No One is Alone, darn it.

I got to rewatch Into the Woods this week, thanks to a DVD borrowed from the library.

(Into The Woods, for those of you who don’t know, is a musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The show retells four traditional fairy tales – Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Rapunzel and a fifth, new fairy tale, The Baker and his Wife.)

Although there are a couple of Sondheim musicals I like better than Into the Woods, I don’t think any of them have wordplay as clever and playful as Into the Woods. Here, for instance, is Jack’s mother trying to convince Jack to sell his cow before its value depreciates any further:

We’ve no time to sit and dither,
While her withers wither with her.

Of course, it’s not all silliness. One thing that’s always surprised me is how many people misunderstand the second act’s central song, “No One is Alone.” Too many people understand this song as a reassurance: “don’t worry, I’m with you pal, you are not alone.”

Actually, “No One is Alone” as an attack on the ethic of individualism that dominated the US in the 1980s. (Into the Woods was first performed in November 1987). Here’s the key verse:

You move just a finger,
Say the slightest word,
Something’s bound to linger,
Be heard.
No one acts alone.
Careful, no one is alone.

The song tells us that when people make mistakes, it’s because they’re “holding to their own, thinking they’re alone.” Indeed, the worse moral error any character in Into the Woods commits is self-centeredness. For example, Jack climbs the beanstalk, robs the kingdom in the clouds and kills the giant; understandably, he’s thinking of alleviating his and his mother’s poverty. He doesn’t think about the mourning of the giant’s wife – and his thoughtlessness brings tragedy to the entire community.

In fact, the entire first act of Into The Woods – in which fairy tales which are normally told apart are shown to be interrelated, actions in one tale leading to repercussions in another, which lead in turn to new actions and reactions – is an illustration of the “no one is alone” principle.

Having established its attack on individualism, the lyrics of “No One is Alone” go on to endorse that perpetual punching bag of conservatives – moral relativism.

Witches can be right,
Giants can be good.
You decide what’s right,
You decide what’s good.

Just remember:

Someone is on our side,
Someone else is not.
While we’re seeing our side-
Maybe we forgot.
They are not alone.
No one is alone.

The song, which seems comforting at first, is actually very disquieting: the moral is, we have to avoid the selfishness of thinking as if we were alone, and we have to remember that even our enemies are sometimes in the right.

That’s one thing I love about Sondheim – his works almost always repay a second (or a twentieth) listening..