I saw the movie, The Postman, ages ago and I liked it. It was first released December of 1997. Since then, any time I mentioned it or tried to get a conversation going about it, friends rolled their eyes.  Evidently, I saw something in it that no one else did.  In fact, I remember making an old boyfriend sit and watch it with me.  I’ve tried to make my daughter watch it with me.  Regardless of my positive outlook on the work, I couldn’t find any one else who liked it.

It might be as simple as people don’t like Kevin Costner.  The movie is quite different from the book, which has it’s own problems.  The film deals with a faction of post-apocalyptic AMERICA (Why all caps?  It is very nationalistic in the stars and stripes sensibility.) struggling against another faction.  In comparison, the book deals more with the power a single individual can have to create change for the positive.

Over the Christmas holiday, I enjoyed a family dinner with friends and during our post-dinner conversation, Peggy, mentioned the book, The Postman.  She was the first person that I’ve ever bumped into who showed any appreciation for this piece.  I borrowed her second copy of The Postman by David Brin and took it home to read in three evenings.

All this aside, I wanted to write about why I enjoyed both the book and the film.  I like the idea that written letters become, especially in the movie, the thread that bonds the survivors together.  I liked the exploration of the fact that letters create hope for the citizens and that a postal network rises out of the chaos and violence of the time.

This concept raises up the concept of resilience and hope for humanity.  It talks about the power of word.