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<title> "YE WHO CRAVE ALL THINGS WILL NOTHING HAVE" </title>
I have chosen the novel "THE FIFTH CHILD" by Doris Lessing for my literary essay. The idea of this piece of writing is to show what I consider to be the main theme of the book. The book is about Harriet and David who decides to get a big family and live a happy life. Their demand for happiness and their hard fall from this idyllic life is what I have found to be the main theme of the book.
Harriet and David crave happiness from Dame Fortune. At the beginning all the characters of the book find and take part of their happiness in the warm considerate home of Harriet and David. That 'finding of happiness' in their home is most obvious in Bridget whose family is so split she stays with Harriet and David during the school holidays. "We are here because it is so lovely, said a schoolgirl cousin of David's." (p 36) This very much represents the mentality of the whole family and David and Harriet at the beginning of the book.
	 At the beginning of the book Harriet and David are convinced that the way to happiness lies with a big family and this conviction is not altered at any place in the book. Their immediate family disagrees with their view of happiness. Getting lots of children is not something that modern working people do in this time. The late seventies and the eighties was a time of independent women and small families. David and Harriet's happiness is represented by the big house they buy in an outer London suburb from where David can commute to work. The house is to large for the couple but both Harriet and David want many children to fill its many rooms. They consider children to be their happiness. The big house in many ways represent the theme I found. Being big enough to hold their dream of the happy family it is also too big for the two of them to pay, keep and fill themselves. They buy it any way, not listening to the warnings of the family, letting David's father pay for it. The greed for things they have decided to have, not always following the modest ideas of others. Harriet and David are good at ignoring things they don't want to see. The world outside the family is constantly changing but the Lovatt's consider this to be something for others, wanting to keep the warmth and love within the family. In a way considering themselves to be more than the rest of the world. This is shown on the pages 29-30.
	 Harriet considers her sister and the sister's family to be less than her and David because the sister has a Down's syndrome child and therefore cannot be happy. "Harriet said to David, privately, that she did not believe it was bad luck; Sarah and William's unhappiness, their quarrelling, had probably attracted the mongol child..." (p 29) What I think Harriet does not see is that her sister learns to be happy in spite of her bad luck. The sister doesn't expect or demand happiness and therefore it finds her in the end.
David and Harriet decides to be happy and are convinced that just because they decide so they are going to be happy. "Happiness. A happy family. The Lovatts were a happy family. It was what they had chosen and what they deserved." (p 28) Notice the last word "deserved", they consider that they deserve happiness just because they have chosen to be happy. This way of thinking is changed towards the end. "'We are being punished, that's all.' 'What for?' ... 'For presuming. For thinking we could be happy. Happy because we decided we would be'" (p 141) This idea that you can be punished for the things you do is also reflected in the quote from p. 29. Maybe she in this later part of the book has begun to realise that they were demanding too much from Dame Fortune and life.
	 The family's happiness suffer a serious blow when their fifth child, Ben, is born. He is found by the family to be abnormal and he sucks the happy atmosphere from them, splitting the inner family. At the end not one of the relatives want to come visit during the holidays anymore, not even Harriet and David's own children, because Ben is there and they are afraid of him. They loose their happiness, personified in their children and the loving family. "We have no children, Harriet." (p 150). The Fifth child can be seen as Dame Fortune's punishment for their presuming that they were better than others. David and Harriet have seen it all come down around them and in the end they are thinking of selling the over sized house and buying something sensible. Their happy cocoon has broken and there was no beautiful butterfly inside but rather a greedy mosquito that nourished on their happiness.
The Lovatt family who in the beginning wanted it all and expected it to be handed to them on a silver plate has nothing but the big house and dreams of a better future in the end. They carelessly got in over their heads and were not able to handle the consequences when it all went down. At the end they are even thinking of selling the thing that represents their happiness, the house. They seem to have understood that happiness is not a way of life it is a gift you can be blessed with, if you are lucky, and that nothing comes form nothing, you have to have tried misery to cherish happy.
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