Something I neglected to think about in yesterday’s post is whether a successful escape is a good thing. Well, I did touch on it in vague terms when talking about my own daydreams of solitude, but I didn’t really put it back into the context of the song – arguably a pretty core function of the series. Since I, once again, have failed to give myself enough time for a proper post, I thought it would be worth giving it a brief exploration now.
The perspective of august, with the song possessing the benefit of hindsight, means that we know the relationship doesn’t work out. What we can never be quite as sure of is whether it could have worked out, in different circumstances. We don’t even really know whether the narrator believes it could have worked or not, although we know that she believed it once. It takes a certain level of belief to commit to the idea in the way that she did, getting as far as inviting him to join her in the car.1
I think the idea of escape naturally invites the question of whether the escape would have worked. Would the narrator have stayed with James forever? Would they have fallen more deeply in love? These aren’t questions that we will ever be able to answer, though we can ponder them – and of course, given that I still have 19 blog posts to write after this one, I’m sure I will indeed ponder them.
An escape would be, in some ways, a pyrrhic victory. It doesn’t feel like something that many people would really choose: a craving for solitude is a consequence of society, not an inherent trait within humans. A desire to participate in a social world is much more natural, given our evolution. As such, it’s hard to imagine that the narrator really wanted to escape. Instead, it became her least-bad option. The pyrrhic element comes into play when you think about what she would be giving up, just to keep the one thing she wants. Is one person worth it? Maybe, when you’re young and in love. But what about the future? What about forever?
- And I’ve just realised that we don’t know if he got in or not. Another post, perhaps. ↩︎