Faith and Uncertainty

That doesn’t explain, though, why we like to know what happened in a bit of fiction. Consider Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw.” The story is Henry James looking right at you and saying, “You don’t like uncertainty. It makes you anxious not to know what is going on. Well, here, let me turn the screw a little more and increase your anxiety.”

The plot in brief: a governess goes to a large country manor to watch a couple of wonderfully charming children, a boy and a girl. While there, she sees a male ghost, whom she finds out look just like a former servant on the estate. Shortly thereafter she sees a female ghost, who looks like the former governess. She keeps seeing the ghosts. Nobody else ever sees the ghosts. Her terror mounts. Then the ghost appears in the presence of one of the other servants and the young girl. Neither one sees the ghost as the governess shrieks in terror. Afraid of the governess and her crazy tales of seeing ghosts, the servant and the girl leave the estate. Soon thereafter, left alone with the young boy, the governess sees the male ghost coming into the room to attack her or the boy. In her terror, she murders the young boy. End of story.

The question: are the ghosts real or just a figment of the active imagination of the governess?

Oh, that wasn’t actually the plot of the Henry James story.

The plot in brief: a governess goes to a large country manor to watch a couple of what we will soon discover are terrifying children. She discovers to her horror that the ghosts of a pair of former servants are haunting the place. Even more terrifying, the children can see the ghosts, yet refuse to acknowledge that they are there. She begins to realize that the children have a connection with these ghosts. There are hints that she is afraid that before they died, the former servants may have had a relationship with these children, perhaps even a sexual relationship. The ghosts and the children may or may not be planning to all unite again in a sort of ghostly family. Eventually she catches the daughter running off with the female ghost, but when she exposes the matter, the daughter becomes furious and refuses to have anything more to do with the governess. The young girl leaves. Left alone with the governess, the young boy is in the room when the male ghost shows up. The governess sees the ghost first, and then the boy screams out, “You devil” and then mysteriously dies.

The question: was the young boy calling the governess a devil because she had exposed the existence of the ghosts or the ghost a devil because he was afraid of the ghost?

Now, Dear Reader, you have two plot outlines, both of which lead to a question. The answer to the question will color how you read the entire story. You can hunt for clues in the story to answer the question. Enjoy.

But, first, which one of those is the real plot of “The Turn of the Screw”?

Before you answer, there is also this important tidbit: the bulk of the story is a manuscript written by the governess herself. Is she a reliable narrator?

This is the brilliance of the Henry James story. If you just read it, having no idea what to expect, you might very well think you just read a rather conventional tale, without a lot of mystery. I read a story about governess who was slightly insane and just seeing things until her mind snapped and she murdered a young boy. Ho-hum, I thought. Then I Googled the book and discovered that everyone else also knows exactly what this story is about, but that there is zero agreement which story is the correct one. I then chatted with a couple of former students about the book, and discovered they also read a different book than I read.

That, of course sends everybody back to the text to see why everyone else is wrong. Going back, you discover something remarkable. James, ever the precise writer, has oh so carefully arranged every trace of evidence for your preferred theory in a way that it can actually be read in a completely different manner.

This is not the case of a book which just doesn’t make any sense. Thomas Pynchon writes books like that; when you hit the end there is absolutely no point in going back to try to figure out what just happened in the novel; the novel (take your pick which one—they are all the same—but if you want the best example, Gravity’s Rainbow) deliberately makes no sense—that is the point.

“The Turn of the Screw,” in contrast, makes perfect sense. There is a perfectly coherent story here, and there is a ton of evidence that the story is saying exactly what you thought it said. Moreover, there is not a single unexplainable part of the story. It all fits neatly in a little box.

That is true, no matter which of the above plots you think is the actual plot of the story.

The Big Question: how does this uncertainty about the plot of “The Turn of the Screw” make you feel? Is the answer simply that the story has no meaning? Can you read it and say, “The ghosts are like Schrodinger’s cat, neither there nor not there, but the box is one which it is impossible to open”?

What if I told you that “The Turn of the Screw” was a true story? It comes with an introduction where a narrator, who could very well be Henry James, is talking with someone who has the governess’ manuscript. Maybe the story isn’t fiction at all. (OK, you know it is fiction (how?), but pretend for a second that you don’t know.) If the story is true, are you still perfectly willing to accept that there is no correct version of the plot?

Life is like that. The history of theology and philosophy is full of explanations of the nature of life. You might think you could just sit down and reason out the world, but you will rapidly find that many have gone before you and reasoned about the world. What did they find? Not the same thing.

You cannot escape the fact that if you are going to understand the world, you have to start by believing one thing. Then you can work out the rest. You can test your theory of the world against the world to see if it collapses. Is it possible, for example, that in “The Turn of the Screw” the people you thought were real are the ghosts and the people you thought were ghosts are the real people? I haven’t tried to see if that works too—I didn’t see anyone propose it, so I have no idea if anyone has ever tried to see if that theory works. Maybe it works. Maybe there is some place in the narrative that it would break down and demonstrate it doesn’t fit the world. In that case, you’d toss the theory aside and begin anew.

That is how we live our lives. We start with faith. We must start with faith in something. And from there, we build up a world. People are confused about this fact all the time. People think it is faith that needs to be examined. People think that other people’s faith is silly or childish or something. But, the faith isn’t the only question worth discussing. Another interesting discussion is whether starting with wherever you place your faith, do the facts of the world fit? What does that story of the world look like? Are there wobbly parts or unexplained parts?

As Chesterton notes in Orthodoxy, if a man starts by believing he is Napoleon, there is no point in arguing with him about whether he is Napoleon. Far more interesting is to explore the world of this Napoleon. Ask, him “If you are Napoleon, then why is the world the way it is? Why don’t you fix this shabby little world if you are the Great Napoleon?” That conversation is really interesting. You might learn something about your own world in that conversation.

You say that there is a God. Then why did God create the world in this way instead of another way? You say there is no God. Then why do you follow a moral code? You say that the world is determined. Then why do you have faith in your own mental processes? You say you have free will. Then why do you decide to do so many things you wish you did not do?

“The Turn of the Screw” is a lesson in world building. What you start believing has consequences for how you interpret a great many details of this world. How certain are you that the facts of this world are not better explained by that person over there with a different starting place, a different faith?