Death of Childhood

Published on: Thu Apr 09

“To drive children into labour is to slaughter artists, to scour deathly all wonder, the flickering dart of imagination as finches flitting from branch to branch - all crushed to serve grown-up needs and heartless expectations. The adult who demands such a thing is dead inside, devoid of nostalgia’s bright dancing colours, so smooth, so delicious, so replete with longing both sweet and bitter - dead inside, yes and dead outside too.”

The 11th chapter of Toll the Hounds opens with this, as young Harllo’s new living condition working at mines is introduced. Equating child labour to the slaughtering of artists struck a powerful nerve for me. I’ve always believed that to do something truly artistic that to have a childlike attitude is almost mandatory. No matter how cynical the art may be, to be unafraid of judgement and true to ones self leaves a much stronger impact than one who is afraid of themselves. The result of child labour is a fear of expression, that their imagination is less important than “grown-up needs and heartless expectations”. And much like other beliefs that stem in childhood, it sticks until the inner child learns to deal with it.

Harllo as far as chapter 17 within Toll the Hounds (haven’t read further than that yet) is a child who does not have the protection from the greater world that a child often has. A child of the rape of Stonny, Harllo’s mother leaves him to another family, only being known to Harllo as an ‘aunt’, although Harllo is aware of the truth. His adopted parents while treating him well, don’t pay enough attention to understand the danger Harllo is in with their other kid. Snell, the biological child of Harllo’s adopted parents, resents his new brother. The idea that his parents are to share their affections to both children as opposed to just Snell is unthinkable to him. So he beats Harllo. While Harllo gathers materials outside the city, Snell beats him unconscious and takes the gathered resources to pretend they were of his own finding. Harllo is found by an elderly man and thrown into child labour at a mining camp west of the city to help the elderly man. His childhood ends at age 6.

But that childhood doesn’t die, but simply lies dormant. As a whole, Harllo’s world is shattered. There is no safe fallback when something goes wrong. There’s no ‘uncle Gruntle’ to fund his adopted family. There is no shallow affections. Regardless of all that, young Harllo curves a childhood for himself. He is able to work the mines, and still have that undying love for what he does not know. He is in awe of meeting a T’lan Imass, buried within rocks for thousands of years, and makes promises for things he does not understand. That wonder within Harllo refuses to die, taking any chance to flourish. Sneaking in the dead of night to deliver what he thinks qualifies as splints to the undead Imass, the young child brings bones because it kind of sounded like splints to him. It’s a small moment but is sweet in its execution. Imagination and an understanding that he must keep this ancient beings existence a secret, forces Harllo to just take a quick guess. Bones are kind of similar to splints? Probably? And there’s a lot of dug up bones here in the mines. Nobody uses them. It’s perfect for a new friend! Harllo continues to retain his childhood even in its uprooting.

Something the above has made me question is when my “childhood” died and the consequences of that. At a fundamental level, I believe a part of my childhood died when I immigrated as a kid. It feels strange to look back at, at the time it felt so inconsequential. I was just flying somewhere different, I was going to see my family whenever so all was good. But that never happened. Not in a true sense. Leaving so young, there’s always been this disconnect between me and my family overseas. As a kid I had unending love for them. I will always cherish memories of going to barbeques in the woods. Of gardens and concrete, of glass walls and digital screens. But it is so separate from who I ended up becoming. It was easy to feel less and less for that extended family. I have visited since I was a kid, but that was almost 10 years later. I had developed anxiety and forgotten the language I grew up with. I couldn’t truly connect with my family, and neither could they with me. The only family member overseas I feel truly connected to were my grandparents, who visited every few years. But that lack of familial support and relations still affects my thoughts to this day. With therapy I’m naturally more aware, but over the years it has caused endless problems in the way I interact with the world. The fear of abandonment, although unintentional, has led to this need to keep all relationships strong and close. That any distance, could mean an end to ever seeing the subject of that distance again. To the point of overwhelming with the need to fill the hole created in a time where it only mattered beneath the surface. Any day it could all be torn away, so quickly with nothing to remember me by.

As a child, love is expected. There is no concept of earning it, or concept of being unaccepted in ones curiosity. You exist, and so do other people. Why should safety be an exception? Even with that ‘death of childhood’, the innocence never truly goes away, it simply hides. It no longer feels safe at all times, but in precious moments it pops out and exists in its purest form. It comes out in picking out gifts for a friend in need, in telling stories about your living, and in the art we create.