Fiery Cross: Dignity in Suffering

Sometimes, when focusing on just one aspect of a work, we get bogged down.  I am interested in the treatment of reproductive issues in the Outlander books, but I am completely bogged down by them, because there's so much there, and because I've written about it at such length already.  So... as I continue to read (and I admit to being bogged down a little bit in the series; at this point, I'm sort of just waiting for the next book, and for Rick Riordan's The House of Hades in paperback or some other discounted format...), I am putting things off for later.  I did this with Voyager, and never came back, but sometimes that's what has to be done.  And putting it off for later analysis is definitely easier with the Kindle format.  When I am reading a paper copy, I don't want to flip too many pages past the passage that I want to analyze because I'm not marking the copy.

As I was reading during my lunch hour today, I came across a scene that struck me as being true--and that I believe speaks to the reader in a particular way.  At the Gathering of the Clans that begins in Drums in Autumn (a poor title, really) and continues into The Fiery Cross (which arguably contains the content that the title of Drums was referring to), Roger MacKenzie, whom I see as participating in the weakened masculinity of the 20th Century as much as Frank in the earlier books, makes the rounds of certain families to enlist their help in an attempt by the governor to prevent revolt.  While making the rounds, he encounters a strong woman, "Auld Joan," who has become the head of her family because of the inability of her brother to assume the role:

     “A bhràthair, here’s Captain MacKenzie,” she said, reaching out a hand to the man that lay on a pallet of dry grass under the blanket’s shelter. Roger felt a sudden shock at the man’s appearance, but suppressed it.

     A spastic, they would have called him in the Scotland of Roger’s own time; what did they call such a condition now? Perhaps nothing in particular; Fraser had said only, He has nay speech.

     No, nor proper movement , either. His limbs were bony and wasted, his body twisted into impossible angles. A tattered quilt had been laid over him, but his jerking movements had pulled it awry, so that the cloth was bunched, wrenched hard between his legs, and his upper body was left exposed, the worn shirt also rumpled and pulled half off by his struggles. The pale skin over shoulder and ribs gleamed cold and blue-toned in the shadows.

 Nevertheless, his sister involves him in the decision to send men of the family to this skirmish or to withold them, and the revelation to Roger, and to the reader, that follows is quite profound, and sheds light on previous events in the series involving life, death, and dignity:

     Joan Findlay cupped a hand about the man’s cheek and turned his head so that he could look at Roger. “This will be my brother Iain, Mr. MacKenzie,” she said, her voice firm, daring him to react. 

     The face too was distorted, the mouth pulled askew and drooling, but a pair of beautiful—and intelligent —hazel eyes looked back at Roger from the ruin. He took firm grip of his feelings and his own features, and reached out, taking the man’s clawed hand in his own. It felt terrible, the bones sharp and fragile under skin so cold it might have been a corpse’s.

     “Iain Mhor,” he said softly . “I have heard your name. Jamie Fraser sends ye his regards.”

     The eyelids lowered in a graceful sweep of acknowledgment, and came up again, regarding Roger with calm brightness.

The expressiveness of the eyes immediately puts to rest any thought that this man is not a participant in the life of his family--and that fact exists quite apart from the care with which his sister has kept him alive and preserved his dignity and his place in the family.

In our own time, we have debates about the quality of life of severely disabled individuals.  On the one hand is the abstract notion of "quality of life," and the assumption that if one's life does not meet certain criteria, the misery of that knowledge or that state of being, or its limitations, make death preferable.  On the other hand is the--perhaps equally abstract notion of "dignity of life," a notion which seems to be contradicted by the undignified position of the severely disabled.  This scene cuts through all of the abstraction, however, and shows the reader what is at stake--and what is at stake is the soul, which is very much alive.

I have not mentioned them before now, but I have maked "for future discussion," if you will, scenes in which a main character--Claire most often, or in one case, Dougal MacKenzie--was the agent of death for someone who was suffering.  In three cases, it was not so-called "passive" euthenasia, though once Claire did simply withold treatment from a man who was bleeding to death with the knowledge that he would die a horrible death from infection if he survived the boar attack.  In two cases, Claire administered drugs--in a 20th Century hospital, and in the event of a near-lynching.  Dougal acted more in a more direct manner, speeding the death of a kinsman with his sword--unlike the medically assisted examples, it is not an "easy" death.  But each case was cast as a mercy killing, and each does, indeed, put an end to earthly suffering.  At no time during these scenes does the narrative evoke dignity in suffering.

Here, however, there is suffering, and there is also dignity.  The suffering is not man-made suffering resulting from violence.  Nor is it represented as a terminal illness--though it is likely degenerative.  It is a narrative moment when the author's Catholic background shines through, and it is one to notice, and perhaps to ponder against the examples of mercy killings in the other books of the series.

Gabaldon, Diana (2002-10-01). The Fiery Cross (Outlander) (Kindle Locations 2645-2646). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.