A NIGHTMARE

A Nightmare

Don't judge a book by its cover.

Reminds a bit of Mamet's play Oleanna.

We see everything at first from the point of view of Kunin, "a well-intentioned but unreflecting and over-comfortable person." And what he sees is a nightmare. The priest is completely ineffective, weak, stupid and is not up to the job.

But then we get the point of view of Father Yakov and we soon learn why he wears patches on the elbows of his cassock. He is completely poor because he gives all he has to help others and he doesn't even have enough for tea for himself and his wife. And then we realize what the real nightmare is:

Some live with trays full of biscuits and some can't even afford one.

There is another story,  Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny, that also comes to mind. It also relates a story from one point of view and we make our judgements based on that point of view until we are then given a different point of view and our reality is changed.

Chekhov also does something similar in his story - The Letter.

In fact, we all  make judgements from our own perspective and most of us are blind or uniformed to the way the world looks to others. We assume and glean bits of information to base our judgements but I'm certain if we really knew all the facts we'd look at things differently.

The reality is we would rather not know the way things really are -- it takes too much work -- it's a lot easier to just assume things and go through life without those assumptions being challenged.

Books are judged by their covers and that's why millions are spent on designing a catchy cover.

And that is truly a nightmare.