Adjustment of Perspective

We can be disgusted by the oddities of other cultures (and subcultures), or we can choose to be delighted by their eccentricities. Foibles can be annoying, or endearing, depending on your perspective.

This all became much clearer to me when my mom found a sinfully amazing sale at our local Dillards store. For three days, she came home with $44 sweatshirts and $30 collared button-downs for $2 and $3 each. Unfortunately, the sale was all children’s clothing, so I didn’t benefit directly from the abundance, but I was happy for my little brothers. Actually, I probably cared more about the new clothes than they did. At 11 and 13, they’re into snakes, not sweatshirts.

Or, at least, that’s how it used to be. My mom found some Echo brand hoodies and brought them home. Apparently Echo clothing is “sort of a big deal. People know it.” (Now, so do I!) In my opinion, these particular hoodies are gruesome. They’re coal black, with a screen-printed rhinoceros across the chest. The rhinoceros is surrounded by a field of red, and little red splotches are artistically scattered across the black cotton front of the hoodie.

I took one look at this piece of clothing and screamed, “It’s a bloody rhinoceros! Ewww!” (I used bloody in the literal sense…) My youngest brother told me it wasn’t blood, just red paint. I remain unconvinced. Anyway, he put on the sweatshirt, pulled the hood down low over his eyes, and started creeping around the house. With the sable hood, he looked exactly like the Death Angel of Rhinoceroses, if such a thing exists. May you all be spared from any similar vision.

This whole episode generated some thoughts. I’m sure my definite opinions about the sleeves on sweaters are just as arbitrary and strange to my brothers as their love for a bloody rhinoceros is to me. And yet, if I just adjust my perspective a little bit, I can understand – not agree, empathize, but understand – why they love what they love.

I think Charles Dickens would agree with me. I just finished Great Expectations, a classic rags-to-riches story, with several morbid twists. One of those stories which make you wonder, “Did it really have to be this long?” Great Expectations is full of subplots and unlikely side characters.

One such character is the convict Magwitch, who makes many appearances throughout the novel. Each time Magwitch reappears, the main character, Pip, forms a new opinion about him. Thus, the reader’s perspective about Magwitch is constantly in flux, depending on Pip’s own point of view.

Magwitch enters Great Expectations when Pip is a young boy. A half-starved escaped convict, he terrorizes Pip into stealing and bringing back to him some food and a metal file. At this point, Magwitch is fearsome, cruel, and larger-than-life.

After a disappearance that lasts many years, Magwitch unexpectedly seeks out Pip in his home. The intervening years have transformed Pip from a poor orphan to a gentleman of fortune, and Magwitch reveals that he himself is responsible for Pip’s change in circumstance. Apparently, Pip’s generosity toward Magwitch touched the grizzled convict, and ever since the day the two met, Magwitch has labored to make a fortune so that he can bestow it upon Pip. This news horrifies Pip. He sees Magwitch as frightening, course, ill-mannered, and criminal. Yet, Pip is also dependent upon him.

Eventually, Magwitch is tried for another crime, and sentenced to death, but by this point, Pip has come to love the man who is behind his “great expectations.” The reader now sees Magwitch as loyal, brave, and good-hearted.

So, the question is, at what point, if ever, do we see Magwitch truly? Is there a time when Pip’s analysis of the convict’s character is objective and trustworthy? Or do we have to discover the truth by synthesizing Pip’s various opinions throughout the story? Regardless of the answer to the question, the point is clear: the role of perspective is vital.

Perhaps the conclusion seems tired and threadbare. We know the kind of influence perspective has on our thinking. It may be, though, that our knowledge of this truth is part of the problem. Something so obvious as “perspective is vital” can be difficult to apply, simply because we’ve heard it so many times that we’ve lost our sense of its profundity.

In the abstract, it’s easy to introduce a phrase like “perspective is everything, you know,” into a debate or discussion, but in the midst of a situation in which perspective truly is everything, it’s all of a sudden quite difficult to connect what we believe about perspective to our actions.

It can be helpful to see old truths illustrated in novel ways. This week, Magwitch and the rhinoceros hoodie helped me to realize anew the role perspective plays in cultures, families, and conflicts. I’m sure there are deeper levels to this topic, too. Let me know what additional thoughts you may have.