Oscar Wilde's plays drew a rainbow of characters, whose opinions were so dramatic and varied that one could not possibly ascribe such thoughts to the man himself. Or at least I hope not, otherwise he would have led a very bleak existence.
Sadly, we know this to be the truth. Coming from the man who was sent to the workhouse at the age of seven, whose mother was taken into a mental institution when he was nine, and who spent years in prison under a multitude of charges - you'd think he'd be a little more sympathetic towards those in dire need, even through the mouthpeices of his characters.
Last week, a good friend of mine and myself took part in a charity event called Jailbreak. The idea is deceptively simple: 36 hours to get as far away from our uni without spending any of our own money.
The key phrase here is 'our own money'.
I'm sure that, back in the good old days when people were more noble/smart/kind/better, they hitchiked and trudged and struggled through the snowy season to emerge somewhere a little more interesting. What do we do now? We beg, barter and annoy people for money.. and use it to buy plane tickets.
Admittedly, this probably works to get people further (one group got to Sydney this year, pretty mind bending stuff), but those thousands of pounds given to airline companies?
Not once over the course of those hours did we bend the truth, exxagerate and weasel our way out of awkward explanations. We never lied, but that speaks not of our moral victory, but more of those kind donations which came from the rushed, the bored and the occupied. Those that would rather throw a few coins in the listen to our frozen, desperate pitches.
In the end, we'll collect more money than we spent (which, admittedly, got us far further than we could have hoped for), but does the end justify the means?
We returned exhausted, dirty and poor, but elated. Shame to think those folks in Sydney have get right on that plane and come back the next day.
*CORRECTION*
ReplyDeleteOscar Wilde was not, in fact, born to an insane mother. Writing late at night and too lazy to fact-check (the horror), I confused his life story for that of Chaplin's. Apologies for this gross mistake. Wilde did suffer greatly, but throughout the later years of his life, when he was imprisoned and sentenced to hard labour. During a transfer between two prisons, the crowd of the station platform spat and jeered at the prisoner.