Weight by Jeanette Winterson

Weight, published in 2005, is one of Jeanette Winterson's newer novels. I've read quite a few by her: Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, The World and Other Places, and Sexing the Cherry. Her writing is always evocative. It makes me fall in love with trying to make sense of this world we live in all over again.

Sexing the Cherry made me go gaga over maps and the huge fat ugly and powerful Dog Woman. I can see the Dog Woman in my mind as clearly as if she is real. And she is real, in the sense that she lives on paper and in my mind.

And Weight gave me the coolest metaphor about the past, present and the future ever. It is a retelling of the myth of Atlas carrying the weight of the world. Atlas was condemned to carry the weight of the world for all eternity because of a war with the gods and was given temporary relief when Hercules offered to carry it for a while. In retelling this myth, Winterson changed it forever.

At the brink of making an important decision, have you ever wondered if everything was fated? As if every little thing in your life led to this one moment, and you can't help but decide the way you will? Sometimes I do. For example, when I decided to major in English Literature, it was a culmination of little coincidences: struggling with English in Sec One, a teacher's off-the-cuff praise in Sec Two, etc. etc.... It is as if I couldn't have decided otherwise. I think some people who are bonded to our government feel the same way — that they couldn't have made the decision not to sign when they were 18 years old because, well, there were no other choices in their little psyche then.

Winterson calls this present moment Weight. Because this present moment is weighed down by all our past and all our future, and we bear it on our backs. The question is — do we have the freedom to put it down?

Winterson's Hercules is bothered with this question and so he slaps his head with his hand to get rid of it. In a way, all of us will have to deal with this question sooner or later — if we want to be free.