Reflections on the Past

After reading Ian Frazier’s “What Ever Happened to the Russian Revolution” and Allegra Hyde’s “Let the Devil Sing” within Cheryl Strayed’s “The Best American Travel Writing 2018,” I noticed a pattern of reflecting upon the past within both travel essays. This is done within “What Ever Happened to the Russian Revolution” through an examination of Russian history and within “Let the Devil Sing” through an examination of the authors marriage. In both works, this reflection of the past is done to form a better understanding of how the present came about and the impacts that the past had upon it. To begin, I will examine how this pattern of reflecting upon the past is shown within “What Ever Happened to the Russian Revolution” over the course of Frazier’s time in Russia, as he reflects upon the past history of Russia and the lasting legacy of the Russian Revolution. In the beginning of “What Ever Happened to the Russian Revolution,” Frazier states “Russia is both a great, glorious country and an ongoing disaster. Just when you decide that it is the one, it turns around and discloses the other” before briefly touching on the previous two hundred years of Russian history that he will later discuss cultivating in the Russian Revolution one hundred years ago (Frazier/Strayed 93). Speaking of the revolution, which is the main focus of his travel essay, Frazier further elaborates “Today, a hundred years afterward, we still don’t know quite what to make of that huge event. The Russians themselves aren’t too sure about its significance” (Frazier/Strayed 93). For this reason, in this travel essay Frazier tries to reflect on Russian history to try to determine the true and lasting significance of the revolution. At the end of his travel essay, Frazier concludes “There would have been no Soviet Union without Lenin. Today he might feel discouraged to see the failure of his Marxist utopia – a failure so thorough that no country is likely to try it again soon. But his political methods may be his real legacy” (Frazier/Strayed 133). In this way, Frazier reflected upon the past events of the Russian Revolution to try to determine the main legacy that it had left behind, finding that it is within the methods that were used to bring it about, not the state(s) that it was able to form. However, within “Let the Devil Sing” the reflections of the past are regarding Hyde’s marriage and her past. In this travel essay, Hyde laments about both her marriage and the current state of her life living in Bulgaria, which is shown within the statement “My husband and I love one another, but our marriage feels like a sham. This is one of our problems. The other is living in Bulgaria” (Hyde/Strayed 172). She reflects upon this aspect of her life over the course of her and her husband’s trip to see The Devil’s Throat. Within one of these reflections, Hyde reflects upon how her conversations with her “future husband” in the past had been so enthralling and captivating for her, but “Now though, it seems more like an incursion to share the thoughts inside me, to unravel my knotted anxiety, to expose the hot coals lining my mind” (Hyde/Strayed 176). On her marriage, Hyde states “I wouldn’t have gone abroad if he hadn’t come with me. And if I hadn’t gone abroad, we might have not signed those binding papers. Those two things feel inextricable now – Bulgaria and our marriage – which in turn feels problematic” (Hyde/Strayed 175). She then explains the circumstances in Bulgaria that she had found to be very trying on their marriage and the complex feelings that had resulted within her because of it. Thus, amidst the backdrop of visiting the place where the legend of Eurydice and Orpheus was set, Hyde reflected upon her own past and the unhappiness she was now experiencing within her marriage that had seemingly come as a result. In this way, although both stories use reflection of the past in very different ways to examine the present, I find that it is a key pattern that can be observed within both travel essays. I believe that this aspect of reflecting upon the past and its impacts upon the future is an essential aspect that both stories share as it is able to connect the individual author’s travels to a greater central focus. Thus, even though the places that the authors visit are vastly different, they both share the aspect of using the past’s connection to the present to give their narratives a central theme to build off of and to engage the readers further from just the description of the places that they visited, even though each of these author’s central themes that are explored from reflecting upon the past are similarly vastly different. In this way, I found that this was a key pattern that both of these essays shared.