THE NOVEL of Jostein Gaarder’s The Orange Girl is a very poignant and inspiring story that reveals about how a father yearns to be with his son longer, yet couldn’t do so due to a serious malady that took his life when his son was barely 4 years old. He showed his admiration and love for his son, George by writing him a very long letter a few months before the terrible illness slowly chewed on the life in him away from his beloved family.
In his letter, Jan Olav talks about the riddles he came across upon meeting the Orange Girl in a tram one day. He shares these riddles to his son. He also relates how he’s able to unlock the mystery of this Orange Girl. Furthermore, he shares his innermost thoughts about life, which is too short against the vast and endless galaxies, and how life is comparable to a fairy tale. He also talks about death, which he considered a thief of dreams and future, about the universe that he regarded as eternal and a mystery that no one can unlock. He also shares his perception about love and how it brings bliss to life.
The book welcomed the readers to a very mundane introductory narration of George, who, in the time of reading his father’s letter, was already 15. He narrated about his deceased father who passed away eleven years ago; and yet, despite his dad’s physical absence, he stated with an air of pride that they are writing a book together.
Honestly, there is nothing really special about how the story was introduced. It even sounded a bit boring in the few beginning paragraphs, yet the simplicity, preciseness and straightforwardness of the writer, as well the creative and sometimes aesthetic ways of relaying his ideologies in words, pushed me to continue reading.
However, the slight air of tediousness slowly faded away as the story progressed to a more interesting part. It was the time when George’s grandparents drove all the way from Tonsberg to Humleveien in Oslo, Norway, about 104 kilometers away to give him the sealed brown enveloped they found from his pushchair in the stock room of their old house in Tonsberg. George's father wrote him a letter and kept it hidden inside his push cart when he was just barely 4 years old, a few months before his father died. So the letter stayed there for 11 years already, untouched. George’s grandparents understood why Jan never wanted them to take the push cart away.
As George retreated into the peacefulness within the four corners of his room, he realized that he never had a clear recollection of his father, except for the time when they were on the patio looking at the stars as his father told him stories about the heavenly bodies. He remembered his father cried that night after talking to him and he recalled knowing the reason why he cried that time. It was because, he was about to leave them very soon.
One of the highlights of the long letter was the story of the Orange Girl whom Jan fell in love with at the age of 19, and which, at the end of the story, ended out that it was Veronika, George’s mother. She was the girl in anorak bringing about 10 kilos of oranges in a brown paper bag and standing on a jam-packed tram where they first met. It also turned out that Veronika was Jan’s childhood playmate whom he lost contact with after they (Veronika’s family) moved to another city at the age of 7.
I won’t really go into the very details of the story since it is always better to read the book than read a book review. However, I love the book in many ways. For one thing, it coincides with my principles about our existence in this world; that we are neither merely here just because we are supposed to be here, nor that we are just here to live life for a moment before it is totally gone from us. Moreover, we are not merely born in this world to do only the things that make us happy and then eventually after our short span of happiness here, die and leave everything behind as if nothing really happens. Indeed, there is more to life than just plainly living and dying. We are here in this world for a purpose, and for a good reason.
In this world, there are rules to be followed, and as Gaarder stated about them in his novel, we do not need to ask why we should follow these rules, we just simply follow them because we have to. Like in fairytales, there are rules that each character should abide to, otherwise, there is a parallel punishment with every broken rule. I definitely agree with him in this outlook, and I personally believe, this is what we call FAITH. We follow because we have FAITH. FAITH is what makes us believe in following these rules and help us endure everything despite the illogicality of things.
Gaarder also mentioned about the universe being infinite and that he is certain that there is a very powerful being that controls everything. He mentioned about the Big Bang Theory and all the other theories about how the world came into being. His ideas amazed me in so many sensible and logical ways, even despite the thought that he shared his perception with an apparent air of being a theoretical atheist. As I have noticed, while Gaarder mentioned God once in his novel, he never believes in GOD. However, he mentioned that he believes there is something out there, an ultimate being above us all who controls everything, which is perhaps, why despite all the reasons he provided, he still has so much to ask about everything within and outside the world we live in. I think the only to answer to his many unrequited questions is simply the lack of FAITH. I think this is what Jostein Gaarder missed in his book, The Orange Girl.
Our faith in the ultimate being will help us accept things as they are. Moreover, it will teach us to understand that there are mysteries and secrets about the world that are meant not to be solved or be known to people. When we have faith, we just have to believe and follow the rules, and never having to ask why we follow these rules.
You can get this book HERE.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
No comments:
Post a Comment