The Last Straw

We have all been informed that it was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. But that image troubles me. As a proverb and metaphor, of course, it is very powerful. Another one, “The Tipping Point,” conveys almost the same idea, but less negatively. The image now is of a balance, by which everything used to be weighed – a known weight on one side, as against something to be weighed on the other. The point at which the unknown is shown to be heavier than the known is the Tipping Point – so that’s where you add the “straw.”

But what about the poor camel, with its back at risk? How did this image get into the popular imagination? No doubt, ever since these animals were first used as beasts of burden, there have been cases of overloading, and it would not be hard for somebody with a poetic gift to think that there must have been a tipping point at which the load was unbearably heavy, and the ill-used creature would just collapse. That poet’s mind gave us the Last Straw.

But why would a camel be loaded with a bunch of straws anyway? To many people today, the word “straw” conveys only the idea of a drinking straw, a hollow tube, usually made of paper or plastic, which used to be provided free with most cold drinks, and considered disposable after a single use. Just in the last few years have ecologically minded administrations and establishments, in a move which to some has seemed un-American, required that these sucking-devices be furnished to customers only when they’re specifically asked for.

Before modern manufacturers found a new way to profit, drinking-straws were cut from the hollow stalks of reeds. And the Old Testament tells us that more ordinary straw was essential in the making of bricks – as it has been an ingredient of adobe right up to our own time.

But getting back to the poor old camel and its back, there are of course veterinary doctors who specialize in treating camels, and no doubt, within that field, there are orthopedic specialists, and (although I haven’t looked into this) there must be numerous camel spinal problems and injuries which might be described as symptoms of a broken back. People may be confused or misled by the fact that camels already have on their backs a large hump, or sometimes two humps, in which they store their food (not their water, which is conserved by their bodies in other ways). But of course, that hump, or those humps, cannot be considered any part of the added-on burden whereby our final straw makes such a difference.

And now I suppose you are going to say that I’m making too much out of the camel’s back, just as I did out of the straw which supposedly broke it. But I am not the first to conjure up associations. People tend to connect mountain peaks with this creature, and thus we have Camelback Mountain, a very prominent feature of the metropolitan area of Phoenix, Arizona. There is also a so-called Camelback Mountain – a geological feature, but not really a mountain – in the Poconos of Pennsylvania, which has a ski resort named after it.

But, while considering humps, we now have a whole day of the week – Wednesday – being referred to as “Hump Day,” presumably because it comes in the middle of the working week, and is thus a kind of hurdle to get over. And then, there are the somewhat tragic human variety, as embodied in the immortal Hunchback of Notre Dame, a creation of Victor Hugo, unforgettably played in a 1939 movie by Charles Laughton, and in a later version, by Anthony Quinn. 

Forgive me for letting that bring to mind the story of a naïve young lady attending a Notre Dame football game whose escort was explaining the team positions of fullback, quarterback etc., who then asked, in all innocence, “Which one is the hunchback?”

All of this brings us a long way from that fabled “last straw.” But of course, speculation about broken backs is not confined to camels. In fact, I remember a sidewalk game from my childhood in which the mantra was:

Step on a crack –
break your father’s back.
Step on a line –
break your mother’s spine.

Why do children even play with such awful ideas? I suppose it’s not “out of line” in a culture in which babies in cradles fall from treetops.