On the Subject of Sacrifice

Tonight we read Tomie de Paola's Legend of the Bluebonnet, in which The People are experiencing drought and famine.  The shaman reports that the Great Spirit needs the people to sacrifice their most important possession, and all the adults go to bed justifying that what is special to them is certainly not special enough to the Great Spirit.  But the little girl leaves her bed in the night, knowing that the beloved doll that her parents and grandparents had made for her before they died was surely the most important possession, and she sacrifices it in a fire and spreads the ashes.

The children were deeply drawn into the story, with its musical language and quiet pictures.  (Okay, the language was more musical before Hibiscus joined us and started asking questions constantly, which made it a little hard to hear.)

At the end we talked about giving something up.  Emerson readily admitted that his legos were his most important possession, and Hibiscus immediately chimed that her legos were too.  I suggested that they were important to Emerson, but they weren't the thing that Hibiscus cared about the very most.  She sat mulling that over while I asked Emerson whether he would be able to throw them into a fire.  He thought about it, and obviously wished that he would, but his whole body curled up as he thought and he whispered no, he couldn't.  I asked, even if there was no food to eat and your family was sick and hungry?  (I felt like we didn't need to talk about the dying part.)  He thought about his legos and shook his head no, still curled up, wincing away from the possibility.

"No food?" Hibiscus asked, who had apparently missed that central point so far.  She had been thinking about all the wonderful THINGS in her life, but the idea of no food shocked her out of her reverie.  "I would give up all my nice new fings and I would throw ev'ry-fing in the fire if my family had no food," she said frankly.

I praised her for being unselfish, and tried to compliment her the same way the girl in the story had been honored, but it turned out she had missed that part too.  (The problem with asking so many questions is that you don't actually hear much of the story, apparently.)


But it makes me a little sad inside.  I hurt for her, that she knows so very distinctly how terrible it is to have no food.  She knows how hard it is to not have anything, and she clings to each toy and article of clothing and bit of ribbon and special, pretty, mismatched fork in the apartment's drawer.  Hibiscus is nothing if not blunt, and I'm sure the thought of throwing all her nice new things in the fire was very real to her -- and nothing to the specter of hunger.