Henning Mankell’s 1996 mystery novel,
“The Fifth Woman,” delves directly into the problems of the
increasing violence in Swedish society. Using the structure of a
police procedural novel, Mankell allows his chief detective, Kurt
Wallender, to think seriously, almost philosophically, about why
things happen as they do.
Henning Mankell’s 1996 mystery novel, “The Fifth Woman,” delves directly into the problems of the increasing violence in Swedish society. Using the structure of a police procedural novel, Mankell allows his chief detective, Kurt Wallender, to think seriously, almost philosophically, about why things happen as they do.
In the middle of a long and difficult murder investigation, Wallender pauses to have a dinner with his daughter. Sometime in the middle of that conversation, she asks him “why it was so difficult to live in Sweden.” Wallender responds that “Sometimes I think it’s because we’ve stopped darning our socks.” Like Wallender, I learned to darn socks when I was young. Darning socks and sewing on buttons were two things that my mother taught all of us.
Wallender continues, “Then suddenly on day it was over. Socks with holes in them were thrown out. No one bothered to repair them anymore. The whole society change. ‘Wear it out and toss it’ was the only rule that really applied to everybody.”
I admit that time is more valuable than money. When I was growing up, we would spend our time to save money. Now, we spend money to save time. It is not just that people don’t bother to repair things. For many today, they no longer know how to do it and if they did, they can not buy the tools required.
I have a number of good saws that are getting dull. To put a saw back into good condition, you need a file and a saw set. I have the file, but have not been able to buy a saw set. In fact, the only person in Orchard Supply, Home Depot, or Lowe’s who even knew what a saw set was told me he had not had anyone ask for one in 10 years.
Wallender saw this as something more than just an economic trade-off. “As long as it was just a matter of our socks, the change didn’t make much difference. But then it started to spread, until finally it became a kind of invisible but every present moral code. I think it changed our view of right and wrong, of what you were allowed to do to other people and what you weren’t.”
Like Detective Wallender, I wonder just what effect this is having on our society. Just what are we willing to throw away. Is it all just a joke gone too far like a Brittany Spears throw away marriage? I wonder even more when the media plays up stories of smashing pumpkins or fruit cake projectiles. Can we really make a festival out of throwing away food and then turn around to ask the public to support Second Harvest Food Bank? I guess we can, because we do just that.
Wallender realizes that it is no longer “a time when we didn’t wear out or throw away anything, whether it was our socks or human beings.”
This is not Sweden. But there are similarities. There is a frightening increase in the level and randomness of violence in American society. Some people now feel that they are allowed to set a school on fire. Others set fire to entire apartment complexes just to make an eco-terrorist point. Human life has become somehow less valuable. Morgan Hill is not Oakland and we are not yet afraid to tell the police what we see. Still, the level of violence rises.
Some would like to blame this on the media and the ultra-violence of action movies or video games. Politicians like Joe Lieberman love to blame Hollywood for this aspect of our society. It plays well in most of the country and they know that they will won’t be able to do anything about it.
While we probably will not return to darning our socks, it would not hurt us to start planting our own gardens. If you make a garden and take the time to care for it, if you eat the produce of your own mini-farm, maybe you will start to value things differently. When we learn to make the earth, the sun and the rain work together and are able to enjoy the results, we also learn to value other things. Maybe we begin to understand how to make our community work together.
Mankell’s “Wallender” series of police procedural novels are available at the Morgan Hill Public Library.
“I find I have a great lot to learn – or unlearn. I seem to know far too much and this knowledge obscures the really significant facts, but I am getting on.” – Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Wes Rolley is an artist and concerned citizen. The Board of Contributors is comprised of local writers whose views appear on Tuesdays and Fridays.
