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. 

Voyager: Frank as Ghost

Today I start a mini-series on Frank.  I'm not really crazy about Frank, so writing about him is more of a chore than some of my other topics.  On the other hand, Frank briefly ties in with a number of other themes that I've been addressing for the past few months.  So when we come to Chapter 19, we come to one titled, "To Lay a Ghost."  There are many ghosts in Voyager who are not exactly ghosts--strikingly, Jamie and Claire exist as ghosts to each other--but Frank does hang over this chapter like a ghost, and returns as a ghost in future Outlander volumes as well.

In this chapter, we learn some sad truths about Frank, notably that he was barren--that he, in fact, had himself tested and found that he was barren (271).  This pitiable fact renders him as castrated as Jack Randall--and in fact Jamie Fraser has a hand in the castration of Frank as well as Jack Randall, though he remains capable of performing sexually:

     “Did you know I couldn’t sire a child? I  …   had myself tested, a few years ago. I’m sterile. Did you know?”
     I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
     “Bree is mine, my daughter,” he said, as though to himself. “The only child I’ll ever have. I couldn’t give her up.” He gave a short laugh. “I couldn’t give her up, but you couldn’t see her without thinking of him, could you? Without that constant memory, I wonder— would you have forgotten him, in time?”
     “No.” The whispered word seemed to go through him like an electric shock. He stood frozen for a moment, then whirled to the closet and began to jerk on his clothes over his pajamas. (270-271)

Because of Jamie, Frank is incapable of being a husband to his wife, even though it was not exactly a cuckolding.  Finally, knowing that Claire would never have forgotten Jamie--Bree's real father--leads Frank to his death.  For Claire, the final parting between them was "twenty-odd years before, on the crest of a green Scottish hill" (273)--also a pitiful detail, but not, somehow, one that makes Frank more forgivable.


Frank lingers in the house as Claire says goodbye to her life in Boston:

The thought of Frank went with me into the bedroom. The sight of the big double bed, smooth and untroubled under its dark blue satin spread, brought him suddenly and vividly to mind, in a way I had not thought of him in many months. (264)

A process that starts her reminiscences, including her memory of his death.  Although a doctor, and a rationalist, with none of Jamie's superstition, Claire does have a spiritual understanding of death that lends itself to belief in ghosts, as her confrontation with his recently dead corpse reveals:

     I stood quite still, listening. I could hear the wail of a new ambulance approaching, voices in the corridor. The squeak of gurney wheels, the crackle of a police radio, and the soft hum of a fluorescent light somewhere. I realized with a start that I was listening for Frank, expecting  …   what? That his ghost would be hovering still nearby, anxious to complete our unfinished business?
     I closed my eyes, to shut out the disturbing sight of that motionless profile, going red and white and red in turn as the light throbbed through the open doors.
     “Frank,” I said softly, to the unsettled, icy air, “if you’re still close enough to hear me— I did love you. Once. I did.” (273)

With Frank safely buried, Claire is able to treat him with affection, and speaks to his ghost, although she does not (yet?) call on him for help, as Jamie does with his ghosts:

     My weeping done, I rose and laid a hand on the smooth blue coverlet, gently rounded over the pillow on the left— Frank’s side.
     “Goodbye, my dear,” I whispered, and went out to sleep downstairs, away from the ghosts. (273-274)

But though she lays the ghosts to rest, Frank doesn't go away, but stays--seemingly to look after Bree, or to oversee Claire's parenting:

     “What you found,” Roger corrected, squeezing her knee with one hand as he negotiated the tiny orange car through a roundabout. She gave him a quick glance and a reciprocal touch with an air of intimacy about it that set off my maternal alarm bells on the spot. Like that already, was it?
     I seemed to feel Frank’s shade glaring accusingly over my shoulder. Well, at least Roger wasn’t black. (284-285)

Frank's ghost lingers over at least the next book, and perhaps the next two, and his role is to become almost something like Claire's conscience--a role he has no right, in my mind, to fill.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Voyager: Denial yields... Ghosts

It was a moment that I drifted over the first time I read the novel.  And the second.  And as I looked through my notes, I overlooked it again.  And then I started actually reading the chapters to recover a sense of the scenes I was analyzing, I lingered for a moment on the word, "ghosts":

     Grey breathed deep, and let it out slowly. “I am sorry for your loss,” he added formally.
     They were both quiet for a moment, alone with their ghosts. Then Fraser looked up and drew in his breath. “Your brother was right, Major,” he said. “I thank ye, and I’ll bid ye good e’en.” He rose, set down his cup and left the room. (174)

I had to work backward a bit to find the reference, and about what Lord Melton was right.  It was obvious... and not, because the references were separated by a couple of dense pages:

     “He made me go and look at the body— Hal did, my brother,” Grey blurted. He looked down at his hand, where the deep blue of Hector’s sapphire burned against his skin, a smaller version of the one Fraser had reluctantly given him.
     “He said that I must; that unless I saw him dead, I should never really believe it. That unless I knew Hector— my friend— was really gone, I would grieve forever. If I saw, and knew, I would grieve, but then I should heal— and forget.” He looked up, with a painful attempt at a smile. “Hal is generally right, but not always.” (172)

And perhaps it is a function of quick reading--and also why I enjoy reading and rereading a book, because I notice new things each time--but it seems that there is a bit of a puzzle.  With what ghost was Jamie alone?  Claire, of course, but the fact is that Jamie did not ever see her dead.  And so, as an earlier incident indicates to Jamie and the reader, he has difficulty believing that she is... gone from him.

This might be clear, or not seem to require the analysis that I have given it, but ghosts are a common theme in the novels, and one I have set out to tackle.  When we think of the figurative meaning of "being alone with one's ghosts," the reference is not necessarily to someone who is dead, but to someone who is removed from one--who cannot be recovered.  With Hector, the novel treats the phrase literally.  He is one of Grey's "ghosts."  At this point, we also know that Jamie has ghosts, including his brother William, who are still real to him.  Claire may be like a ghost to him, but she in fact still does exist.  In this, she actually resembles Jamie's other ghosts, who also exist--and seem to occupy a "space apart" in a very real afterlife.  But Claire occupies a different--a virtual--space for Jamie--the one from which she came to him in the first place.  Because he knows that when he left her, she was alive, and knows that it was his intention to keep her alive, he can never believe that she is gone.  And he will grieve forever.  Or so he assumes.

Gabaldon, Diana (2004-10-26). Voyager (Outlander) . Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

Dragonfly: Not-so-saintly Ghosts

Towards the end of Dragonfly in Amber, we learn a thing or two about ghosts.  As she marvels over Alex Randall's ability to cling to life, Claire-as-narrator (because I think her voice shifts throughout the novels) ruminates on what ghosts are, no longer doubting their reality:

I thought that was perhaps how some ghosts were made; where a will and a purpose had survived, heedless of the frail flesh that fell by the wayside, unable to sustain life long enough.  I didn't much want to be haunted by Alex Randall; that, among other reasons, was why I had made Jamie come with me today. (858)

Although it is peopled with more or less saintly ghosts from beginning to end, the one ghost that haunts the whole Outlander series for me is the ghost--presumably Jamie, though we don't know him at that point in the narrative--whom Frank Randall sees gazing with consternation at Claire's 20th Century window at the beginning of Outlander.

About 30 pages later, the novel evokes the bond between Jamie and Claire--a timeless bond (appropriately enough)--in Jamie's declaration that (once again evoking The Princess Bride), "death cannot stop true love--it can only delay it a little":

"I will find you," he whispered in my ear.  "I promise.  If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you--then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes.  For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust.  But there is one thing that shall lie in the balance.  When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest."
     His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me.
     "Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well." (889)

Though final judgment before God is evoked, there is something a little unholy, both in the will of Alex Randall and that of Jamie--unholy, but also admirable from a very worldly, human perspective, since it is human love that leads the soul to resist eternal rest, and human love itself is presumed to have some redeeming power.  (The idea of the redemptive power of human love could lead me on a whole different tangent, about Plato's Symposium and the "ladder of love"...)

A few pages later, as Claire and Jamie consummate their leave-taking:

Neither of us could finish the vow, "so long as we both shall live," but the unspoken words hung aching between us.  Finally he smiled crookedly.
    "Longer than that," he said firmly, and pulled me to him once more. (892)

Between the two passages, the reader can begin to piece together the mystery of Jamie's ghost:  his will and his purpose are bound to Claire, and she no longer exists in his time.  Jamie cannot time travel in body--only as a ghost.

Here I am reminded of another ghost story--The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which is both a 1947 classic film with Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney, and a 1945 novel by R. A. Dick.  The protagonist does not fall in love with the ghost until he is a ghost, and the film and novel versions of Mrs. Muir present very different versions of the afterlife, with the novel permitting a movement of ghosts back-and-forth between a heaven-like place and the material, human world, and the film omitting the vision of heaven.  However, the connection of soul to earth because of the will and unfinished purpose is a commonality with Outlander, and the idea of eternal (human) love that transcends the flesh is another.  In the film, the eternal nature of love is particularly poignant and attractive, and though the differences are too many to number, the vision of Jamie as a ghost with unfulfilled purpose, refusing eternal rest and gazing on the woman whom he loves and with whom he cannot be joined, evokes the ghostly Captain Gregg for me.

Dragonfly: Here is your...spouse?

"Jesus, Thou Son of Mary," I started, speaking hoarsely, "I call upon Thy name; and on the name of John the Apostle beloved...." (Dragonfly 893)

So says Claire, beginning the interrupted prayer of benediction with which she intends to send Jamie into war while she returns to the stones.  Reading this book for the second time, these lines jumped out at me, not because of the circumstances, or the prayer itself, but because of the names they invoked:  Jesus, Mary, and "John the Apostle beloved."  In particular, John, the beloved Apostle.

About 30 pages earlier in the edition I have been reading, the small trade paperback with the orange cover, a dying man presides over the marriage of his brother and his beloved, (unwed) mother of his unborn child.  Jamie and Claire stand as witnesses.  The marriage is one of convenience, undesired by either, and was intended primarily to give the family name to the brother's child, and also to give his beloved--named Mary--into the custody of his brother Jonathan.  In case the names of the characters--who have been part of the story, and so are known to the reader through their actions as well as names--did not jump out at the reader right away, the narrative includes this detail:

He stretched out a hand to his brother, who took it after a moment's hesitation.  Then he brought them together, laying Mary's hand in Randall's.  Mary's lay inert, and Jack Randall's stiff, like a dead fish on a wooden slab, but Alex pressed his hands tightly around the two, pressing them together.

     "I give you to each other, my dear ones," he said softly.  (860)

In this short passage, Alex Randall assumes the position of the dying Jesus, giving Mary (who is not his mother in this scene, but who is an innocent) into the care of his beloved John (who is Jack Randall--Black Jack Randall, so named for the color of his soul, as Jamie quips in Outlander).

What does this moment do?  It is not a parody.  As a comparison, there are too many incongruencies.  It simply. . . is.  Except that two textual moments cannot coexist as a conscious reference without there being some kind of interaction in the mind of the reader who is familiar with both texts.  So let's take a look at the incongruencies.

First, Alex.  On his way to death, he delivers Mary into the hands of John.  And yet, he is not dying at the hands of others; nor is he sacrificing himself for others.  So his situation only resembles the journey of Jesus to the Cross because of his provision for Mary.

Mary is the most interesting figure in this scenario.  She is an innocent--of sorts--but she is no longer virgin, having first been raped, and later, having had a liaison with Alex, who would have married her had he been able to support her.  She is also a mother, though not noticeably, and not the mother of him who gives her away--rather, she is his unwed spouse (if you will) and mother of his child.

John (i.e. Johnny, i.e. Jack, i.e. Black Jack Randall) is beloved of Alex, but he is not an apostle.  Truly, it remains incongruent that he is beloved of anyone--even his brother--given the depth of his depravity, which Alex claims to know.  The relationship between the brothers is deeply troubling and problematic, given that Jack--while humiliating, punishing, and raping Jamie--calls Jamie by his brother's name.  Can love coexist with the impulse to humiliate, hurt, and exploit?  The narrative suggests yes.  It is a point on which I disagree.

If Alex is Christ-like, it is perhaps in his forgiveness and unquestioning acceptance of his brother.  In which case, it is a misrepresentation of what it means to be Christ-like, since love and acceptance of depravity are not actually the same thing.  'Lest it be misunderstood, when I refer to "depravity," I am referring specifically to Jack Randall's sadism, and possibly his incestuous feelings, rather than his homosexuality, which the novels (and a spinoff series) treat separately in the character of John Grey.

The contrast between the Biblical source and the novel's scene is so stark that the point seems to be the contrast, though the narrative might be entreating the reader to view the scene with compassion and pity as well, perhaps since there is no higher meaning to this drama of human imperfection and inadequacy.  It is a clever tableau, but there is not a lot to analyze; it was simply so obvious a Biblical parallel that I would have felt remiss had I not given it a separate post.

I am open to any additional interpretations that anyone might have to share!  Might there be something to be said about dignity?  There might be a point to made about marriage as well, particularly since the observers are Claire and Jamie....

Dragonfly: Saintly Ghosts

Looking back on Outlander as I finished the novel, I thought about a curious scene in which a seemingly ghostly Jamie looks in on Claire in 1945.  I will return to ghosts as I work through the rest of the novels, because while I don't necessarily see them functioning in the same way in each instance, the spirits of the dead remain with the characters in ways that become familiar.

In Dragonfly in Autumn, remembering the untimely death of his older brother and holding the small snake his brother carved for him when he was a child, Jamie describes how he talks to his brother:

"I talk to Willie, sometimes, in my mind," Jamie said. He tilted the snake on his palm.  "If you'd lived, Brother, if ye'd been laird as you were meant to be, would ye do what I've done? Or would ye find a better way?" (551)

There is a specific connection here to Jamie's own self-doubt, and feeling of humility at having inherited a role that should have belonged to his brother.  In a quite different way, he is also aware of his father's presence at unexpected times:

"I hear my father's voice sometimes, in the barn, or in the field.  When I'm not even thinkin' of him, usually.  But all at once I'll turn my head, as though I'd just heard him outside, laughing wi' one of the tenants, or behind me, gentling a horse."  (552)

There is obligation and responsibility that accompanies Jamie's memories of both his father and brother, but the interactions are different--his brother seems a confidante and guide; his father a trusted companion.

While Jamie's conversations register as manifestation of memory (mostly), but as Claire recounts her own experience of talking to the dead, there is a kind of shift from memory to a presence, particularly when she imagines her mother after her miscarriage:

"I do the same," I said softly, after a moment.  "With Uncle Lamb.  And my parents.  My mother especially.  I--I didn't think about her often, when I was young, just every now and then I'd dream about someone soft and warm, with a lovely singing voice.  But when I was sicker, after... Faith--sometimes I imagined she was there.  With me."  A sudden wave of grief swept over me, remembrance of losses recent and long past. (551)

The presence of Claire's mother beside her bed, as she coalesces after miscarriage, is of course the mother connection of childbearing women, but also hints at Claire's closeness to death.

Jamie crystallizes what they are both feeling:

"I think sometimes the dead cherish us, as we do them." (551)

In this particular exchange, with the descriptions of Claire and (especially) Jamie, I can't help hearing a kind of echo of Tevye talking to God in Fiddler on the Roof, but of course, without the conversation partner being God.  I also remember how, growing up, I imagined relatives I had never met, who died before I was born, looking down on me and watching over me.  Eventually, this is how I came to understand the Catholic concept of the Communion of Saints--not sure if I picked up on this from relatives who had been Catholic, or if it was just a child's way of theorizing death.  Either way, I see these ghostly memories, these presences, as being particularly saintly.  It is a comforting way of viewing the dead, and one that Gabaldon makes the most of in the Outlander series, beginning, in a way, with this conversation between Claire and Jamie.

Dragonfly: Humiliations Galore

Warning:  This discussion cites, and elaborates upon, some of the more intense and disturbing imagery in the first two Outlander books.

In The Princess Bride, as Fezzig wrestles the Man in Black (i.e. the Dread Pirate Roberts, i. e. Wesley, i. e. Cary Elwes), he says, "I just want you to feel you're doing well.  I hate for people to die embarrassed."  The line sounds amusing.  If one is about to die, what does embarrassment have to do with it?  Would having one's fighting ability validated in some way matter?

I believe that the Outlander books answer the second question constantly.  Death in battle is definitely the most noble way to die, for those who are able, but it is clear that this is not the only way that people die--and that many suffer much more ignoble deaths.

Of all of the tortures enacted upon Jamie Fraser in Wentworth prison by Jack Randall to satisfy his sadistic lusts, the most chilling account, to the mind of this critic, occurs in Ch. 8: "Unlaid Ghosts and Crocodiles," as Jamie presumably unburdens his soul onto Claire. The disembodied voice of Jack Randall, which Jamie tries to separate from all physical sensation, taunts him as it abuses him:

     "Have you ever seen a man hanged, Fraser?" The words went on, not waiting for him to reply....
     "Yes, of course you have; you were in France, you'll have seen deserters hanged now and again.  A hanged man loses his bowels, doesn't he? As the rope tightens fast round his neck." [...] He clenched his good hand tight around the edge of the bed and turned his face hard into the scratchy blanket, but the words pursued him.
     "That will happen to you, Fraser.  Just a few more hours, and you'll feel the noose." The voice laughed, pleased with itself. "You'll go to your death with your arse burning from my pleasure, and when you lose your bowels, it will be my spunk running down your legs and dripping on the ground below the gallows." (Dragonfly 156)

Taken out of context, the words lose some of their disturbing quality. We might get hung up on words like "spunk" and "arse," wonder whether the sadist and torturer would have really led off with the rhetorical question, "Have you ever seen a man hanged, Fraser?"  When I read, "A hanged man loses his bowels, doesn't he?" I think of a particular episode of Futurama, in which a comatose Leela hallucinates Fry's funeral, and the minister intones, "And it goes without saying that it caused him to empty his bowels."

But it is that bowel emptying, and the rapist's semen, and most of all, that the perpetrator should choose this particular taunt to a doomed man with no hope who is suffering every pain and indignity--these are what cause the horror that lingers, and prompts me to write this post.  The humiliation of the doomed.

There was a billboard that I used to pass every time a road trip took me through Orange, TX.  It said, "Raped While Dying."  There was a snippet of a story involving a man's rape and murder of his ex-wife, and possible desecration of her grave.  I can't find a link to the story, but I did find a Google archive of a Houston Chronicle archived story that no longer exists online:

This story held the same kind of haunting horror because it combined torture and humiliation with the sure knowledge of death.  Of course, the details are not really known when the victim dies.  Fictional Jamie lives to recount--remember--relive.  It is fiction, but the horror is real.

There is yet another account of humiliation in death that carries the same sickening sense of horror as the narrative moment in Dragonfly in Amber, as Jamie recalls Jack Randall's taunts.  This one feels particularly relevant, as it is World War II horror--the horror of the 20th Century war that Claire lived through.  Although I can't find a "linkable" reference, late night documentary-watching acquainted me with the execution of one of the members of--I believe--the Valkyrie plot, or someone only marginally associated with the plot, if memory serves.  He was filmed--being hanged--with his pants pulled down. Humiliation in death.

And so when I read the moment in Dragonfly in Amber, it sort of explodes in my mind.  Whatever else might be going on in the narrative--"bowels," "spunk," or "arse"--this particular moment conveys the kind of psychological torture that would break a man who seemingly could not be broken.  The preceding analogous examples underscore the emasculation that Jamie suffers, as well as the dehumanization.  And the humiliation--the blending of sex and death--makes the detail of Jack Randall's torture more chilling than the warning description of the traitor's death--hanging, drawing, and quartering--in a later chapter (430-433).

I am reminded of the line from Tolkien, "It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy." Because to dwell on torture is to do exactly that.  I have not seen it questioned whether the depiction of torture was realistic, but the horror it evokes feels real, and brings me back to Fezzig's gallantry:

"I hate for people to die embarrassed." 

And that, by contrast, is why Jack Randall is a monster.  It's about dignity.

ROTK: Thinking about Denethor

On Friday, December 14,  many lives were interrupted--some permanently.  In the face of this, I am interrupting my posts on Outlander, just for a moment.

On Friday, December 14, Peter Jackson also released another of his interpretations of Tolkien.  I have not seen The Hobbit.  But I remember that, when Fellowship of the Rings was released into theaters on the heels of September 11, 2001, it offered some comfort in its portrayal of Tolkien's noble, beautiful Middle Earth--a world that was crumbling, but was still worth fighting for.  The film reminded us, in Tolkien's words, that "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."  It gave us a vision of joining hands and bravely facing what might lie ahead, however beautiful or terrible.

By the third film, many of these ideas--prominent in Tolkien-- had been left by the wayside, or reduced to an afterthought.  I focus on Denethor, because Jackson's film gives us a vision of Denethor as a near-demonic madman, first with a mouth full of berry juice, dripping red down his chin--heavily (and heavy-handedly) symbolic of the blood of his people, and of a flaming Denethor hurling himself off a cliff.

Denethor has always registered with me as painfully tragic.  He kills himself, and tries to kill his son.  He is corrupted by the absolute evil of Sauron.  But he is not a demon, or, strictly speaking, a monster.  He is simply a soul in absolute despair.  And Tolkien gives the reader, in the words of Gandalf, the tools to understand Denethor's actions:

"Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death," answered Gandalf.  "And only the heathen kings, under the domination of the Dark Power, did thus, slaying themselves in pride and despair, murdering their kin to ease their own death." (835)

Because of his despair and pride in his own false knowledge, Denethor is unable to face life.  But he is equally unable to face death alone.

Tolkien evokes "heathen kings."  Wives thrown onto the pyres at Norse funerals, or buried alive.  The accompaniment of souls into the afterlife is an idea evoked in Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, when Nimue kills herself after betraying Kevin the Bard to his death--Morgaine is comforted that Kevin will have someone waiting for him on the other side.

We are afraid of death.  We seek company in our fear.  We want a blaze of destruction to signify our mark on the world, and to give us the courage to die.  A grand gesture.  I am reminded of the video to Pearl Jam's "Jeremy," which does not (as some suggested when the video was popular) show the boy committing an act of violence on others, but rather, depicts suicide and death as a grand performance.  It is a madness of pride and egotism.  But it is very, painfully, human--and a symptom of our broken world.  A world that, in some ways, returns to primitive customs in the absence of Faith and in response to despair.

And as we ask why, one discourse is lacking--a discourse that centers on our fear of death, but also human desire for companionship, despair in isolation, and pervasive lack of faith in a world to come, or in a God who will comfort us on the other side.