'The Day the World Almost Came to an End'
Beryl Clarke, Contributor

Every time I read Pearl Crayton's story The Day The World Almost Came To An End, I laugh. What about you? What do you find amusing in it?

Our storyteller is also our major character. She is reflecting on a childhood incident. She was 12 and still involved in childish pastimes. When we meet her she is playing in the mud and she is comfortable in her own company. She is, however, old enough to recognise that she is a sinner and that there is a way to escape punishment for her sins. Like many human beings she has decided to continue enjoying her 'sinful' ways for as long as possible. You see, it was her belief that when she is old, it would be time enough to get religion. (Do you know anyone who thinks this way?)

I wonder if you remember the sins of which she accuses herself. We are told that she had 'saved' her neighbour's ripe plums and peaches from going to waste, 'neglecting to get the owner's permission'; 'the fights' she 'had with the sassy little Catherine'; 'the domino games' she 'had played for penny stakes'; the lies she had told as well as 'other not so holy acts'. These, she believed, would earn her a place in the burning fires of hell.

It strikes me as strange that although the church or rather the teachings of the denomination she attended, yes attended, perhaps, very regularly, for she was a church-going sinner, warned her, she did not stop doing what she considered to be wrong. She finds her sins too sweet, 'delicious' she call them, to give up. It is obvious, though, that she knows right from wrong.

Her unwillingness to 'get religion' in her childhood is something that makes our story very realistic, for to a child death would have seemed far away, and associated with old age. After all, many 12-year-olds are not particularly interested in their salvation. Realism is maintained through several other means. The incident is set in 1936, reference is made to a real person, Ralph Waldo Emerson - American lecturer and essayist and poet, Rena warns her of the impending end of the world on a Friday, there is talk of an eclipse although the information is garbled, and a real airplane does fly over the area.

As is customary in a story of this length, there are few characters and of these only two are developed. These, as you are aware, are our narrator and her father. Pearl Crayton has created two likable characters in them. Our child storyteller is honest in talking about herself and her actions and her attitudes to others. We are able to learn that she loves her father dearly and seems to have a closer relationship with him than with her mother. Daddy plays the crucial role of being her support. She trusts his knowledge and outlook. He listens to her concerns, explains matters that she does not understand, such as the sections of the book of Revelation that she has read; he is the breadwinner of the family and an officer in their church. This suggests that he was an exemplary member of the community. Her skeptical position is clearly the result of her preferring to accept what her father says above what others say.

I began this week by asking if you too find humour in this story and I think that would have alerted you to the fact that it is one aspect of the work on which you should reflect.

How does the writer make her story humorous? I would like you identify the methods that are used. Let me start you off! The very first sentence is not only humorous, due to its surprising information, but it arouses the interest of the readers. The following sentence is also funny, made so through exaggeration, a technique that is employed again as the story develops. Did you laugh out loud when you read the explanation that was given for an eclipse? Some readers did. I can easily visualise the little girl in her long nightgown running and hollering loudly that the world was coming to an end. What a spectacle! Part of this humour is because the storyteller makes fun of herself - but wait a moment, what I am doing? You spot the rest.

I cannot close without pointing out how the writer creates tension in our narrator. She does not get the news until Friday afternoon that the world would end on Sunday; soon after Miss Daya, who is passing, tells them that the Lord is coming soon, (the time must have seemed very short in which to 'get religion') her father on whom she depends for reassurance takes longer to come than he usually does, then he tells her that the world could end that night and, to top it off, it was a moonless night on which this was to occur!

Delicious sins! She has her reasons for so naming them. What do you think? Try to read Emerson's story on 'Compensation'. Walk good and God bless!

Beryl Clarke is an independent contributor. Send questions and comments to kerry-ann.hepburn@gleanerjm.com