Publisher: Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/652)
First Published: 1759
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3 (definitely not great)
Didactic; but this is not a bad quality, especially when the teaching is wise and good. The teaching in Rasselas is good because it shows that joy cannot be found in this life.
But the teaching is also bad for this very reason because joy can be found in this world, but not from this world. Joy is found in Christ alone. The source of joy is in living for the glory of God, who is Jesus Christ the very image of God (Christ is never explicitly mentioned in the book, but “God” is). Rasselas (the protagonist), though knowing of God, never seems to find the joy that is found in God, in Christ, that can be obtained in this world (though admittedly not to its full extent because of evil), but not from the world.
In the end Rasselas is right to find that joy will not be complete until evil is wiped out. Sin and death, their doom having already been sealed, still subsist until Christ returns to complete what was begun at the cross.
The book is good, but the story is definitely found subordinate to the author’s message, and since the message is not all that wonderful the book suffers for it.
So what is the story J-Dub?
Ultimately the story is about the search for happiness in this life. The narrator follows three primary characters: Rasselas, who is a prince of Abyssinia (which was an Empire in Ethiopia and Eritrea), a princess of Abyssinia (Nekayah), and Imlac, a philosopher. At the beginning of the story all three are found living within a palace, which the prince and princess have never been allowed to leave. Imlac, a philosopher who came to live within the palace grounds, helps Rasselas and Nekayah abscond into the outside world and search for the way to happiness. Along the way the three travelers meet characters from all walks of life and engage with them to discover if they have found happiness in their lives. Unfortunately each and every character explains that, at best, all he or she has found is comfort and ease, but not happiness.
I’m not going to hide the conclusion from you, my readers, because I know most will not read the book. The book concludes with this chapter: “The conclusion, in which nothing is concluded.” None of the characters find the way to true happiness so the three travelers decide to depart for their palace in Abyssinia, to return to the place they had left.
Even now, thinking about the conclusion, I am disgusted. Samuel Johnson lost a great opportunity to extol the truth or at least not to mis-characterize the truth. He mis-characterizes the truth because he misrepresents the afterlife as the only place where happiness can be found in God. But joy too can be found in Christ on earth, in the here and now, just not to the degree or fulness as it will be found in heaven with the not-obscured God. He makes God the God of the next world, but not also of this world. Johnson presents a false dichotomy.
Author bio: Samuel Johnson was English. He published a famous dictionary and was the subject of James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. (Wikipedia)
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