Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a genius. Crime and Punishment is a fascinating look into the mind of a murderer before, during, and after the crime. I would, however, contest the label of "murderer" being applied to Raskolnikov; just as someone who tells a lie must lie consistently to be called a "liar", so should one consistently murder to be called a "murderer". Raskolnikov isn't an evil person. As was demonstrated at Marmeladov's death he gives nearly all of his money to the widow on a whim, while murdering a loathsome old woman took months of careful, neurotic planning with Raskolnikov second- and tenth-guessing himself. The pure anguish he experiences after the crime, his desperate attempts to rationalize his actions to himself, give credence to his fundamentally good nature. Nietzsche, whose favorite author was Dostoyevsky, once said that the one who is punished is never the one who committed the crime. I can't help but think that Raskolnikov is the inspiration of his statement.

Antigone the Anti-Oedipus

Antigone disregards a clearly-stated law for which the penalty is death, because she considers there to be a higher moral imperative than the law. We may disagree with the ancient Greeks on the specifics, but we can agree that the law is not the greatest authority. One factor that differentiates humans from their cousins is the respect that we accord the dead. Unsurprisingly, Sophocles understood this; Creon's behavior is understandably barbaric. Everyone sees that this is so; thus Sophocles shows that Creon's, the law's, authority is not boundless.

Of course, the Greek concept of justice is pretty screwed up. Oedipus is punished for killing some stranger and marrying a widowed queen after saving her city? If not for that, then he's punished just because some guy made some prophecy? And the gods, who in Antigone are the origin of the righteousness, allow this? It's not just Creon who's inconsistent between the two plays; it's the whole divine side of things as well. Sophocles was making sense with Antigone, but in Oedipus he seems to have taken a completely different stance. It's hard to pass any judgement on either of these works without completely ignoring the other.

On the Virtue of a Bountiful Catch

And many of those who called themselves the disciples of Zarathustra followed him and accompanied him to market at a small fishing village. Many merchants advertised their wares; many merchants promised low prices; many merchants Zarathustra ignored.
Much time passed, and Zarathustra's attention turned to a merchant with few wares under the heat of the sun. Zarathustra purchased this entirety: five loaves of bread and two fish. And he turned to the multitude of his followers and spoke: my disciples, we shall find a suitable place to dine. As Zarathustra walked through the crowd, the crowd behind murmured: is this not an unsuitable amount of food? Does Zarathustra expect us to dine on morsels?

Presently Zarathustra began to speak:

My brothers, take care not to fall into gluttony! Happiness cannot be achieved through excess. Look yonder, to the horizon. The sea has provided for you this day; the merchant is only its agent. The all-to-human animal forgets this. Take not the road that is easy; abandon your tradition at its moment of triumph! For Man has indeed triumphed, but in comforting spaces one loses the sense of direction. The merchants at market fear the sea; they prefer to sell their wares and count their coin. Brothers, do not fear greatness! Verily, Man fears all greatness but his own; small souls cannot fathom the endless fathoms of the sea. I say to you, reinvent and become the New Man! Do not sit idly by as the world passes; you must become creators of tradition, not slaves to it.

And here is where we shall break bread. Notice the grating roar of the surf as it meets the land. Remain faithful to this earth, my brothers! Do not soar so high into mystical realms that you lose sight of the ground. To one who lacks sight, the roar of the sea is indistinguishable from that of his monsters. See the sea for its reality, and you, the New Man, will gain mastery over it as surely as it has gained mastery over the all-too-human.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

The Empire and the Empire

The central connection between Heart of Darkness and Waiting for the Barbarians is that both deal with the relationship between “civilization” and “barbarians.” The attitudes of both Coetzee and Conrad are quite similar to each other regarding the uncaring greed of the dominant civilization; while ivory was on the lips of nearly everyone in the Heart of Darkness, on the frontier the empire and its newer officers care equally for dominance over the land. The differences in thought between the two civilizations are a product of time only, and mostly superficial: the core of both Conrad's and Coetzee's colonial and imperial machines remain the same.

It's harder to see Kurtz and the Magistrate as two sides of the same coin, though. While Kurtz is a genius, as many people claim him to be, the magistrate is a more down-to-earth character, preferring to distract himself with his hobbies rather than intellectualize the situation he finds himself in. However, a key point in both novels connect the two: Kurtz's hastily written “Kill all the brutes!” and the Magistrate's wish, however fleeting, that he could kill all the barbarians. Both betray a certain selfishness on the part of both characters: Kurtz wants to kill the Africans to be rid of their barbarous ways, however much he dislikes returning to his society of origin, and the Magistrate wants to kill all the barbarians so he doesn't have to deal with their problems.

Like Marlow, Kurtz is implied to have been sympathetic to the Africans at one point. It seems that his descent into madness is caused by nothing other than the corruption of the true face of civilization. What happens to the magistrate when he encounters the “true face” of the empire? He doesn't incite infighting among the barbarians, as Kurtz does to the Africans, but he does something arguably worse: nothing. He assists the boy whose father is killed and the barbarian woman, but these are only two people: Against the empire's campaign against the barbarians, these actions have essentially no effect. He becomes complacent by fooling himself into thinking that his almost nonexistent humanitarian action is enough, and so can ignore the plight of the other barbarians, such as those penned up in the square, with relatively good conscience. The excuse of retaliation by the empire isn't an excuse: it happened anyway. Both Kurtz and the Magistrate effectively damn their respective “barbarians” through either action or non-action.

Waiting for First Impressions

Waiting for the Barbarians makes its point through the eyes of a tired old official of the Empire; this perspective gives a sort of inside look at the empire's evolution from the Magistrate's younger days to the unjust modern government. The first line reveals his out-of-touch relation with the current affairs of the more important areas of the Empire. The numerous conflicts he has with the officials from the capital give them the impression of his supposedly provincial nature, but it’s clear that this provinciality is a superior outlook. His speaking and thought style gives insight not only into the politics of his world, but also into his life, his struggle to find meaning as his life and zeal wanes.

The relationship between the magistrate and the barbarian woman, while somewhat creepy, shows their perspective on life. The woman has taken on the role of a passive observer, watching life go by, living out the days complacently, while the magistrate tries to find the pleasures of his younger years but ends up failing to even carry out the motions. It is not until the barbarian woman is about to return to her people that they find some sort of meaning to their relationship.

The uncertainty the magistrate always expresses makes him a very sympathetic character. He wonders if it would have been better if he had never visited the prisoners that night; if he never felt any sympathy at all for the captured fishermen and agreed with whatever the Colonel proposed. But the audience knows just as well as he that this is not possible; that to do so would be, quite simply, an affront to our sense of morality, even though the Empire’s “new morality” would claim otherwise: anything for peace, a notion the Magistrate entertains for just a moment.

Wallace and Galton

Alfred Russel Wallace: Are Humans One Race or Many?

• Humans are ultimately related
• Differences between races are due to environmental adaptation
• Even though other races may be "worse," they are still human, higher than animals

Francis Galton: The Comparative Worth of Different Races

• The "black race" is substantially less intelligent than the "white race"
• However, there is no shortage of men belonging to the former race that can be "raised above the average white"
• They are, though, on the whole, "childish, stupid, and simpleton-like"
  

Behind Blue Eyes

In the final moments of the novel, Benjy is placated by Jason's restoration of the routine. It is in this image that we see most clearly the degeneracy of the Compson family. Although the rest of the characters (except Dilsey, who knows better) believe Benjy to be "different" from the rest of the Compsons, we see in him reflected the fate of the family. As Benjy is unable to break away from the routines of the past eighteen years, so are mother and Jason unchanging.

Faulkner describes the Benjy's eyes as "empty and blue and serene again," describing both Benjy's state of mind and the state of the Compson family; devoid of life, as contrasted with Dilsey's family.

What is the fate of the Compson family after Quentin's departure? Has the state of the family ever been anything other than emptiness?