Part VII: In Love and Death

Beloved goes right along with everything I've been saying this far about how good and evil is relative. Sethe killed her youngest daughter, Beloved, to save her from slavery. The community was disgusted with her and thought she was a monster, but to her it was an act of love. She only killed Beloved because she knew death was far better than slavery. But then comes the question of whether she had the right to determine her child's future. So when it comes down to it, Beloved brings up the conflict of good vs. evil, but it is in the form of love vs. selfishness or pride. As for who determines what good and evil is, Beloved seems to suggest that good and evil can only be objectively labeled once the outcome of the act is seen. If it has a positive outcome, there you go. Good. However, if it has a negative outcome, that's bad. Unfortunately, nothing is quite that cut and dry, but that's the gist of it. The point is, it's hard to say if what you're doing is good or evil when you're doing it. History can look back at anything and determine it was evil. Just look at slavery. Slavery existed in America for so long because at the time, no one thought it was evil. Obviously, now we can see that enslaving other human beings is pretty bad. But at the time, it was just the norm.

Part VI: Absolution

There is no good and there is no evil.

At least, that's what Camus appears to be saying with the The Stranger. Meursault is the most logical person in anything we've ever read and he seems to recognize that good and evil are just arbitrary words that we assign to things that we do or don't agree with. Meursault kills a man, and when told that he should be feeling guilty, he simply cannot because he does not think of it as an evil act. He doesn't think of it as a good act, simply an action that he carried out. In this sense, I agree with Meursault. What I've been saying in many of my posts is that good and evil is relative. That what may appear to be evil to one person could be the most pure act in another person's eyes. To take it one step further, it could be said that "Good" and "Evil" are just labels that we assign to the things we think oppose or support us. A devout Christian might call an Atheist evil because he doesn't believe in God, but that Atheist could be donating millions of dollars to charity, adopting needy children, etc. The point is, evil can be looked at as merely the opposition to your own ideas that you view as "Good." Just as Meursault is seen as a threat to society because he does not go along with what society tells him he should.

Part V: Prepare to Be Wrong

The Metamorphosis applies to my question from a different angle: how perception affects what is viewed as good or evil. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor transformed into a disgusting creature and is therefore treated poorly. Based purely on his appearance, Gregor's family treats him with disdain as if he were something evil. They fail to recognize that he is the same good person that provided for them for so long. Conversely, once Gregor is forced to look at how his family treats someone in and unfortunate condition that they didn't like, he sees that they are not as kind as he once thought. So maybe what Kafka claims is that good and evil depends heavily on your point of view. A poor man might not see stealing as evil, just as a way to provide for himself. But a wealthy man might view it as evil. At the same time, the poor man might think the wealthy man evil for not helping the poor, while the wealthy man just sees it as his way of life. It's a conundrum to say the least.

Part IV: The Resistance

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man lends itself quite well to my question. Because art = relative. The end. So on a small scale, the way Stephen judges what is pure and what is obscene is pretty much the same as my whole shtick. Pretty cool, right? Stephen spends most of his time in his head thinking about what it good and what is evil. He battles with what he is told by the church and his own independent thoughts. The conclusion it seems that he eventually comes to is that only he can decide what is right and wrong in his eyes. His spends his entire childhood being told what is and isn't a sin and he eventually ends up questioning what makes these things sins or pure acts. That is when he decides that he can't let someone else tell him what is a sin when he might think it is totally natural. Obviously if he thought murder was totally natural, it'd be a problem. Then we'd be working in some gray areas. But the point is, Joyce seems to offer up the possibility that it is the individual's responsibility to determine what is good and what is evil. Curious.

Part III: Lies for the Liars

Synge seems to take a similar stance to my own in Playboy of the Western World, in that he appears to think good and evil is relative. If at any point the townspeople believed Christy was wrong in the murder of his father, they immediately changed their minds when he justified the murder. This is where Synge and I differ. Based on Playboy of the Western World, Synge believes that an "evil" act can be manipulated and twisted and contorted into a justified and good act. With enough lying and exaggerating, a scoundrel can become a saint. Even patricide can be justified with a smooth enough tongue. The point is, lying is what makes the world go 'round. Deception makes evil good and good evil. I disagree, but it could just be because I'm a bad liar and I'm bitter about it. Still, didn't Christy's lies kind of blow up in his face? Didn't he end up actually having to try and kill his father again? But before he was found out, the townspeople worshipped him. So maybe good and evil is just a matter of deceit. Maybe the good people in the world are just the best liars. That sounds pretty cynical, doesn't it?

Part II: Dig Out Your Soul

In the end, it seems that King Lear argues that it is up to the individual person to decide whether their actions are good or evil. Lear is the one that makes the final call on whether he'd ruled justly and whether he'd treated his daughters the way he should have, just as Gloucester was the only one who could justly decide if his actions were traitorous or justified, or how Kent was the only one who could judge if his loyalty was earned. In the end, these men were the only ones who could decide if their actions where correct. It may be a small-scale version of the question of "Good vs. Evil," but the basic idea still remains: the outside world can judge a person's actions, but it is ultimately up to the individual that committed whatever act it was to decide if what they do is good or evil. At least, that is the argument that King Lear seems to make. However, there is no real answer to the question of who decides what is good and evil.

Part I: This Road Is Made of More Than Asphalt

Perhaps it's sad that I constantly wonder whether man is inherently good or evil. Perhaps it's merely evidence that this mind really is active. Either way, the conclusion I've arrived at, at least for the moment, is that we are neither.

The world is not made of people that are good, just as it is not made of people that are evil. The world is made only of people who have free will and choose to act on it. This provides a lot of gray area for us to inhabit.

Good and evil is a matter of perspective. Joe Kavalier of Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay thought the imprisonment of his family in the Holocaust was an act of pure evil. But in Hitler's eyes, it was justified. Granted, the world has judged Hitler as a mad and evil man. But this is another matter of perspective. For had Hitler succeeded in his genocide, and won the war, would history not look at him in a different light?

Oedipus viewed his actions as evil, and poked his own eyes out. The rest of us would also view his actions as evil to some degree, or at the very least very icky. But the prophet that told him he would commit such "evil" actions would not necessarily view them as evil. Instead, the prophet might just view them as fact, just an occurrence.

The point I'm trying to make is that my question cannot be answered. Which is kind of a bummer. But I'm okay with it because it leads to a much more interesting question: Who is truly just in deciding what is good and what is evil?

That's my big question. At least for now.