2/15/96
The real irony of my last writing, The Pied Piper, is that the real place where the healing occurs is in the act of revenge itself. A necessary step in freeing anyone from repression is to get them to separate themselves from their parents. Otherwise, they will never be free. They will walk around their entire lives, making the same mistakes their parents made, fooling themselves into thinking they are helping people when they are hurting them the same way their parents did, and never becoming aware of their own real consciousness and power to affect the world.
The Pied Piper has had her revenge, and it has been sweet. And once she has had her revenge, she will be free to travel the world, as the Pied Piper of Hamelin did, and find more problems to solve and more diluted people to hurt. Her life will be complete.
This seems like a good place to end this article, so if you feel it should be ended, proceed on. Otherwise, scroll down and read some more of my comments about The Pied Piper.
I'd like to consider a different ending to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. So let's change the story a little. What would have happened if the mayor had agreed to pay the Piper for his services? Would our odd stranger have gone on his way, leaving the children alone?
It is my belief that had The Pied Piper been properly paid for his services, he would never have needed to appear in the first place. Let me explain further. You see, had the villagers been truly honest with themselves, they would have never had the problem with the rats in the first place. At the first sighting of a rat, they would have armed their homes with traps, laid out food with poison in it for the rats to find, or figured out another way to get rid of the creature. Perhaps, if they were kind-hearted, they would have sent the little creatures on their way down the river on a raft with ample supplies to last until they could find a new home. (Hey, maybe I should submit that one to Disney as a screenplay for their next animation!)
The reason the villagers were helpless against the rats is that they had failed to be honest with themselves about an oncoming threat. This is the same reason they were fooled by The Pied Piper, and it is also why they thought they could fool him. Read the entire poem again if you haven't already. How dumb could those people be? How could they not realize that his power to entice rats away could also be used in more menacing ways? And how miserable all their children must have been, having to live with all those rats.
The Pied Piper did indeed represent justice. He recompensed the children for having to live with horrible parents by giving them a perfect world. He exposed the dishonesty of the town by forcing it to openly decieve him, wheras before he came, its dishonesty had been hidden inside the minds of the townspeople who were unwilling to stand up and vote out their incompetent mayor and elect a new one.
As with just about any subject, I could go raving on into eternity about this one, but I'd like to shift the focus towards modern times, and examine OUR Pied Piper, OUR rats, and OUR justice. Let's start where we always do, with Madonna, and hypothesize on what might have happened had her story been a little different.
Let's start when she was five years old, when her mother died. (Or so I'm told. I've heard several equally credible sources each state different ages at which it happened, ranging from age five to age seven. I've also heard one trustworthy source say that she was born in 1958, and another in 1959. I'll never know anything for sure.) Back to Madonna's mother. First off, Madonna describes her as a very strong and loving woman. Even if she was only there for five years, and especially if she was there for the first five years, it would have been ample time for Madonna to have gained an impenetrable sense of justice and goodness instilled within her. So already, Mo has obtained the status of a judge presiding over the highest court in existence, and that's pretty darn good for a five year old. ;)
Now, when her mother is taken away, let's see how she exercises her judgement. Well, being the wise and contemplative figure she is, she is going to take into account not only the natural (in a manner of speaking) death of her mother, but also the reaction of the world to it. And the world flunks with a capital F. She is told she must "be strong", she cannot cry, her siblings are not allowed to grieve either, and she expresses this judgement in the form of vomit in the toilet whenever her father, who cannot be around all the time to make sure she falls in line, leaves the house.
The world has been warned, but it has not heard or heeded the warning. It did not bother to look at the vomit on its way to the sewer. It has shut out the cries of one of its own, and a little girl's grief burns inside of her. No one, not even the regretful Moira, can understand her.
Take a Bow. Act 1 is over. The curtain's down, and her heart is vacent. The masquerade is getting old to this child. She can't figure out if the world really means what it says because it can't be honest with itself either. Yet the honesty instilled before is present, even if it is just one lonely star.
Intermission. Get up from your chair. Go
get some refreshments. Talk the play over with
your friends in the foyer, and be proud of
yourselves for having the courage to take
this discourse into the heart of human nature.
You may want to wait several days or weeks
before you read Act 2. It is even more
traumatic than the first, so you'll want to
be well prepared so you can appreciate it.
Until then, eat, drink and be merry. And most
of all, find a good party to crash. You've got
a lot of anger that needs to be let out. Get
rid of it! When you're ready, you'll return
to this theatre before you on your computer
screen. Now go.
When you return, click here.