Initially I wrote this as a review for the movie, because I just finished watching it, but I couldn't help comparing it to the book, so it turned out Initially I wrote this as a review for the movie, because I just finished watching it, but I couldn't help comparing it to the book, so it turned out to be about both.
I saw this movie as a child and it tore me apart. I had never felt this way about a movie before. I read the book later, as an adult. I am happy that I waited to do that, because the book is not like the movie. The characters and the story are darker and more complex. That isn't to say that the movie is weaker. Admittedly, there are some fundamental differences. Some things are changed, some key aspects and characters are left out in the movie adaptation. Nonetheless, it carries the spirit and essence of the novel it was inspired from. The differences are not disappointing or offensive, but balancing. They complete and complement each other. Both movie and book are unique and powerful in their own way, each offering something the other can't.
I find Gwenwyfar equally annoying in both (though I admit her redeeming features) and Morgaine equally amazing. It Lancelost and Gwenwyfar's relationship that is the most famous one. But I love the relationship between Arthur and Morgaine more. I remember how deeply touched and excited I was while watching for the first time. I was too young to understand all the complex nuances and subtle hints. As I got older, I saw it on a whole new level. I had an acquaintance who loves the movie and the book as much as me, but who could not accept that the love between Arthur and Morgaine goes beyond sibling love. I was quite moved. Even the first time, when I couldn't see everything that was left unsaid. I could feel it. I was quite shocked and excited to see that the nature of their feelings was presented much more unequivocally in the book and that I hadn't been wrong in what I had sensed.
I also came to discover new sides to the characters that were left out in the movie. They turned out to be much more ambiguous and layered than what we are led to believe in the film. The other wonderful surprise was the role Accolon that turns out to be much more substantial than what we see on the screen. And then there is Kevin, who doesn't appear there at all, but is a key figure in the novel and one of my three favourite characters, the other two being Arthur and Morgaine. The only serious gripe that I've got is the infatuation of Morgaine with Lancelot that doesn't bring anything neither to her as a character, nor to the overall story. It actually burdens the story and it feels very weird and out of place. Even though Arthur and Morgaine's relationship is supposed to be the scandalous element, I found her obsession with Lancelot and the way he treated her much more disturbing. I don't actually believe that she truly desires him. I actually think she sees him as another version of Arthur. And since she can't openly act on or even admit to herself how she feels about Arthur, she is projecting all those desires on Lancelot. But other than that, the whole plot line, the character development, the ideas invested, everything is truly outstanding.
What I want to close with is my belief that all those who claim that the story is anti-Christian, are wrong. It doesn't speak against Christianity. Actually, the pagans in the book, even Morgaine, who is the lead character, commit much worse atrocities than the Christians. So if we take it too literally, it might be seen the other way around. I believe it speaks against bigotry and extremism in all their forms, in all religions. It is a lesson she comes to learn the hard way. That names, images and symbols are not good or evil, right or wrong by themselves, but rather what we make them to be. It is the basic message the book begins with. That the world around us is shaped and ruled by our thoughts and believes and there is no such thing as true tale, that truth has many faces.
“Well, so it must be, for as man saw reality, so it became.”
“For this is the thing the priests do not know, with their One God and One Truth; that there is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you, and whether, at the end, you arrive at the Holy Isle of Eternity or among the priests with their bells and their death and their Satan and hell and damnation… ”
'For all the Gods are one god,' she said to me then, as she had said many times before, and as I have said to my own novices many times, and as every priestess who comes after me will say again, 'and all the Goddesses are one Goddess, and their is only one Initiator. And to every man his own truth, and the God within.'
Even the old goddess has many faces and seems to be equally generous and cruel. In the end Arthur tells Morgaine that to him she is the goddess. Knowing how he feels about her, it is a fitting comparison, aiming to show that ultimately we all choose our own idols. If we can believe in one deity with many faces, why not in its new incarnations? If people come and go, if they are born and die and change a thousand times during their lifetimes, why do they not allow the same those in whose image they were supposedly created? I feel that this is the main point of the story and its true heart. It calls not to a god or a goddess, it doesn’t speak against or in defense of any religion, but rather it speaks about faith, faith in humanity in general. It is what Merlin tells to Vivian before he dies. That maybe the truest expression of the divine is our human nature and the joy we find in being humans. “I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself”...more
TRIGGER WARNING: It is best for people particularly sensitive toward the subject of sexual abuse/child molestation to avoid reading any further. Cauti TRIGGER WARNING: It is best for people particularly sensitive toward the subject of sexual abuse/child molestation to avoid reading any further. Caution is advised.
And so, Love, you launch in vain your insane onslaught: since it will be said - to see me fall yet not surrender - that you managed to kill but failed to conquer.
Juana Inez de la Cruz
When beautiful things are broken, screams begin. When beautiful things are taken, horror begins. When beautiful minds are bended, there is no tomorrow or yesterday or today. There is only a place a million miles away melting in the darkness, seeming like home, but you know it isn’t. It is the death of a broken mind.
"At first, these recollections came unbidden. Soon I had to work to recall them. But eventually they became threadbare, thin as the blanket on my bed, until one day my heart nearly stopped when I could not summon them up. Still, there is one image that I cannot forget, no matter how I try. Trying to remember is like trying to clutch a handful of fog. Trying to forget, like trying to hold back the monsoon"
When I was thirteen, I read a book called Princess: A True Story Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia. I felt so strongly about it that it changed my relationship with books forever. Before that I wasn’t that much of a reader. Then I read Princess and ever since I haven’t been able to stop.
Most of the people you will meet will tell you that they sympathize with women’s fate, that they are appalled and that they wish it was different. We all do. However, with a part of myself I have always thought “What does that help with? We all talk and talk, but none of us can actually do anything.” Which is why I tend to avoid non-fiction regarding certain matters. Including this one. Because it is too much of a reminder that I can’t do a damn thing. I feel too much like a voyeur, someone who gets let in on something extremely personal, yet, someone who is merely a spectator. It feels wrong to get to know so intimately someone’s greatest pain and at the same time to stay passive, to not be able to even say to those you are reading or hearing about “I’m sorry. You deserve better” You only stay with the feeling of sad eyes, accusing eyes, blood-shot eyes full of pain and anger following you everywhere, whose gaze transfixes you and haunts you from far way and lips whose silence screams louder than the loudest scream. Those are women who have no voice and who have no right to lift their eyes up. They say the woman is a burden, the woman is a sinner, the woman is inferior, the woman is a witch, the woman is weak.
"A son will always be a son, they say. But a girl is like a goat. Good as long as she gives you milk and butter. But not worth crying over when it’s time to make a stew."
“Why,” I say, “must women suffer so?” “This has always been our fate,” she says. “Simply to endure,” she says, “is to triumph.”
And it is only those of us who truly know what it means to be a woman (and you don’t have to be one to, it is enough to be a human being with intelligence and compassion) that know that the woman is a treasure. I am not among the most impressive representatives of my gender and I certainly didn’t do much with the privileges I had the luck to be born with, ones I know that those women would have made a much better use of, so I probably don’t have the right to speak on all women’s behalf, but what makes me do so is that despite all my personal failings and faults I still have a sense of right and wrong, I still care.
Lakshmi is a 13-year old girl who gets sold to a pleasure house by her step-father who can hardly imagine life without having enough money for gambling and buying himself new coats. She is undone. She is humiliated and abused multiple times. Physically and mentally. She is insulted, threatened, beaten, raped, starved, mutilated.
"I hurt. I am torn and bleeding where the men have been. I pray to the gods to make the hurting go away. To make the burning and the aching and the bleeding stop. Music and laughter come from the room next door. Horns and shouting come from the street below. No one can hear me. Not even the gods."
"Before it starts, you hear a zipper baring its teeth, the sound of a shoe being kicked aside, the wincing of the mattress. Once it starts, you hear the sound of horns bleating in the street, the vendor hawking his treats, or the pock of a ball. But if you are lucky, you hear nothing. Nothing but the clicking of the fan overhead, the steady ticking away of seconds until it is over. Until it starts again."
I clench the sheets in my hands, for fear that I will pound them to death with my fists. I grit my teeth, for fear that I will bite through their skin to their very bones. I squeeze my eyes closed tight, for fear that I will see what has actually happened to me."
"Somehow, I am outside myself, marveling at this pain, a thing so formidable it has color and shape. Fantastic red, then yellow, starbursts of agony explode in my head. Then there is a blinding whiteness, and then blackness. Somehow, without warning, the pain is gone. A new pain takes its place"
She doesn’t cry. I have never been strong and this story made me wonder what I would do in her place. Would I suddenly find an unsuspected, latent strength in myself, would I transform into a brave, courageous woman, would I in the end be stronger for it, would it make me see my life and myself differently or I would I get out of it broken and unrecognizable, barely resembling human, dead on the inside, defeated and hurt beyond repair? I was no older than Lakshmi when I faced what it means sometimes to be a woman, but I faced it from the comfort of my home, in the pages of a book. Unlike all those other women, even children, because this is what Lakshmi is. A child at 13. But that may not always be the case. And would this make me bigger or smaller? I was deeply touched by the way Lakshmi bore herself through the whole thing. She doesn’t stay defiant and fierce, resisting until the very end. She bends and tries to do the best out of the worst situation she could have found herself in. But she also preserves her compassion and her hope. Her humanity.
A tear is running down my cheek. It quivers a moment on the tip of my nose, then splashes onto my skirt, leaving a small, dark circle. I have been beaten here, locked away, violated a hundred times and a hundred times more. I have been starved and cheated, tricked and disgraced. How odd it is that I am undone by the simple kindness of a small boy with a yellow pencil.
I was reluctant whether I should keep using the word humanity as equivalent of goodness, but as cruel and stupid humans are in some ways, they are also incredible in others, as Lakshmi herself shows. And since I have been working on being less critical toward my fellow humans and more open-minded, I choose to focus on human race’s positives rather than its negatives, hoping that it can do the same for me.
They call women the weaker sex. Women are not weak. Women are gentle. And it is up to those that have power over them whether they will turn that gentleness into weakness, by taking advantage of it, by abusing and crushing it for pleasure and for profit or see the beauty in it, the strength that comes with it, the miracle that can be a woman who is loved, respected and protected. Women might be physically more vulnerable than men, but they can be as fierce lovers and protectors as any man, they feel the responsibilities bestowed on them as keenly and take them equally seriously. In "Jane Eyre" Mr. Rochester tells to Jane:
"Never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye, defying me, with more than courage - with a stern triumph. It is you, spirit - with will and energy, and virtue and purity - that I want: not alone your brittle frame."
Why should we use our strength to make others weaker? When all you are left with is a bruised, abused, broken thing, merely a shell of a person, how does that make you strong? There is no beauty in broken minds. A strong person is one who can see past the veil, past the ostensible and primal. A strong person is not the one who uses his strength to conquer, but one who shares it. A strong person is not the one who uses his strengths to dominate, but who can see the strengths in others’ weaknesses and bring them to life. I am ending this review by quoting my friend Jeffrey who says in his fantastic review of “Finding Nouf”
She let me see the longing in the eyes peering from behind the veils. They are beautiful caged birds...let them sing.
"They were brightly dressed, but not in the peasant garb an older person might have associated with the Hollywood version of Gypsies in the thirties a"They were brightly dressed, but not in the peasant garb an older person might have associated with the Hollywood version of Gypsies in the thirties and forties. There were women in colorful sundresses, women in calf-length clamdigger pants, younger women in Jordache or Calvin Klein jeans. They looked bright, alive, somehow dangerous."
I would have read this book sooner, had I known what a dish it would turn out to be. I’m not sure if there’s a pun intended. I think I would have appreciated it even more if I had read it in calmer, more collected state, but I will probably re-read it anyway, so it’s alright. This book represents the two great bodily pleasures for the human race – food and sex – also as the two sources of all the woes that befall our protagonist/antagonist. I sympathize with Billy Halleck, because stress makes me eat as well. I haven’t yet been in a crazy accident caused by deviant sexual behaviour, but there’s a first time for everything. As for why I categorize Billy as both protagonist and antagonist, it is because he is both. Everybody in this book – with the exception of his young daughter – is. The characters, the situation, the culmination…the whole book is full of equivocation and it raises more questions than it gives answers. Right and wrong seem more like abstract concepts, old-fashioned und peculiar, belonging to a different time and place. Ultimately, even the best and most noble intents and purposes get eclipsed by the instinct for survival and the need to protect yourself, those dearest to you and also to avenge. The story begins with primal instincts – like the need of food and sex – as the cause for all the trouble and ultimately the characters seem to stay equally raw and led by primal instincts until the very end. Even the motives of our “hero” Ginelli seem questionable and his friend Billy Halleck wonders how much of it is a friendly loyalty and how much something quite different and a lot darker, lurking beneath the surface. The book raises topics as guilt and innocence and shows how the two are not always easily distinguishable and that right and wrong, good and evil, justice and revenge sometimes might be the biggest mysteries and the hardest truths one has to live with. They can be like identical twins, very different at the core, but very much alike on the outside. And you start questioning everything you have ever known.
Billy Halleck’s life changes one miserable evening, when his wife Heidi decides that it’s the perfect time for her to try spicing up their marriage, hence she decides to give him a hand job while they’re on the road. Billy loses concentration and the result is the death of Susanna Lemke, the daughter of very old and very powerful Gypsy man who doesn’t leave his daughter’s death unpunished. As Billy is let off the hook, because of who he is and because of who his victim is, he faces an entirely different kind of justice system.
“Thinner” whispers Tamuz Lemke on that faithful day and everything for Billy Halleck changes drastically.
We see him losing not only his weight, but what also seems like his soul and his sanity. The guilt, the anger, the fear turn him into a different man, he becomes his worst enemy. A seed is sawn in his soul on that day and it spreads like a wild fire. The impossibility to believe what’s right in front of you, being torn by rational thinking and your senses that tell an entirely different story is also something that is well known to me.
“Some guys - a lot of guys - don't believe what they are seeing, especially if it gets in the way of what they eat or drink or think or believe. Me, I don't believe in God. But if I saw him, I would. I wouldn't just go around saying 'Jesus, that was a great special effect.' The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing. And you can quote me.”
And I do. Thank you, Me. Ginelli.
I think nothing is truly simple and perhaps there is no such thing as ultimate truth. Was Billy truly cursed or was it the power of suggestion that was doing away with him? Or a combination of the two? Who is the innocent one, who is the guilty one? No such creature in this book. Everyone has their own layers of innocence and guilt. Heidi chooses an unfortunate time to discover this new side of her. She should have known better than to distract someone on the road. Billy should have known better than to keep driving in this condition. Susanna Lemke should have known better than to cross the way she does. Tamuz Lemke should have known better than to initiate a blood vendetta that would not bring his daughter back, but would only entail more misery and loss.
'Did that bring your daughter back, Mr Lemke? Did she come back when Cary Rossington hit the ground out there in Minnesota?'
Lemke's lips twisted. 'I don't need her back. Justice ain't bringing the dead back, white man. Justice is justice.
And Gina Lemke should have known better than to follow in his footsteps. A series of wrong decisions and feelings stronger than reason lead to a wild chase and something that ultimately goes way beyond the case in point, as Gina Lemke points out:
'He cursed us,' she said, and there was a kind of wondering contempt in her voice. 'Tell him for me, mister, that God cursed us long before him or any of his tribe ever were,'
We plan our affairs carefully. Most of us would like to believe that we are good people. We are not. Each of us is guilty of something and in front of someone. It is a basic flaw and positive of the human condition. We all need a certain level of selfishness and ruthlessness in order to survive and be productive. It is the measure, the degree that has the final say. From Billy and Heidi’s point of view it was all just an accident, an unfortunate event, a case of “wrong place, wrong time”. They didn’t mean to hurt anybody. They just wanted to have some fun. From Taduz und Gina Lemke’s point of view they are cold-blooded, cruel monsters, ready to run over (figuratively and literally) anybody in their path in order to have what they want. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between.
Ultimately Billy Halleck does strike back. They see to that by refusing to give him any benefit of the doubt whatsoever. And Billy fights his own demons, other demons than the scales – he loses weight progressively, to the point of being anorexic – and the old gypsy man with the rotten nose. There is a part of him that quietly, but definitely and persistently hates his wife for her choice of place and time.
It is hard for me to place a judgement on any of the characters and I don’t think I want or need to say who is right and who is wrong and decide who deserves what. What I want to do instead, what I can’t help doing, is seeing human beings in pain. Yet, I can’t help sympathizing with the Hallecks, the alleged murderers, more than I do with the alleged victims. Because I do feel that the Hallecks realize what they have done and the reasons behind it and are the kind of people who do learn from their mistakes. The Lemkes, on the other hand, seem permanently on the defensive and on the vengeful side, as Gina’s poignant words to Ginelli show. They are abused and mistreated and no one can deny that. But they fill their hearts with so much hatred and bloodlust that they don’t realize how alike they and those they fight against might be. They are people who fight, for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways, because they feel that this is all they have left. And everything else in between is just a dream. And it goes on and on.
…he is crazy, this friend of yours, and he will never stop. Even my 'Gelina says she sees from his eyes he will never stop. “But we'll never stop, either” she says...
For a moment he stared at the festering hole in the middle his face, and then his eyes were drawn to the man's eyes. The eyes of age, had he thought? They were something more than that … and something less. It was emptiness he saw in them; it was emptiness which was their fundamental truth, not the surface awareness that gleamed on them like moonlight on dark water. Emptiness as deep and complete as the spaces which may lie between galaxies.
How much do we let ourselves being ruled by our primal instincts and how much do we rely on reason and compassion to lead us forward? We are all a combination of passion and rationality and I think that we need both and both balance each other out and feed off each other and make us equally weak and strong. I have been told that I am very emotional and that this hinders me and makes me lose control and sober judgement and while I believe it to be true, I also know those all those strong passions also incite me toward deep contemplations and soul-searching and that ultimately makes me turn toward serious thinking and evaluating, which is, after all, inherent in reason and rationality. There is little of the latter in this book. But there is a lot of heart. I couldn’t help liking and sympathizing with Billy Halleck and his attempts to protect himself and his family and take responsibility for what he had done, all the while wanting as little harm as possible to befall his enemies. Part of him didn’t want to go with it at all, even if it meant being lost forever. Hurting and/or killing another living being is not something that should come lightly to any of us, regardless of the reason. But it seems to come quite easily and naturally to the Lemkes, hence it is harder for me to sympathize with them, despite everything that happens to them.
So I couldn’t keep my word and not “take side”, but I didn’t do it lightly. I stand by my words that there is no completely guilty or completely innocent party in this situation. Or anywhere at all. There is only the aftermath and what you learn from it.
Why, upon hearing the word devil, did I just imagine the monster? Why did I fail to see a lake? A flower growing by that lake? A mantis praying on the
Why, upon hearing the word devil, did I just imagine the monster? Why did I fail to see a lake? A flower growing by that lake? A mantis praying on the very top of a rock? A foolish mistake, it is, to expect the beast, because sometimes, sometimes, it is the flower’s turn to own the name...Just as in every small town and big city, women cried and men knew how to shout. Dogs were beat, children too. There weren’t always mothers to bloom identical to the rose, and more often than not, there was no picket fence to paint. It was the scar of paradise lost, and beneath the flour-and-butter drawl, there was the town’s own sort of sibilant hiss on the wind, which made you quiet and made you sense snakes.
Autopsy Bliss, a man of the law, who has done his job conscientiously his whole life, makes a fatal mistake. One that costs the life of an innocent man. He finds out how deceptive appearance is, how fragile truth, how transient happiness. His whole life he has been a man standing firmly on one shore or the another. Guilty and innocent, perpetrator and a victim, freedom and incarceration. But life isn't that simple anymore and now he is a man in need of answers. Naturally, as a lawyer, he is an intelligent man, a thinking man, a man who knows how to stretch his mind. Only, in that one unusual summer he makes one stretch too many.
Dear Mr. Devil, Sir Satan, Lord Lucifer, and all other crosses you bear, I cordially invite you to Breathed, Ohio. Land of hills and hay bales, of sinners and forgivers. May you come in peace. With great faith, Autopsy Bliss
Breathed is a city with people who appear no different from any other people you have met. There is Dresden, the pretty girl next door, who dreams of being saved by the boy, of a life that doesn’t include drinking and abuse that come from her mother, who blames her for her father’s leaving. There is the tired of life, slightly creepy neighbor, Mr. Elohim, who, even after decades, seems to not quite believe that his fiancé is dead, who still keeps all her belongings and uses them in a way that make it seem like she's still alive, who is rough and odd on the outside, but seem a good person once you get to know him. There is Mrs. Bliss who too has her oddities, though, thankfully, considerably less frightening. She is afraid of being outside, claiming she fears rain. She hasn’t left the house for a very long time. However, she has managed to capture a piece of the world and have it all to herself. There are rooms there with motifs from different countries. She travels from one place to another within seconds. By the end of the story she and her attitude toward rain are completely changed. There is the school, the football team and the football star. None other but Grand, Mr. and Mrs. Bliss’ older son. He is the boy that every girl wants and every boy wants to resemble. He embodies everything a young man should be. He, however, is much more than what meets the eye. He turns out to be a boy with great sensitivity and very tormented soul. He has a secret and once that secret is out, we get to see layers of his personality that up until this moment have staid unrevealed.
I think about the way the world wanted him to be. As classic as a front porch post. Clean direction, straight up and down. But really he was as wild and as twisting as the honeysuckle vines. Bending and exploding in uneven wonders. Moveable and crooked, crossing in awesome curves and beautiful bends. Something about his eyes made me think of Russia. Perhaps because they were so large, the largest country in the world of his face. Then again, knowing what I know now, maybe it was because his eyes were so like matryoshka dolls, hiding the real him within boxes of lacquered mystery. You’d open one box and find another just the same. No matter how many boxes you took away, there was always one more
However, it is the Blisses’ younger son, Fielding, who is the narrator of the story and who brings the Devil home. Once Autopsy sees him, he needs to stretch his mind even farther. Because the Devil is….a thirteen year-old boy named Sal. Yet, there is something about him….
“Your eyes…” I stared at his irises, never having seen such a dark yet sparkling shade. They were like July foliage in the sun. “They’re so green.”
“They’re leaves I took as souvenirs from the Garden of Eden.” He said it so certain, I couldn’t doubt its truth.
“Don’tcha wanna live forever?”
“I’m the devil. I am already forever.”
As the plot moves, we see that the idea of someone, an image that exists in people’s heads, can do a much more damage than an actual villain of flesh and blood. It reminds me of that saying “The only thing you need to fear is fear itself” Every day humanity struggles with its perceptions, with its ideas, with its prejudices. Just when Autopsy Bliss enters a phase in his life where he feels he cannot be sure of anything, the people of Breathed fall to the opposite extremity. They become far too sure, far too obsessed. Superstition and ignorance are among the chief enemies of humanity and the whole atmosphere, everything that was happening, made me feel like I was reading something that was happening decades earlier. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that this was not 1984, but 1954, But as history shows, people are capable of anything, any time. The witch-hunt that takes place and destroys so many lives reminds of the shocking case of a woman tortured and slain for witchcraft during the XIX century. A time when this practice was long gone. But then, even today, in some countries women are stoned for nothing and baby girls are slain because they are not considered valuable enough. It only goes to show that it is never too late and it is never impossible to fall from grace. That people of any age are capable of anything.
That was when the screaming started. They were screaming cheers, we were screaming tears, and he was screaming fear. A rhyme of the ages.
It is like the sin that supposedly took Adam and Eve out of Eden has taken roots in us, has been printed on our DNA and we are destined to fall from grace over and over again. Is it so hard to believe, then, that the Devil might be just an ordinary human boy? Who is the real devil? Or as Autopsy Bliss says, who was burned at the end of this story? We believe in the impossible, we believe in superstitions, in the improbable, in myths in the name of which we do atrocious things, supposedly in an attempt to rid the world of some evil, of what we perceive as evil. And after we are done, we can feel, as the people of Breathed, that we have become the thing we want to fight against. And the terrible thing is that sometimes, instead of this giving us a pause and making us want to change, to see the world through new lenses, it makes us even more conscious of the dark side, it makes us even more fanaticized. We see the evil in ourselves and get even more afraid of it, even more bent on discovering and destroying it, we become even more prone to cruelty and misjudgment. A vicious cycle.
They reached for that brightness, and while the light distracted them, while it comforted them in its false rescue, the dark power behind it did its work, and before any of them knew it, they were not being saved by the light, they were being changed
I do believe that love breeds love and hatred breeds hatred. It is the same Autopsy Bliss believes in. I believe that this is why he defends the perpetrators. He calls to the Devil, because he stops trusting himself, because he feels helpless. It unleashes a tragedy that words aren’t enough to describe and in the end he is left with more questions than answers.
They were rounded up and charged. The devil was put on trial, though there were no horns, no pitchforks either. It was not one strange face indicted, but many familiar ones. The man who sold us all insurance, the woman who ran the church raffle, and the couple whose cake we ate at their fortieth wedding anniversary the previous April.
The man who fixed my tire when it went flat in front of his house, and his older sister who bandaged my knee when I fell. The guy who was said to have the warmest handshake, and his wife who fed the stray cats in the neighborhood.
They were not walking caves of nocturnal demons, scared of the sunlight and fresh air. In fact, the way they all went into court, they looked like cotton curtains of the sunniest, breeziest, most welcoming windows in all the world. They came not from underground lairs but from homes with flowers in vases and cookies in the oven. They were men who held the door open for the ladies who thanked them as they passed through
He is afraid that he will not be able to differentiate between guilty and innocent, but then he finds himself in a situation where he has no doubt about the truth. Yet, the decision is just as hard, the stakes feel higher than ever. There are those people, perfectly normal people he has known for a very long time, who suddenly turn into monsters and who, as suddenly, go back to their old selves. And you can’t help feeling sorry for them. Because, as Fielding says, even bad men are still men and there is still good in them. So what are you supposed to do?
People always ask, why does God allow suffering? Why does He allow a child to be beaten? A woman to cry? A holocaust to happen? A good dog to die painfully? Simple truth is, He wants to see for Himself what we’ll do. He’s stood up the candle, put the devil at the wick, and now He wants to see if we blow it out or let it burn down. God is suffering’s biggest spectator.
People are pieces of glass. Fragile, but sharp-edged, sharp-edged, but fragile. Unfortunately, though, for that same reason, they are not anywhere near as transparent. We are all complex, flawed and unpredictable. Maybe God can't help us, maybe he doesn't care, maybe he doesn't exist. Either way, for better or for worse, it is on our shoulders that the responsibility lays and the hard choices we face every day are inevitable part of life. I have always suffered from mixed feelings and inability to trust and accept myself and others, which has always gotten in the way of my development and the way I interact. Reading this book, as tragic as it was, gave me a strange feeling of comfort. I managed to identify very strongly with what I was reading and was reminded that I was not alone in my struggles.
Loading...
