The importance of connection in 《Where the Crawdads Sing》

書名 : WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING

作者 : Delia Owens

觀後感

 Have you ever felt tremendously lonely before? If your family members, friends, and lover leave you one after another, and what lies in store is a series of blow, what will you do? These difficulties seem too tragic for everyone. However, the main character in this story should face all the problems all alone.

  The story starts with a family living in the marsh area. Kya, the protagonist of the narrative, lived with her parents and siblings. People living in the marsh area were usually discriminated and badly treated. Even worse, her father was brutal, often got drunk and savagely beat his wife and children. Finally, her mother, siblings, and even her father all left, leaving her alone to struggle in the marsh 5 district. Desiring people΄ s company, however, she was tortured by the malevolence from the society; what the future held for her was nothing but loneliness, betrayal, cheat, and invasion.

  Despite all the frustration in her effort to connect with people, she overcame and found her own way to adjust to a life of solitude. From the story, I learn how to put myself together from failures of attempting to trust and connect with others. When there are interactions among people, there also must be wounds left. However, should we shrink back just due to the wounds we suffer from the connection with others?

  I think the answer is negative. Despite the trauma and failures, what we can do is to recover from every heartbreaking experience, try again and again, and learn from the lessons. I think we don' t have to keep ourselves intact and thus avoid any interactions with people as if it were the plague; instead, we should take the important experiences from the past, and reduce the chance of being harmed again.

  For example, if I were betrayed by someone I'd trusted before, then I can think why he or she would do such things? Is it because something wrong with his or her character or I did something to lead to the results? After drawing a conclusion, if it's their problems, I can check their personality and thus realize I can't put reliance on those who have these character and may be more aware of others' thinking and motive. Just like Kya, she was hurt deeply, and once didn't want to trust others anymore, but with the help of someone who loved her, she gradually developed the ability to distinguish between nice people and someone with bad intentions. She decided to give Tate, who'd once left her but later found her his true love, a chance to accompany her again.

  This story also contains abstruse meaning toward one thing, such as the explanation of the hurt Kya had been inflicted upon. Although Kya was usually the victim of malice from the society, she wouldn't swallow her anger all the time. Once the chance comes, she'll fight back. Like the metaphor in the story: one certain kind of female firefly will gnaw at another kind of male firefly while the male one mates with it and thus doesn't notice what it's doing. Then the female one will chew its head, body and every part of the male one, finally eating up the male firefly without anything left. That warns us that in addition to the principle that the strong shall rule over the weak, sometimes “the weak” isn't so vulnerable as it might seem; instead, hidden beneath the surface exists a strong entity, ready to fight back at any time. And it's also like the relation between humans and nature. If we continue doing harm to the natural environment, it'll strike back and we'll take the consequences in the end.

  From the story, I realize the importance of the connection between people, and the thoughts that we should always be kind to others and the nature; after all, no one can live alone throughout the life and go through the day without others' help. We are a group; we are social animals. And we all need the assistance of other people; we need to rely on the nature that nourishes us. With the connection, with the nutrient, we can get through the hard time together.