Instances of the Number 3
When Peter Hansome dies it
is not an end but a beginning. The beginning of a new
understanding for his wife, Bridget, his mistress Frances
and, most of all, for Peter himself.
In a sense, 'Instances of the
Number 3' is part of a tradition of English ghost stories.
Peter's ghost, like a much more famous one in literature,
the ghost of Hamlet's father, is, we learn still here
for a purpose. In his life he has made errors of judgment
which have affected those he leaves behind. And in the
gap between this world and the next he must lean the
meaning of his mistakes.
His wife, Bridget, is a lover
of Shakespeare and it is through her thoughts about
Hamlet, and the ghost who visits him, that she comes
to understand her dead husband. We learn that Peter
is in purgatory, the place where in the old religion
humankind were 'purged' or cleansed of their sins so
that they might enter the knigdom of heaven.
In taking the old pre-Reformation
idea of purgatory I was, rather like Shakespeare, using
a literal idea as a metaphor, for the way in which our
attitude to the past can affect it. The old idea was
that by praying for the dead you could shorten their
time in purgatory. Bridget, through thinking about Hamlet,
and talking to her dead husband, releases him from his
own misdemeanours and comes to a deeper understanding
of herself. Our memories of the past - or the dead -
affect our present lives and 'Instances of the Number
3' explores this idea and the liberating possiblities
of forgiveness.. Life and death are not simply physical
states of being: they are metaphors for states of being,
or the way we take life. And maybe the barriers between
life and death are more permeable than we, in our super-rational
age, suppose...
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