Part 3: The Death in the Garbage Truck
The Death in the Garbage Truck
The cruelty of innocence
is the pain comes too late, and its interests accumulate with
the years.
Poverty as an Eternal Theme
“The Death in the Garbage Truck” is one of those stories that stays with me long after I finish writing it. Firstly, because it contains elements from a true story. Secondly, and most importantly, because the theme is what I yearn to carve out in flesh and blood: poverty.
N., the garbage collector’s death, is based on an accident in my hometown. Though the reality is less dramatic, of course, and less oppressive than what I have depicted in the story, my questions remained the same:
Why did the garbage collector choose that way to exit the Greek tragedy that we call our dear life on Earth?
Poverty is nothing new to me. I wrote something very similar in Chronicle of a Love Foretold: Living based on lies or living to feel life—which do you prefer? What I mean is, between suffering and indifference, I would choose the first option.
But to many people, those who are far less privileged, the choice is not that prevalent. They are forced fed the life they never wanted, neither for themselves nor for their loved ones.
Perhaps that is the reason why, when I first heard the story about N., I had thought that poverty would be an eternal theme for literature. Because we can end a lot of things in a billion years going forward, but how can we end human suffering?
The Gap Between Existence and Survival
“You fuckin’ stupid bourgeoisies with your fuckin’ stupid
The Death in the Garbage Truck
bourgeoisie idears. ‘Too sad to live,’ eh? And what can death
do about it? The only thing it can do is to bring more sadness.“
Originally, I planned to portray a generational difference between the old man and the young journalist. However, if the chasm between them is only that tiny fissure, there would be very little to dissect, and I couldn’t tolerate a shallow debate.
So, I raise the stakes. I couldn’t take all the credit. The discussion on the internet contributes a lot to the development of the old man and the young journalist’s conversation.
The idea that ‘someone could die because it is too sad to live’ is preposterous to the older generation. It isn’t because they don’t understand the meaning of the thought—on the contrary, they understood it all too well. However, they survived the sadness far too many times to accept the fact that someone would die of it.
Meanwhile, the young journalist, inexperienced as she is, who had tried to take her exit on the stage of life quite a few times in the past, knows how hard it is to keep on going when every day is a battle and every waking moment is a call to arms.
It is, in essence, a difference in the language they speak. The language of pain, the language of generational suffering, and the language of tolerating the burden that Mother Time is lashing onto their toughened skins.
We can say that the old man is surviving as he best knows how. And the journalist is trying to find a meaning so she can continue her existence. Those two paths are as different from each other as polar poles; each one is right in its own sphere.
The Continuity of Death and Rebirth
The bus arrives. She steps on and looks outside the half-opened
The Death in the Garbage Truck
windows. A fierce light almost blinds her. In the opposite
direction, the garbage truck drives into the darkness.
The original ending of “The Death in the Garbage Truck” was a morbid one. It showed the journalist as an anti-climactic character who hadn’t reached her epiphany. Thanks to my editor, and the books that I’ve been munching on for quite a long while after the first draft was finished, the ending was rewritten to the current version.
To put it simply, I had decided on a continuity of death and rebirth.
In a more complicated explanation, I planned the ending so it could follow Yukio Mishima’s “The Sea of Fertility” tetralogy.
It isn’t about the light at the end of the tunnel for the journalist; nor is it about the sudden, positive change in the poverty-stricken life for the old man in the poor village where N. used to live. The ending provides a closer look at the reality that most of us would face in similar situations. It isn’t the perfect escapism, but it is what we have all been through, and will continue go through as long as we live.
In short, life goes on. We will go on. The show must move forward. And in that timeframe, nobody will remember the death in the garbage truck. Nobody thinks about the ghastly suicide.
Only poverty remains as an eternal theme to dissect and debate amongst the privileged ones.
And isn’t that the most realistic, saddest fact?