Hi All!
To summarize The Walk, the main character Alan
Christofferson, an advertising mogul, loses everything that a man holds dear.
First, he loses the love of his life, his wife and childhood sweetheart McKale,
due to the repercussions of a serious accident. While he is suffering
through his wife’s condition and eventual death, his unscrupulous business
partner Kyle has underhandedly stolen Alan’s company from behind his back. Alan
realizes he has no home, no car, and no job when he tries to pick up the pieces
following McKale’s funeral. Emotionally and spiritually exhausted, he decides
to take a break from life and just walk. Alan charts a path for himself from
Seattle, Washington, to Key West, Florida. He makes all the final arrangements
with his secretary Faline to leave behind his former life then packs his gear
to begin his walk.
Along Alan’s walk many incidents occur with people and places, of
course, that lead him to delve deeper into himself, his strengths, his
weaknesses, and most of all his ability to survive without it all – McKale, his
profession, his way of life. At one stop on his journey, Alan meets a woman who
survived a near death experience. Possibly hoping to find definitive answers
from her on the nature of why anyone should continue to exist in a world filled
with so much sorrow, Alan asks her, “So what is your mission?
She responds, “Nothing that will make headlines… Actually, I’ve
spent my life trying to figure that out. It took me years to realize that the
searching was the path. It was simple. My mission is to live. And to accept
what comes my way until I get back home. My real home.”
As Alan listens to her story, we the readers hope he is beginning
to see the point of his existence and maybe, in our response, we see a little
of ours. The woman explains that we cannot live as if this life is everything.
She calls people that do “life huggers.” She adds, “They are people that hang
on to this life because they think this is it. But they’re fools, thinking they
can hold on to this life. Everything in this world passes. Everything. You
can’t hold onto a single thing.” I love this passage. Because at this point in
the story, I felt the The Walk’s theme. Is the story really a message
relating to Christ, His walk, and more specifically, his last walk, the walk to
His crucifixion? We all have crosses to carry, suffering, and we all must fight
for the will to survive – all major themes of Evan’s novel. Finishing this book
at the start of the Lenten season, when we Christians are creating the path we
hope to follow in order to reach the perfection that is Christ, connected me to
the story’s deeper messages.
The ultimate walk to our own salvation can sometimes seem
difficult, even impossible. We are mindful of Christ’s agony especially during
Lent, and we remember what He endured so that we might have a chance to follow
Him home. Alan faces His own torturous moment as He walks, we all do, but in
spite of our own miseries, like Alan, we are in Christ’s hands. He is carrying
us all the way. Even when Alan succumbs to one of his darkest moments in the
story, we see through the circumstances how God was with Alan all along.
A simple business card, ordinarily something one tosses aside, became the name,
the link to one of God’s angels, and strikes the reader as divine intervention.
Alan was never alone. God was always at his side affirming that He is always
with us, too.
How many times in my own life have I wanted to leave everything
and just walk? Many, many, many times. As Alan takes a literal path from
Seattle to the Keys, my walks may only have been around the college behind my
house where my path, worn and tramped with thirty years of pain and prayers,
could probably equal in distance. The notion of “walking” is in all of us. It
comes to us, I believe, instinctively. If you are feeling bad, move. Move and
never stop moving. Alan knew he had to move. Staying still, staying in the same
environment with the reminders of his grief and loss would eventually kill him,
and he knew that is not what his wife McKale would have wanted. Walking, Alan
states, “it’s not new. Every generation has dreamed of roaming. Deep in our
hearts everyone want to walk free.” As the previous themes mentioned of
suffering and survival become clear, we must walk through all of it to reach
our home, our peace, our freedom.
Our next book club will meet tonight, Wednesday, March 22, to
discuss yet another story of a man who must come to terms with the loss of his
spouse. It is the novel A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. We
will meet at our usual quiet destination, Natilie’s Pizzeria, to identify the
many similarities and notable differences between this book and The Walk.
In addition, the characterization of Ove in Backman’s book is certain to
generate an in-depth discussion, as Ove is such an unforgettable protagonist.
Let’s arrive at the meeting ready to share our own examples of Oves we may know
and love. This book is sure to stir up some intriguing conversations!
Tammy
