Floyd and Lucille Burroughs on Porch: The Will to Survive

    -Floyd and Lucille Burroughs on Porch, Walker Evans, 1936

       Walker Evans’ photograph of a Depression ravaged father and daughter sitting on their porch instills in me a sense of complex emotional paradoxes. And while I am fairly certain he was only trying to capture the true reality of the Great Depression’s effect on those living through it, I find myself struck by this image in particular.

       In this photo, I see such truth in the stoicism found on their faces. Barefooted and threadbare, their clothing tells a tale of chronic desperation. And the dirt on their feet implies a long road ahead. They sit in closed-off positions, suggesting a defensiveness— likely brought on by the losing battle they’ve been fighting. And the way she stares directly into the camera! There is a startling lack of childhood innocence—describing to me her journey, explaining that she had to grow up very quickly.

And yet, her father’s face tells a different story. I see determination in his gaze. His closed mouth speaks of quiet strength…fortitude. He has dug in for the war he fights, his trenches stocked with little more than his own physical strength and his sheer desire to survive.

In this photograph I see the powers of the human will. He will continue to fight, if only because he knows should he give up, he dies. And if he dies, what chance does his daughter have? And while no emotional closeness is shown here, the fact that they are together—she in the chair, and he on the ground— evokes a sense of their familial bond. They seem to say, “We’ll stick together until the end—be it your end or mine, or the end of the struggle.”

       This calls to mind The Old Woman in Volatire’s Candide. She knew such sadness, such tragedy, such tribulation that she considered taking her own life to be done with it all. The shame of illegitimacy, rape, slavery… And still, her will to live survives:

“A hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but always I loved life more. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts; is anything more stupid than choosing to carry a burden that really one wants to cast on the ground? to hold existence in horror, and yet to cling to it? to fondle the serpent which devours us till it has eaten out our heart? —In the countries through which I have been forced to wander, in the taverns where I have had to work, I have seen a vast number of people who hated their existence; but I never saw more than a dozen who deliberately put an end to their own misery.”

       Countless songs speak to this theme, but one I wish to highlight today is JoDee Messina’s Bring on the Rain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn6F2TP-JiM

       And I concur: When times get hard, I will push through it. Things are not always easy, but I will never give up. So bring on the rain!