To the Editor,

I never would have imagined a year without Easter.  In 69 years, I’d sooner imagine aliens landing or my children turning their backs on me. Yet here it was. I woke up one morning to a dystopian world like the new worlds of “1984” or a Handmaid’s Tale – ours had now changed.  People were to stay indoors and distance themselves from others.  No more social gatherings and no more religious services. 

Price gouging, stuff flying off the shelves in markets, hoarding, and daily health briefings were now the new norm. And people that we touched and loved daily were hunkered down somewhere else like distant memories. It was all so new; yet a long time in the making. It was a brand new virus from God-knows-where, yet; it was an illness on a society long waiting to pounce. 

We took God out of our schools, sports, and businesses and, before long, He took us away from Him. 

A President, who many treated like the hateful figure Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984”, now had to save our lives and yet; those same people still managed their two minutes of hate each day. Had they learned nothing?  Maybe they never read a dystopian novel before. I know the school system has failed them; but, they must have read A Brave New World and surely they did not want that world? Or did they? Was it pure unadulterated ignorance or had the brainwashing needed to pull this off occur long ago? Has everyone become so insensitive to hate that they didn’t recognize their own use of it?  Had people become so entitled at their own self-interests that they were able to turn their backs and their hearts on their families, goodness, and God? Is that why there’s no Easter this year?  I couldn’t help but wonder.

Peggy Porter

Warwick