Alan Marshall: lessons in courage

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Alan Marshall was born, like any child, to run, jump, play fun with peers. But it turned out differently. Life has developed in such a way that every movement was an overcoming and a feat. And he never interfered with his sufferings to those around him. On the contrary, Alan Marshall gave lessons of courage and perseverance throughout his life. His biography is the story of a man with an honest, courageous look at reality and a sense of the joy of being.

Childhood

It is described in the most famous book, which is called "I can jump over puddles." The boy was in a hurry to be born. He almost outstripped the midwife who arrived at the last moment. Everyone was waiting for him: two sisters, mother and father. This happened on May 2, 1902 in Australia, in the Western District of Victoria, in Nurata. The father, seeing his son, immediately said that he would be a runner and a rider, because his legs were strong. Alan Marshall himself thought, as a toddler, that he would ride and handle any horse.

School and illness

Shortly after the child started going to school, a polio epidemic broke out. It is nowAll children are vaccinated against it. Then they simply did not exist. Alan Marshall fell ill at age 6 and was never able to physically recover from it. After spending eighteen months in the hospital, he became an invalid, whose lot is a bed and crutches. While he was recovering, he binge read adventure books and comics. He rejected all attempts to patronize him and sought to do as much as possible himself. The father and mother encouraged all the aspirations of the child, especially the fact that he wanted to share all the affairs and activities of his classmates. Alan, with his wholesome boyish outlook on the world, didn't have the feeling that he was exceptional, that he was a little cripple. With a school enemy, he fought with sticks, climbed into the mouth of an extinct volcano, learned to swim and ride. Before you is the inflexible stubborn Alan Marshall (biography). The photo below shows him with the horse he was learning to ride.

His illiterate father turned out to have an exceptional teaching talent. Parents did not seek solace in religion and did not submit to the "will of God." The father taught his little son to be involved in everything that seemed to be denied him by fate, as well as to empathize and be useful. The driver who took him on a long trip to the lumberjacks did not offend Alan with pity. His friend Joe's mother didn't notice Alan's crutches either. The wandering seasonal workers, the swagmen, did not moan over the cripple. Everything in the popular environment taught Alan the habit of relying on himself in everything and being able to lend a hand to those who are in trouble.

Becoming

Young mandreamed of becoming a writer, but the knowledge he received at a rural school and business college was not enough. And no one wanted to hire Marshall with paralyzed legs. Therefore, he was glad to become a clerk in the municipality with a beggarly wage, and an accountant in a shoe factory, and a night watchman. But everything that he saw and heard, as well as his thoughts, Alan Marshall wrote down in notebooks. Over time, they accumulated about a hundred. In the thirties, a wave of crisis swept the country, there were mass layoffs, and the unemployed were sent to prison.

The newspapers that came out daily did not print Alan's reports about the disadvantaged people. “Pictures from the Life of a Proletarian” was published by only one newspaper, where the journalist wrote about the sweatshop system at the General Motors factories, as well as articles against war and fascism and in support of the republic in Spain. At thirty-seven, Marshall becomes editor of a small anti-fascist magazine and is then elected chairman of the Writers' League.

Marriage

Met Olivia Dixon in 1937 by Alan Marshall. Personal life gradually settled down. They married on May 30, 1941 in Melbourne. This marriage had two daughters. His wife hardly understood his energetic activity. Alan traveled the roads of Australia, first in a covered cart, which was drawn by horses, and in the mid-forties, in a car that was equipped with complex steering belts. The upper half of the body was athletic, but let down completely withered legs. Right had toamputate. In 1957, after the release of his best novel about childhood, his wife broke up with him shortly before her death. Then Alan lived alone and wrote in newspapers (he had his own column) for women whose lives were broken by drinking husbands.

Conclusion

Marshall believed that all our good qualities stem from the bad things that happened to us.

He saw his whole life as consisting of peaks and plains, and the writer's task was to show that peaks are achievable. He was a passionate advocate for the disabled. Wrote thousands of letters to disabled children encouraging them to follow their dreams and never give up. In 1972 he received the Order of Britain for services to the disabled, in 1981 - the Order of Australia for services to literature. In 1964, Marshall visited our country for the first time, and later became president of the Australia-USSR Society.

The life-loving work of Alan Marshall proves to everyone that a person has no right to bow under the blows of fate. The writer died in 1984 at the age of 81.