil. The drunk driver who gets into an accident may be just as much a murderer as the serial killer. Although we witness this kind of behavior in our own daily lives, in the political environment in which we live, they are larger than life on these pages and serve as a mirror into our own souls. That, in a nutshell, is the gift of this author. He provides the mirror.