Reading Group question: regret

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce included a set of Reading Group Questions. One of the questions seemed particularly appropriate. It seems proper to finish the book by proposing an answer to that one question. The question is:

 

Regret is an emotion that plays a key part in the novel. Do you think Joyce sees it as a positive or negative force?

Image credit: https://goo.gl/images/UUKYkh

 

In answer:

 

• Joyce sees the emotion of regret as a positive force.
• It is positive in that it causes Fry fruitful contemplation and re-centering of focus.
• Fry is entering a new season in his life. The pilgrimage serves to cause Fry a major shift in focus from self-centred to other person-centred. Initially, that shift occurs in respect his target; Queenie, and then his daily contemplations bring him to focus on his relationship with his spouse. Most positive of all is that Fry, after many years, reconciles the loss of his son.
• The new season cannot be endured in old shoes. Fry’s yachting shoes deteriorate through the walk as a metaphor of how Fry need leave those shoes, and his stagnant way of life behind.
• There is no question that regret was both a positive and negative force – the later occurring in Fry’s recognition that he cannot holistically relate to his late-story followers. Nonetheless, the positive nature plays out stronger than the negative.
• Overall, the reader is left recognising that Fry will seek to make good on a wasted life. It is very plausible that all of his relationships improved as a result of his pilgrimage.

 

Shalom,

Ozhamada