BOOK REVIEW – D. H. LAWRENCE – THE ESCAPED COCK (1929) Various editions.
The last complete story written by Lawrence before his death, and clearly his way of showing his sexually explicit and cheerful blasphemous contempt for Christianity on his way out of the World.
The story begins innocently enough. A peasant farmer buys a proud cockerel to tend to his flock of hens. However, the cock is not happy and keeps trying to escape, so the farmer tethers it by tying it down with one leg, which makes it more reluctant to perform its duties. Then, one day, it breaks free from its rope and half runs and half flies away. The farmer gives chase and in doing so, he runs into a man in a funeral shroud coming the other way. It is Jesus, and he has just come back from the dead on Easter Sunday.
Jesus, never named as such, but clearly identifiable, is a confused and frightened man, who had expected to be rescued by his Heavenly father before being actually subjected to the horrors of crucifixion. He feels betrayed and disturbed. He is also scared that if the Romans discover that he survived, they will come back to finish the work they started and execute him properly.
This Jesus is a far from spiritual figure. He is quite cowardly and eager to live the life he had spent so long preaching to men to abstain from. He sees the cockerel, (which he helps recapture) as similar to himself, - pinned down and expected to perform as others would wish – Jesus now becomes utterly selfish and self-serving. He leaves the farm and travels to Egypt, where he seduces a Temple Priestess to the goddess Isis, (who may be the Goddess herself). There is some sex, though rather tame compared to that in Lady Chatterley’s Lover and other Lawrence masterworks. It merely shocks because we know this is Jesus indulging himself and not Mellors The gardener.
When some Roman soldiers catch up with him, Jesus escapes by river on a boat, leaving a poor slave boy to be mistaken for himself and captured while he goes onto more sexual and bohemian adventures – a liberated cock indeed.
This is a silly and not particularly well written fable, intended to offend on just about every level. It still has some entertainment value, nevertheless. The story is also issued as The Man Who Died.
© Copyright. Arthur Chappell
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