wild goose chase
a prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages
It’s a little-known fact that the playwright Tennessee Williams…the author of A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof…once worked in a shoe factory in St. Louis. The experience resulted in what was then called a “nervous breakdown.” It also resulted in one of his earliest, and most easily forgotten, plays: Stairs to the Roof. The most memorable part of the play is its subtitle. A Prayer for the Wild of Heart That are Kept in Cages.
The play is about a man who, like Williams at the shoe factor, is employed at a job he finds monotonous and soul-destroying. In the play, the character leads a one-man worker’s revolt that ends in a sort of fantasy escape. It’s something everybody who has ever held an unrewarding job must daydream about. Not just shaking off the burden of employment, but engaging in an heroic escape from the oppressive chains of routine into a brighter and more adventurous life.
Real heroism, though, isn’t about escape. Real heroism is returning to that cage day after day, returning to that cage when every fiber of your being cries out against it, returning to that cage because others depend on you to return to it. There’s no adventure in it, no romance, no bright shining deeds, no recognition for the sacrifice. That’s what makes it truly heroic.
And that’s also why we all offer up a prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages.
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