Loss of Innocence
“…and the eyes of the two of them were opened.”
Habitually, the loss of innocence is associated with the loss of sexual innocence.
But there is another kind of innocence, the moral kind, one that good people, unless they live on a desert island, inevitably lose at some point in their lives.
One of the spheres in which one can lose one’s moral innocence is the workplace.
The Language Professor is the story of just such a loss.
The lead character in the book, Naomi Singer, does not think in biblical terms, but what happens to her does, indeed, open her eyes. She learns that words do not mean what the dictionary says they mean or what she has habitually believed them to mean, that their meaning and value are not fixed.
After losing her moral innocence, Naomi’s character does not change, nor does she change the way she uses words, but she learns not to expect other people to use them the way she does. From trusting others until proven otherwise, she learns not to trust others until proven otherwise. From believing the words people utter, she learns to wait upon their actions before judging them.
Several years after the events in The Language Professor take place, the new president of Naomi’s college utters many reassuring and inspiring words at his first college-wide meeting . Naomi listens but waits. Let’s see whether he will carry through on all his promises, she thinks, on the team-building and the renewal of purpose.
Naomi waits, the new president does not carry through, and she is not disappointed.
That’s what the loss of innocence does, it robs you of expectations, but it spares you the disappointment.
Debora Resnick
author of
The Language Professor
Eloquent Books
Strategic Book Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-60911-868-6
http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheLanguageProfessor.html