Learning from the Moomin Stories - Bronwen Griffiths
Jansson’s characters
may be small creatures who don’t exist in the real world but their attributes are
all too human. They are certainly not one-dimensional characters – and some are
really quite odd and eccentric. There’s the lonely Groke who turns everything
around her to ice, the pompous and bossy Hemulen, the fiercely independent Snufkin,
the courageous and reckless Little My, the ever-curious Moomin, the shy and
tremulous Sniff, and then there’s the ever present earth-mother Moominmamma, always
available to comfort those in distress. But even the soothing Moominmama has another
side to her personality. One day, feeling homesick, she paints a mural of
Moominvalley on the lighthouse wall (Moominpappa
at Sea) and vanishes inside the painting for hours.
On the surface
the Moomin stories appear to be about a family, and its friends and hangers-on,
but Jansson writes about serious issues - our human need for love and
acceptance. Loneliness. Anxiety. Loss. Uncertainty. Mortality.
Toft
began thinking about himself again. His dream about meeting the family had
become so enormous it made him feel tired…the whole of Moominvalley had somehow
become unreal, the house, the garden and the river were nothing more but a play
of shadows on the screen…He had been made to wait too long and now he was
angry. (Moominvalley in November)
Toft is mad because the Moomin
family aren’t home. Now, at the end of the book, as he wanders lonely and angry
in the forest, he begins to understand that his view of the Moomin family and
of Momminamma in particular, is idealised and unrealistic. He has grown-up.
Jansson writes so beautifully about
our human foibles - our need to be loved and accepted, and to love in return.
In Finn Family Moomintroll, after
Moomintroll tries on the Hobgoblin’s hat, he becomes unrecognisable to his
friends. ‘Your eyes are like
soup-plates,’ said Sniff – ‘Moomintroll’s are small and kind.’ ‘Yes, exactly,’
Snufkin agreed. You are an imposter,’ cried the Hemulen. But Moominmamma
recognises Moomintroll, and the moment she does, Moomintroll returns to his
normal form.
In Moominpappa at Sea Jansson writes about
our need to be needed and to matter in the world. One afternoon at the end of August, Moominpappa was walking about in
his garden feeling at a loss. He had no idea what to do with himself, because
it seemed everything there was to be done had already been done or was being
done by somebody else. He decides to
take the family off on a trip to an isolated island, which gives him purpose.
While the
family are away a number of other creatures visit Moominvalley (including Toft
mentioned above) hoping to spend time with the Moomins. But they are
disappointed. The Moomins do not reappear and an assortment of odd and rather
obsessive creatures have to find a way of living together in the Moomin house
without the family. Moominvalley in
November – the last of the Moomin series – is about loneliness and
disappointment and how to cope with it.
Jansson also
writes about what it is like to be an outsider. In fact most of the characters,
with the exception of the Moomin family themselves are outsiders but the
Moomins accept anyone with grace and kindness – except perhaps for the Groke
who seems to be beyond saving. When the Muskrat appears at the door one night
Moominpappa not only lets him in and offers a bed for the night but also offers
him a glass of wine.
Jansson’s books tell us something
about our place within the universe. In Comet
in Moominland the earth is about to be swallowed up by the comet. Luckily,
at the last moment the comet veers off course. If it had come a tiny bit nearer to the earth I am quite sure that none
of us would be here now. But it just gave a whisk of its tail and swept off to
another solar system far away, and it has never been seen since.
Jansson was originally a
political cartoonist and her first book, The
Moomins and the Great Flood, written at the end of the war, is a reminder
that life can be both unpredictable and frightening.
The
Moomins live far away from cities – theirs is the world of the forest, the
mountains and the sea. The natural world is a place of great beauty but
sometimes great terror. Here is Toft again. The
forest began to thin out and huge grey mountains lay in front of him. They were
covered with depressions full of boggy ground right up to their peaks…up there
was nothing, just the wind. The sky was vast…everything was enormous. Toft
looked behind him and the valley was just an insignificant shadow below.
What we can
learn from Jansson is how to write about the complexity of human relations. There
is humour, pathos, fear and love in her work, as well as beautiful descriptions
of the natural world.
Bronwen Griffiths is the author of two novels, A Bird in the House (2014) and Here Casts No Shadow (2018), and a book
of flash fiction, Not Here, Not Us –
stories of Syria (2016). Her flash fiction has been widely published – one
of her latest pieces appears in the Bath Flash Fiction anthology of 2018. She
lives on the East Sussex/Kent border.
Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/bronwengwriter
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