Have you tried explaining how your child shouldn’t need to wear a mask in school lately? Or that teachers and other government employees should come back to work like the rest of us did long ago? Good luck. “Put on the mask. Bow to the hat. Or face your punishment.”
Our hero’s reaction is similarly violent, and their story ends differently than any school board or vaccine fight of 2021, but the themes are continuous as ever.
“I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes!” composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart complains in the great historical fiction “Amadeus.” “Old dead legends! Why must we go on forever writing about gods and legends?”
“Because they do,” the wise Baron Van Swieten swiftly replies. “They go on forever; or at least what they represent — the eternal in us.