April 10, 2014 (Thursday )
An old Charlie Chaplin movie, “Modern Times,” was shown on Turner Classic Movies this week. Although it was produced in 1936, a time when most movies were “talkies,” Chaplin chose to make it as a silent movie.
The Great Depression was still having an impact, and certain scenes from the movie emphasized the fact that many people at that time needed what they could not have. Times were hard. In the movie, 
Chaplin, the little tramp, got a job as night watchman in a big department store. 
His friend (Paulette Goddard), a barefoot girl who cared for her little motherless sisters by stealing and scrounging food, came to see him at work and together they explored the wonderful world of items for sale in the store. The place was filled with things many people did not have, not to mention the fact that many people back then did not have a place to call home. The couple found a little shack, coming apart at the seams, and made it into their home, using cast-off stuff they scavenged wherever they could.
He soon got a job in a factory that had re-opened after being closed down because of the poor economy. Almost immediately it was closed again. The girl got a job and got the little tramp hired, too, but it all fell apart quite soon, and they found themselves alone and penniless, but as the music of Chaplin’s song, “Smile,” swelled, the two were last seen, arm in arm, walking steadfastly into whatever was next.
The unfailing optimism expressed in the story reminded me of the poem, “Don’t Quit,” by John Greenleaf Whittier:
When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must, but don’t quit.