The Thomas Wolfe Prophecies

Shortly before he died, Thomas Wolfe, made two prophecies. The first of these warns that Americans must reflect and face up to the trauma we whose ancestors arrived here have wrought in the lives of First Nations by stealing their land and of the descendants of enslaved people by stealing them from theirs. There is no second option. “We must probe to the bottom of our collective wound” or be “damned.” Here are his words.

“But it is not only at these outward forms that we must look to find the evidence of a nation’s hurt. We must look as well at the heart of guilt that beats in each of us, for there the cause lies. We must look, and with our own eyes see, the central core of defeat and shame and failure which we have wrought in the lives of even the least of these, our brothers. And why must we look? Because we must probe to the bottom of our collective wound. As men, as Americans, we can no longer cringe away and lie. Are we not all warmed by the same sun, frozen by the same cold, shone on by the same lights of time and terror here in America? Yes, and if we do not look and see it, we shall all be damned together.”

                                                              ― Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again

His second prediction is voiced when he recounts witnessing a Jewish passenger on a train in Germany being forced off and taken somewhere. Wolfe sees this moment as the end of humanity.

They all felt they were saying farewell, not to a man, but to humanity; not to some pathetic stranger, some chance acquaintance of the voyage, but to mankind; not to some cipher out of life, but the fading image of a brother’s face.

–You Can’t Go Home Again

Wolfe doesn’t avoid these thoughts. He commits to them. He sees. He witnesses.

In his next book, if he had lived to write it, he would have given us a third prophecy. He was traveling to each of the National Parks out West. He was going to prophecy about saving the earth.

Story answers each of these prophecies. Through truth and reconciliation we can “look as well at the heart of guilt that beats in each of us.” Story is the process for doing this, for evading damnation. It the process by which we restore our humanity, which has indeed been lost or close to it. With story we can get another try.

For Wolfe, all humanity was a web, a home suspended above the rock of the earth. Together, the people and the planet, The Web and the Rock, were life. Our stories, when we tell them, form our web that binds all of us to the Earth. When we feel wholly a part of something ancient and meaningful, we require less. We have one another. We no longer crave a flatscreen, a Landrover, strangely flavored coffees that cost seven dollars per cup. We are okay with what we have as long as we are supported and sustained in what Alastair McIntosh calls “the basket of community.’ We are happier. We are healthier, and maybe even most valuable of all, we do not fear death for we know the world is a creative process of which we are blessed to be a part.

How do we probe to the bottom of our collective wound? We tell about our experience. Without shame. Without guilt. Although we are certain to feel these, we are unburdening ourselves of these emotions. They are, after all, collective. We are all carrying them in some aspect of ourselves. We do not have to carry them alone. We do not have to rehearse or be perfect or even make sense right away. This country happened, is happening. It has a history. It has a story. In some places it’s a good story. In other places, it is a horrific story. We can come together and gather these stories–not because we are confessing to having done things but because someone else has done things, too. We are all here. Our ancestors were all here. We can tell of them without ripping a hole in the time-space continuum. We can tell of our blindspots, character weaknesses, cruel acts, discoveries, awakenings. We can. Our stories don’t kill us in the telling. They can kill us and others in keeping silent.

https://avlwordfest.com/contact/