Saturday, May 30, 2020




THE PURPLE PLAIN, by H.E. Bates  (1905-1974)

Forrester became engaged to a nice girl just before WWII and they were married after the war began and went on a honeymoon for a week or so.  While dancing at a dance hall in London, the building was hit by a bomb and Mrs. Forrester was blown out of Forrester's arms and her body was never found.  In a more or less permanent state of shock, her husband joined the RAF and built a reputation for his daring and reckless skill during missions.  In fact he was trying to kill himself, but he received promotions and medals anyway. 

After several years of perilous action he was garrisoned in Burma, where he was promoted to squadron leader.  The area he was stationed in was a semi-desert with very high temperatures and very little water.  Heat and dust were the principal environmental issues, creating tension and hostility between Forrester and his men.  He had a checkered reputation:  admired for his piloting competence, but shunned for his black and sarcastic attitude toward his subordinates.  The local doctor, Harris, is concerned about his mental health and invites him to dinner one night at a Mrs. McNab's house in a local village.  She's a short, skinny, fiery sort who yells a lot.  And he meets Anna, the younger sister of a nurse, who, with McNab, survived a 500 mile trek from Rangoon to the village, during which most of the contingent died.  McNab, especially, was respected for having saved many lives at that time with her indomitable drive and medical skills as a nurse.  Forrester falls in love with Anna.

Back at the airfield, he arrives in time to see one of the last planes belonging to the squadron crash while attempting to land, killing the pilot and the navigator.  This event, combined with his awakening love for Anna, bring about a sea change in his psyche, so that he realizes that he's been in a state of delayed shock for the last several years.  His attitude begins to improve at this point and he starts to become aware of other people in a way that was new to him.  He starts seeing them as individuals, each with their own difficulties and characters.  It's as if he'd suddenly been released from a psychological prison that he'd built for himself over the previous few years.

New orders arrive for Forrester to fly his tent-mate, Blore, to a new assignment farther up the Irrawaddy river.  Together with a recently-arrived navigator, Carrington, he takes off and begins what he expected would be a routine flight.  Except Carrington sees oil coating one of the wings of the plane.  Forrester does a 180 degree turn, but it's too late:  the plane catches on fire.  The ground-cover is mostly jungle, with wide streaks of bare soil and rock that demarcate seasonal flood areas washed clean of vegetation during the monsoon rains.  Forrester makes a desperate landing on one of these cleared patches and wrecks the aircraft in doing so.  He and Blore escape relatively unhurt, but Carrington has badly burned legs.  They have little food or water left, but decide to try to walk to safety, as the area is a remote one, and the chances of being rescued are not very good.  They hadn't had a chance to use the radio.

So they begin walking, Forrester carrying Carrington on his back.  They have difficulties;  Blore falls over a six fool shale escarpment, damaging his ankle, and the heat is so intense that they decide to only travel at night;  luckily there's a full moon.  But they make progress even though they're not sure where they're going.  They come to a fork in the dry river bed they are following and Blore, being several hundred yards ahead, takes the right fork while Forrester and Carrington are resting.  He disappears in the distance and Forrester has to chase after him to bring him back, as he's convinced the other branch will take them to a village.  They start off again the same night, traversing the sometimes rocky terrain that features occasional shelfs (waterfalls without water) that cause them to
trip and fall.  Then they reach a large dry lake.  Totally exhausted, it seems like the end.  While the others are asleep, Blore leaves by himself.  The other two are awakened by a gunshot. spoiler ahead:

Blore has shot himself and is dead.  Dragging up his last reserves of energy, Forrester with Carrington tramps onward until he can't do it anymore.  He leaves Carrington and continues on, eventually, at the very last second, running into some native bearers who rescue him and the navigator.  Carrington survives and Forrester is reunited with Anna.

I read this book mainly because i'd previously read, some years ago, Fair Stood the Wind for France:  another book by the same author that i liked quite a bit.  This book had a few problems i thought, but also had some astute recognitions of psychological states that in general afflict many people.  I became aware once again, while reading it, that many experience shock in their daily lives without ever knowing it, and that that can cause all sorts of problems from interpersonal relationships to mental blocks impeding the attainment of desired goals of one sort or another.  Bates definitely makes it overt in this work that he is aware that the most mysterious problems or enigmas in life lie within the depths of one's own personality, not so much in whatever outside environment an individual may happen to exist in.  And that the solutions or resolutions of adversities or quandaries may often depend upon self-awareness as much as on manipulation of situational complexities.  It's sort of like tuning a guitar:  it takes a developed ear to be good at it;  and successfully dealing with the world we live in takes a lot of tuning also:  a kind of evolving theme and variations, haha...  anyway, this book was well worth reading;  exciting and informative both...

21 comments:

  1. My grandfather flew planes, I think it was in WWI In any case, he never spoke of his experiences but when he was dying and somewhat delirious, he kept telling my mom that there were wolves in the woods and she needed to keep me safe. He was right back in the war again. I wonder if he'd dealt with the trauma during his younger years if he wouldn't have been haunted by his memories, but then again, he didn't seem bothered by them when he was younger. So who knows. Perhaps people were under-psychologized in his time whereas they are over-psychologized today. Great and, as always very exciting, review!

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    1. tx, Cleo... the psychology of shock is not very well explored, imo... people are effected by even small changes in their lives more than one might expect... really creatures of a shy and retiring type; it's no surprise to me that our remote ancestors were small bush dwelling rodents (in the Jurassic)...

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    2. I definitely agree that the psychology of shock needs to be better studied and understood. Shock and trauma can come from all kinds of experiences and are not always the big life-changing ones as people typically expect them to be.

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  2. Great review.

    I saw the film starting Gregory Peck. I remember liking that.

    Your insights about psychological shock are astute. I also wonder how many people are out there carrying trauma around.

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    Replies
    1. i didn't know there was a movie about it! i wonder how much it differed from the book? i'll have to see if i can get it on some movie whatyamacallit computerthingie...

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  3. Yikes! And this weekend more people became afflicted with trauma. Possibly many of the people on both sides were acting out their own personal traumas.

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    Replies
    1. it gets really confusing, trying to figure out what makes people do the things they do... most the time it's not related to the present moment, but has to do with stuff from the past or anxiety about the future... so it turns out "the defining moment" isn't where you think it is at all...

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  4. Interesting! All I know about Bates is the Pop Larkin books which I haven't read but my wife keeps recommending them. I see that there's a whole bunch of different things--and different types of things--by him as well.

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  5. i've heard about the pop books but haven't read them either... he had a sort of checkered career before he began writing full time, according to Wiki... he even spent some years in the orient...

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  6. The Gregory Peck movie has been on my watch list for ages. The book sounds pretty interesting, too! You are absolutely right about shock having long-term consequences people don't even realize. I've seen it in the lives of people I know.

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    1. we watched the movie this afternoon. it was pretty good, but not the sort of movie i would have thought GP would have starred in... they changed some of the action and left some of the incidents, but the story line followed the book fairly closely even so... it registered (the shock thing)with me also in explaining the behavior of certain persons i've known...

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  7. What a fascinating story. I did not know there was a movie as well, but I think I'd like to read the book. I'd never heard of this author. Yay, mudpuddle, for increasing my knowledge of past authors.

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  8. mon plaisir, Sharon... as i said above we watched it today; it's on amazon's movie collection... he's not terribly well-known although his books had brief periods of popularity back in the fifties...

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  9. Nice review ....of course .... guess who moved?
    https://miscellaneousmusingsandreviews.blogspot.com/
    Please stop by everyone ....

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    1. there you are! i've been wondering a bit... i'll see if i can get your address to co-operate!

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    2. i've been trying to get your new blog to list and it won't... don't know if it's what i'm doing or something on your end...

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  10. Thank you for sharing. I will give it a look.
    www.rsrue.blogspot.com

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  11. interesting book...nice review....I'll find it.....
    Thank you for sharing your thought and summary

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    Replies
    1. Bates is pretty approachable... after the first couple of pages you'll be hooked...

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