PINOCCHIO

My favorite magazine is without a doubt Smithsonian Today due to the wide diversity of articles it contains on every possible subject. One of the recent issues had an article on the story of Pinocchio written by Carlo Collodi in Tuscany, Italy in 1883. Most of us are aware of the story through the somewhat sanitized Disney version of 1940.

My own introduction to the story came when I was six years old and given an illustrated children's version by a neighbor lady for Christmas. Looking at it again after many years, I was again struck at how “Christian” the book is, not surprising considering that Italy was steeped in that tradition. I will stick to my book version rather than Disney's for what follows:

Geppetto is the loving and patient God figure in the book who forms Pinocchio and sees him come to life. But rather than being grateful to his creator, Pinocchio's (Adam and Eve's) first act is an aborted attempt to run away and follow his own path. He tries to go back home to his “Father” but does not find him when he returns since Geppetto has decided to pursue him wherever he might be (the Good Shepherd looking for the own strayed sheep).

A talking cricket warns Pinocchio that unless he stops being disobedient and goes to school, he will come to no good end. Pinocchio refuses to listen and tries unsuccessfully to kill the cricket (Holy Spirit or inner conscience). Although the cricket did not convince him, the wooden boy finds no food in the cupboards and rues the day that he disobeyed simply because he is hungry.

Pinocchio goes out on the street at night and knocks on a door begging for food. Instead, the man throws water on him out of the upper window. At this point I am reminded of Jesus' parable of the importune neighbor begging for bread at night.

At last, Geppetto returns home, feeds his “boy” and provides him with clothes so that he can go to school, even selling his own overcoat to buy school books for him. There is a parallel here with God providing clothing to Adam and Eve after their fall, presaging God's later sacrifice of His own son to clothe people spiritually.

But rather than taking advantage of all Geppetto had done for him, Pinocchio trades in the opportunity to learn at school by selling his books to a peddler so that he could attend a puppet show instead. He immediately feels that he belongs with the other puppets, but the kindly showman tells him to return home where he belongs and even magically produces golden coins with which Pinocchio can get his books back. There is possibly a parallel here with the miraculous production by Jesus of a coin in a fish's mouth to give to Peter with which to pay his required temple tax.

At this point in the story, the errant Pinocchio decides to repay Geppetto's kindness by using the money to purchase a new coat for him. But before that can happen, he has the misfortune to run into the evil Fox and Cat who tempt him with the promise of food, but rob him of most of his money instead and escape (another echo of the Garden of Eden story).

He meets the Blue Fairy and tells her his sad story. But he lies about whether he has any remaining money and his nose grows. Remember the evasive answers that both Adam and Eve and later Cain give to God when he questions them.

At this point, he encounters a talking bird (another incarnation of the Holy Spirit?) who informs him that his father was seen out at the beach looking for him. The bird carries him there on his back, and Pinocchio spies Geppetto in a boat out at sea. With good intentions again, the wooden boy tries to swim out to him but gets tired and eventually lands on a foreign shore. He has lost his few gold coins by this point and goes around begging for food. At last he runs into a woman whose pails of water he carries in exchange for a good meal. The woman turns out to be the Blue Fairy in disguise (“For as much as you have done for one of these, you have done for me.”), and she tells him that he can become a real boy if he is good and goes to school.

Unfortunately, Pinocchio runs into trouble at school when boys tie strings to him to make him dance. He eventually makes friends with some bad companions who convince him to skip school and go to the beach instead. When there, the boys throw Pinocchio's school book at him but miss and hit another boy instead who falls down as if dead.

A policeman tries to capture Pinocchio, feeling that he is responsible for the boy's death. The puppet escapes but is pursued by the policeman's dog who ends up in the ocean and is about to drown. Demonstrating another unselfish act, Pinocchio rescues him and jumps back in the ocean where he is picked up in a fisherman's net. The fisherman thinks that he is another fish and attempts to fry him when the dog comes in and rescues him.

After a few more adventures, Pinocchio at last settles down and attends school where he gets excellent marks. But he again falls in with an evil companion, Candlewick, who is running away to the Land of Boobies where there is no school. They travel there with a coach drawn by a team of donkeys. Pinocchio rides on one of them, who talks to him and warns him of impending doom (as in the story of Balaam's ass). Pinocchio ignores the warning, and in the end both he and Candlewick get turned into donkeys and are sold to a circus manager.

Pinocchio turns out to be a poor trained donkey and so the manager decides to drown him and sell him for his hide. But when Pinocchio is immersed in the water, the Blue Fairy comes along with her magic wand so that when he is pulled out of the water, he is again a wooden boy (regenerative baptism). He swims away to again find Geppetto and is swallowed by the same Dogfish that had earlier swallowed his father. The two manage to escape with the help of a friendly tuna fish (the story of Jonah, which is a type of Jesus' death and resurrection).

On their way home they encounter the blind cat and lame fox who have by now received their just punishment and must make a living by begging (the final destruction of Satan and all his accomplices).

From this point on in the story, Pinocchio is a born-again person who works hard to support his aging father and give money to the ailing Blue Fairy. But she was only testing him to see if he had really reformed. At the end of the story, Pinocchio's true resurrection occurs when he is transformed into an actual boy and sees his old wooden body lying in a corner (a picture of the resurrection of the righteous in the final days as well as an example of the “old man” being displaced by the “new man.”)

The Disney version does, however, bring one aspect of the story into sharper focus, namely the contrast between Pinocchio as a “free” being and one controlled by strings with no free will at all. This points to the interesting fact regarding atheists. They desire to be free from the restraints of society or religion telling them what to do. But by denying the existence of God, they at the same time deny their own free will and end up having to believe (if they are honest with themselves) that they are nothing but complicated puppets whose every move is controlled by forces of heredity and environment totally beyond their control.

Instead, they are indeed controlled, but it is mainly by their own desires. Thus, they may begin like Candlewick with the pursuit of personal pleasure as their main goal but end up as he did in the original story as a mere beast tethered to toiling at ultimately meaningless work.