Spirits Rebellious (SR) gives you a sense of Deja-vu. Thats because it is very similar, if not the same, in concept/execution to the series of events/stories that led Gautam Buddha to renounce the World ! Just like it took Buddha a glimpse of sickness, old age, death and a wandering monk to set him questioning/thinking of his Life, it takes Khalil, the ’Monk’, tête à tête with a few mishaps befalling him/those around him before he can embark upon his journey for Truth.
The book essentially deals with the premise behind Rousseau’s famous one liner "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains". Throughout the Book, Gibran illustrates how we fall victims to our own Laws and norms and how this phenomenon begets a never-ending cycle of more and more suffering, generation after generation, age after age ! This is typified by the three stories which kinda bring out the "Horns of the Dilemma" situation where its difficult to accept an answer even in theory, let alone practice.
The first story talks of a mismatched couple where Rashid, the husband, aged 40 has taken Rose Hanie, a 18 year old as wife. Rashid does his best to offer a lavish lifestyle to Rose, exhibiting her as a prized trophy. All this happens "before God inflamed her heart with the torch of love". Rose despite her best efforts is unable to reciprocate his love and things go from bad to worse when she deserts her husband in favour of "a man she loves by the will of God".
The second story is about the Emir of ’Beyrouth’, who condemns three people to death without even as much as giving enquiring into the nature and admissibility of their ’crimes’. The last story recounts how Khalil, the protagonist, is expelled from his monastery for questioning his seniors & their ungainly deeds and how he survives the vagaries of a snowstorm to be saved by a mother-daughter duo, only to be captured by the Emir’s mens and tried before his court.
The 3 analogies serve many a purpose. First they help highlight the gnawing dilemmas that have the power to turn one’s Life upside-down, e.g, :-
(1) Is it a crime to abandon a marriage if you cant love your spouse according to the "Law of God" ? Maybe NO. But in that case, is it a crime to marry a girl half your age who enters into matrimony at the age of 18 out of her own sweet volition but later rues the decision when her life is "awakened from the deep swoon of youth" :-P NO again ? Cant decide, isnt it ?
(2) Try this one. Is it a crime to be bound by Man-made laws that inhibit your "Happy Life" and prevent you from enjoying the bounties of Nature which were meant to be distributed in equal measure to all Life forms ? Decidedly Yes. Then by the same token, isnt it a crime/injustice to seek and take protection of Man-made societies when you are disadvantaged and spurn them when you have "greener pastures" at your disposal ? YES again ! Or is it "Cant decide" ?
Secondly, the analogies are beautifully juxtaposed, each leading to the other like concentric rings of a circle. It begins at the personal level when we take a peek into how a "cant fail" marriage turns into a bitter separation. Next in is the neighbourhood level where a handful of ’powerful’ people abuse their station for perpetuating their clasp on the masses, with complete disreagrd for the public good/justice. Last comes the Societal level where the very fabric that forms the basis of daily existence of the farmers of Lebanon is subjected to a questionmark. This brings out the inter-relatedness of these issues to the fore. You solve one and you’ll find it easier to solve the other two !
I have my share of cribs on SR though. Firstly at the risk of sounding blasphemous to Gibran fans, I’ll say that SR’s climax left me a bit disappointed. Given the great buildup through most of the book, the climax came as something of a damp squib where the questions raised during bulk of the piece, were left unanswered/unsatisfactorily answered. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the book was completed in 1908 - much before ’the Prophet’ (1923) and a young Gibran still had bit of a befuddled head. The second complain, albeit a minor one is that he tends to go overboard with the sermonising (Rajeev_Vermacially towards the climax) and is repetitive to the point of being pontificative at times.
SR is more like a Novella that you’ll take 2 hours to read and 10 to digest. The only luxury you have is that of interspersing these 12 hours to your convenience. But that I guess is true of the entire body of Gibran’s work. His works continue to have an everlasting appeal. Primarily because (a) they highlight the dilemmas/travails faced by us in a style that is as comprehensive as it is lucid, (b) the stories and issues dealt therein are not limited to the age they belong to but have a transcendental appeal; being as much pertinent today as they were when written and (c) his stories serve as simple, easily identifiable with and yet profound examples for an exhaustive debate on the puzzle called Life !
(PS - Borrowing MathurSaab’s style, I’d like to thank esteemed member @astrofreak1234 whose review got me so interested in the book that I read and reviewed it in a couple of days flat.)