A Runour

A Rumour

A rumour mill has been defined as a ‘situation in which a number of people spread rumours about something’. Rumours are ‘unverified stories, gossip, or pieces of news passed quickly from person to person without proof’.

In The Great Gatsby, novel, Nick had overheard some gossip relating to Mr Gatsby-he heard that he was a spy, a bootlegger and that he even murdered someone. Catherine, Myrtle Wilson's sister tells Nick that Gatsby is related to Kaiser Wilhelm. Nick did not know what to believe about his flamboyant and enigmatic neighbour. He wondered why Gatsby wanted to throw these lavish parties where beautiful food was consumed and glasses of champagne drunk. And yet Gatsby did not mix with his guests or talk to them. He wondered if it was just a charade.

Fitzgerald writes:

The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.

In the novel, Tom cheats on his wife Daisy, and the latter has an affair with Gatsby and Jordan cheats at golf. It is easy for a rumour mill to manifest in this superficial world that typified the ‘roaring twenties’. At the end of the novel Nick Carraway explains the illusion of the American dream:

‘Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’.

In Matthew 16:13-20, Peter makes a declaration of faith:

3 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

We all want to know the truth and to get to the bottom of things. When it is not clear who a person is, we tend to speculate, listen to rumours or even spread rumours.

Rumors from an Æolian Harp, by Henry D. Thoreau

There is a vale which none hath seen,

Where foot of man has never been,

Such as here lives with toil and strife,

An anxious and a sinful life.

There every virtue has its birth,

Ere it descends upon the earth,

And thither every deed returns,

Which in the generous bosom burns.

There love is warm, and youth is young,

And poetry is yet unsung.

For Virtue still adventures there,

And freely breathes her native air.

And ever, if you hearken well,

You still may hear its vesper bell,

And tread of high-souled men go by,

Their thoughts conversing with the sky.

An eolian harp is a stringed instrument that produces music whenever wind blows across it and causes its strings to pulse.

The Watergate scandal caused a great upset in American politics. Although there were many rumours about the affair, ultimately it involved the arrest of five men who were arrested for breaking into Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate Office in Washington D.C. Basically the men were stealing secret documents and wire-tapping phones to help the President to get re-elected. This was followed by a cover-up and the Nixon administration denied any involvement in the crime. The outcome was that Nixon would have been impeached, but he resigned on August 9, 1974.

Most people do not believe in the existence of fairies. However, in 1917 two cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths took some photographs of fairies in their garden in Cottingley, near Bradford. Even their mother believed that the snaps were authentic and they were declared authentic by experts and gained worldwide publicity. However, in the 1980s, they confessed it was a trick and that the pictures were drawings by Elsie. It wasn't until the 1980s that the cousins confessed to their trickery – the fairies were actually drawings by Elsie, secured in the ground with hatpins – but they still claimed one photo was real.

In Irish folklore, the Tuatha de Danann, were the original inhabitants of the island, but they were conquered by the Milesians or Celts, and driven underground. The Tuatha de Danann became the ‘Sidhe’ or the ‘little folk’ or the ‘wee folk’. In rural areas it was rumoured that it was unlucky to cut down a ‘fairy tree’. In the Irish countryside thorn bushes can be seen growing in the middle of fields and a superstition prevailed that if they were cut down or damaged, a curse would be visited upon the person who carried out this deed.

In his autobiographical poem, ‘Asphodel, That Greeny Flower William Carlos Williams wrote:

it is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.

This means that we read facts and opinions about the daily news and events, but we must turn to poetry to get profound insights about human life. Daily headlines are superficial and lack spiritual truth.