We live in a perilous world, a world made dangerous not necessarily by nature, but by the activity and intentions of humans and their societies.
We hold many weapons of mass destruction, and the variety of weapons will only increase as technology advances. In such a world, the survival of our species depends on reason. Yet many societies remain grounded not in reason, but in superstition, dogma, or delusion, whether through authoritarian rule, religious ideology, or the comforting myths of the past.
So, what do we do in a novel? Give an account of us and our society in a series of chapters, criticising and lecturing about our frailties, until the brow of the reader furrows, the eyes dim and the mouth droops in surrender at the repeated accusations of our silliness…….or……….do we have a good laugh at our own expense? Point at each other and crease up giggling at how dumb we can sometimes be.
Let’s get on and do that.
St Offraed’s Relic, although a story that paints a picture of the absurd nature of some human beliefs and behaviour, in a highly inventive and comical style, seeks to give the reader both an entertaining yarn and a warning. The crux of the message is that if we are to survive as a species, as one of the adult characters suggests, ‘We can’t afford societies built on emotional delusion when we have the weapons we now have’.
There are two methods by which irrationality is highlighted. One is through the innocent thought processes of 1950s English village children. A kind of – One thousand years of the bizarre worshiping of an irrational idea, kicked into a ditch by some 1950s English kids. In that direction unfolds the hilarity of innocence confronting irrationality, even if that confrontation results in an initial mistake, the end result is satisfactory. The second is that a self-sense of growing up enables an unindoctrinated young mind to work through the philosophical problems that most adults never tackle, and arrive at a clearer sense of who we are, and of the roots of our society’s irrational side. St Offraed’s Relic uses absurd comedy as an archaeologist’s trowel, because employing comedy to make a point often digs a hole deep enough to glimpse the truth, and scrapes away the fossilized strata of cluttered mess, formed by dropping the discarded litter from many decades of failed ideology after ideology.
To sum up: St Offraed’s Relic is a whacky story, with absurd comedy and characters, that together form a journey to a satisfactory conclusion. In doing so, the journey leaves a trail of events that point to the irrationality of belief systems, and will hopefully leave the reader subtly altered, perhaps a little older in the mind, and a little less willing to believe what cannot stand up to reason……..or………the reader might just have a good laugh at the characters, and what they get up to, and spend the next day or two with a smile on their face. Either way, I hope you get something positive from the story.
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