I”ve received quite a number of emails and DMs on twitter asking me what the moral of the last story, Salt of the Earth, was since it read so much like a fable or a parable.
Firstly, I’d like to explain a little of how the story came about. I’ve been going through a bit of a creative dry spell. I’m not really producing anything very meaty or long these days. Partly this is because I’ve got so many unfinished long pieces, I simply won’t allow myself to embark on any more long works until I finish at least a few of the pieces I started. Partly, I think it is because what I want out of my writing has changed. I’m not as satisfied to just tell you a story anymore. I guess I’m after a slightly more complex relationship with my readers.
When I’m feeling very creatively dry, I force myself to play the ‘what if’ game. I just sit there and think up a ‘what if’ proposition, and then force myself to follow that question to a conclusion of sorts. So that was the way it started: what if there were a woman whose tears had no salt?
I was reminded of all the old uses for salt. It was heavily used in many religious practices and rituals, magic and alchemy. In the Bible, Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt as a punishment for looking back instead of looking forward. Of course, there are all sorts of natural and scientific consequences to the presence or absence of salt. Plus I was just fascinated with the phrase: ‘Salt of the Earth’. Its origin is also Biblical. It is a phrase used in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew, 5:13) “…Ye are the salt of the earth..” In fact, when I started to research salt in figures of speech, a great deal came up. Take a look at what comes up in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrases and Fables.
Notice I still haven’t given you an answer as to what the moral of the fable is?
Well, I have some ideas about it, but I’m a lot more interested in yours. Tell me, what do you think the moral of the fable is? “Not fair!” you might say. I wrote the story, so I should be the one to tell you what the moral of it is. “No,” say I. When I started the tale, I had no idea of how it would end. Your interpretation of what the moral is will be just as valid as mine.
The moral of the story is obvious. In fact it has several; one being that what you wish for may still come as a surprise. (That’s something I feel every day.)
I will leave the others as an exercise for the interested student…
Really? It certainly isn’t obvious to me. But then, as you say, most fables or parables have more than a single moral. Shame you felt you’d be lowering yourself to our student level to have a go and give us your take on it. 😛
RG, I think a moral of this story is, you never really know what you are searching for, until you find it.
But then that is almost the way that you wrote it.
Love and warm hugs,
Paul.
Whoever added the morals to Aesop’s fables at best gave us another bit to wrestle with, and at worst took the fun out of it all. So thanks for giving us the background–and for not answering the question. I hope my own answer will keep evolving and prove as rich as your tale.
“Morals” come from where the story meets the reader. So here’s what strikes me right now: Learn from the way other people love.
‘That you should love yourself for what you are, not what others expect of you.’ ?
or perhaps that
‘you should value those who love you for what you are.’ ?
Except that for the first one to be really truly be applicable, perhaps she shouldn’t have found such a perfect kiss at the end.
x
To me this is a very clever allegory. Initially one feels that the protagonist is somehow abnormal (from a medical point of view…almost impossible) in not having salty tears. But if one changes focus from the individual not having salty tears, but that they are not able to TASTE the salty tears, then the story takes a new twist.
Taste is extremely subjective. There are many compounds that taste very different depending on genetic make-up. Some compounds taste very bitter to some and tasteless to others, because the gene code to detect that taste is missing.
How I view this story, is that she feels that something entirely fundamental is missing from her life, denoted by the absence of salt. When she embarks upon an encounter which brings out a set of behaviours that she had never previously considered as acceptable, she gained two things that were missing to her – a sexual fulfillment unlike any other and acceptance by her lover, who was also unlike any other. Thus whether she actually tastes the salt or not is now of far less importance than whether her lover accepts her for her abnormality or deviancy (call it what you will).
For me, this broaches the subject of those who live in alternative lifestyles; how they are made to feel by society and how they are fulfilled by their lifestyle choices, once they finally discover like-minded others.
I am so, so loving your readings and your conclusions on this and it’s given me so many ideas and different ways to read it. Really, thank you to everyone who had a go at the moral of the story thing. And please, feel free to think up others.
I’m going to sleep on it. Will report back later.
Penny
I read it more for a mood than a moral, but if I must, here goes:
I was struck by the excessive meaningfulness of the responses of the people she met. They all had a reason for tears to be salty, or what salt meant, or what it was for, but none of them agreed on anything other than that it was important (which, in reality, tears are salty because we are salty, nothing deeper than that).
So what was merely odd to start with was turned into something wrong (by the girl and everyone else).
But that’s only a little bit of the story. I’d hate to call it more than a moral.
Got it! ‘Every good girl deserves flavour’!!!
Penny
I thought about this last night and again today.
It does make me think of a journey or a search for something, but what I find interesting is that how seeds are planted; when something you’ve never known or never considered is brought to light by something or someone else.
It raises questions, and drives need for fulfillment for something you never knew you wanted or needed. It can also easily turn into an obssession when you don’t find what you think is the right answer.
It also makes me think of how we assign our own meanings to life (or other), the things we do or don’t have control over and perhaps the question of: Which is more important? Our destination or how we arrive at there?
I think there are so many things that we do not know of ourselves, whether it’s a given that we will eventually happen upon these things by chance is anyone’s guess; however I do feel that we are naturally inquisitive beings.
Yet, sometimes we just need someone to tell us what we want to hear.
Perhaps he could taste her salt or perhaps he was the salt to her water. When something changes or shifts, sometimes it no longer matters.
I didn’t look for a moral, it struck too close to home. In some ways it’s more pleasurable to be abnormal than normal. It gives one specialness. You can wallow in your pain until it becomes ingrained in pleasure. The act of crying because you are denied becomes fetishized to the point where crying is more pleasurable than attempting to find release.
RG,
I found several themes that drew to the story & character.
-The elusive element we all seek…
-Self discovery & acceptance.
-A quest for truth & fulfillment.
-The illusion of satisfaction.
I think Penny hit it on the head, LOL
This story is such a journey, both physically and emotionally for the woman.
It can be so hard to be different, being outcast or maligned in society is bad enough when it is not by our own choice, but when she seizes upon the saltlessness of her tears and holds on to it so strongly I feel the protagonist has a deep need to belong, to feel a part of something more meaningful than her apparent unburdened existence from being fortunately born.
Something that could have been a mere triviality becomes a force that drives her with passion and need. And while sated with physical passion she perhaps needed a deep emotional passion to give herself a more powerful existence.
What she learns and experiences on her journey, the seeking and desperate wanting and indulgences in lover after lover, in the gorging of herself on salt in all ways possible, in the search for an answer, it is all so mundane in the sense that it is more of the same, she has had these lovers, essentailly the same lover over and again. The food drenched in salt will be nothing more than the blandness of sodium overdose, even the salt baths, immersing herself in the waters and seeking to absorb the salt of the earth in any way she can suggests a lack of understanding and a look to the outside world to fix her problem, her want and desire, instead of looking inward to find what and where the true desires, wants and needs are.
It is only when she finds the man interested in her pain that she starts to see her need for what it is. Realizing that her transactions with her lovers have been acts of selfishness and that her outward actions and feelings have been a single minded focus causing her to pay no mind to the needs of any but her own, with this epiphany it starts to become clear.
The sound beating, fucking and bleeding of the protagonist is unlike anything she has experienced and that kind of physical sensation can cause the most hearty of people to retreat within and divorce themselves from the body as a measure of protection. One can imagine this happening as he has his way with her and the transformative point is perhaps when she begs him to taste her tears, a point at which previous lovers likely acquiesce and taste the freshwater tears of her frustration, but a point at which he refuses, instead subjecting her to more pain, sating his pleasure above hers. This is a consummation of her inability to satisfy her desires and needs, at his mercy she can only give, she cannot take and in this perhaps more is realized.
In the end she is sated, in a way unanticipated and it is here that she finds a measure of peace in what I would call the moral of this story… Acceptance.
There is a moral to this story? I stopped looking for moral’s a long time ago. I just like the way the words went together.
Firstly congratulations on such a beautifully written story!
For me it was really personal and yes, I found it read like a fable. It’s been fascinating reading different interpretations. Here are a couple of the things that stood out for me:
• The quest to feel like something natural, that belongs to the Earth. It’s interesting to me that before it being pointed out by her lover, the girl was blissfully unaware of her deficiency in this area.
• The ending seemed somehow hugely meaningful. It’s almost as if all the elements blur into one – her, him, her blood, the sea and along with it all the natural world. I think, consciously or not, this is the kind of experience she was really looking for all along.
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author”
ROTFLMAO
No, you can do all those things. And make up shit too. I don’t believe in authorial control. “The death of the author is the birth of the reader.” (Roland Barthes) http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/barthes06.htm
The key image for me was tasting the tears after the blood, and him saying it didn’t matter where the saltiness came from. So I think the moral is that she was salty all the time, just looking for it in the wrong place.