Pandora and The Little Engine That Could

When my son was two, he would go on bedtime story jags lasting weeks or months, insisting on the same story over and over. One of the first was The Little Engine That Could, in the original edition with the original pictures, published by Platt and Munk in 1931.

Everyone has always (it seems) understood the moral of the story, the product of  pure American myth: if you think you can do it, then you can do it. Just keep on plugging and trying, and eventually you'll succeed.

But I noticed, through those scores of readings with my son in my lap, that this particular text does not at all emphasize the Little Blue Engine's struggle to get across the mountain; summaries of the book distort its contents, such as this sentence from Wikipedia: "The request is made of a small engine; the other engines mock the engine for trying." This happens nowhere in the Platt and Munk edition.

The book rather spends most of its pages retelling the excuses of male engines why they can't pull the train loaded with commodities for the good little children on the other side.

Remember? First, there's the gold Passenger Engine that's too important to carry cargo for children. Then there's the red Freight Engine, also too important. Finally there's the black Rusty Old Engine, which protests that it is too weary. The excuses have nothing to do with the size of the mountain or the challenge of the pull.

Only the blue engine-- the motherly one-- is willing. Once she is persuaded, there's not much struggle at all.

Maybe there's a message to mothers in this story-- perhaps that though motherhood may seem challenging and an uphill climb, it can be done.

But what about the children? Is a two- or three-year old interested in a positive thinking message? More likely, this story reinforces to children who hear it that even if there are gruff male personalities in their lives who do not spend time with them, yet they are important, they are worthy of receiving care, attention, spinach, and lollipops. And Mom is the go-to parent for such things.

Stories, when they are good, say different things to different audiences. So it is with Greek Mythology. Americans in the nineteenth century discovered the Greeks through Hellenophiles such as Thomas Bulfinch, and they used and modified Greek stories so that the messages changed as well.

One brief example: in the Pandora story, the first woman opens a box (a storage jar in the original version) and all the ills of the world fly out. Only one thing-- a good thing-- is held back: hope. Thus, though there are many troubles and diseases in this world, we still have hope.

Americans are a resurrection people, so we are inclined to think of hope as a good thing. But Hesiod, the poet who gave us Pandora, never says "There was only one good thing in the jar-- hope," or "There were a myriad of bad things in the jar, but hope was the exception." He just says that hope stays in the jar.

Hope is an ambiguous thing in Greek Mythology, sometimes good, sometimes bad. And why Pandora, whom Hesiod describes as deliberately malicious, controls it inside the jar is not easily explained. But Americans see hope and run with it: the Greeks must have thought that Pandora had kept a good thing. While there's life, there's hope.

Two audiences, two messages. Which is why wise people have described myth as a mirror-- if you don't look closely at it, you'll see only yourself.

Comments

[Bob Mustin]

Good thoughts, David. Regarding America and hope, one can only think of Fitzgerald's American archetype of reinvention and hope: Jay Gatsby.