Defeating Evil While Becoming One Essay, Research Paper
DEFEATING EVIL WHILE BECOMING ONEHuman nature, some say its what elevates us to a higher plain of consciousness, what separates us from animals. Others, however, say that human nature is the exact thing that holds us back, keeps us from evolving. Man is such a complex animal, full of contradictions and inconsistencies; it seems impossible for us to fully understand man s nature. But we all agree that we live our whole lives trying to fulfill our objectives. Someone s objective is being rich and a well-known person, another one s is producing useful things for mankind, in summary everyone has an objective to achieve. However what is important is the path we go through to fulfill these goals. Some people try to do useful and good things to succeed in life, some others try to be as evil as possible to succeed, and some of them could use both evil and good ideas to succeed in life. The unfortunate fact is, because people have a very strong sense of revenge, whenever they face an evil action against them, they tend to confront in a worse way. For example, in the novel House made of Dawn, the main character Abel tries to defeat everyone who had an evil action on him, however what Abel missing is that whenever he confront to these evil actions, he becomes one of them who he tries to defeat. Through common stories good and evil are portrayed through protagonist and antagonist view, creating morals and opinions, and how society have changed over time. Common stories portray good and evil through a protagonist and antagonist view. It seems that in this novel, Abel is the protagonist who represents the good guy and fights against evil, and whoever made bad action on Abel are the antagonists who represent the Sahin 2bad guys and try to do every possible evil thing. However unfortunately, as opposed to the fairy tale good guy and bad guy relations, Abel seems to be doing mostly the wrong things to avoid the evil actions taken on him. Thus, whatever he does against evil turns to be damages on his life, and helps him to become evil. In the novel Abel represents a guy who tries to make the transition from reservation life to city life. The novel begins with the returning of Abel from the World War II as an alcoholic. He became an alcoholic after he joined the army for World War II. It is stated on the web source of Pink Monkey as: Abel represents the Native American men who fought in the Second World War for a country that had waged war and genocide on his own people. Fighting in the war, Abel retained the status of an outsider. His fellow soldiers called him “chief,” a term of derision. They regarded him as an alien, inscrutable in his every action. Abel must have felt inordinately alone when he went to war never enjoying the camaraderie that is the consolation of so many soldiers. He responded to his isolation and estrangement with alcoholism. He came home from the war not as a proud soldier having served his country well, but as a drunk who shames his grandfather into tears.In this paragraph it is obvious that Abel was isolated in the army because he was a Native American. The word chief is used for the leaders of the Native American tribes, and it was used for Abel too. Because his fellow soldiers made fun of him and humiliated him, he felt like an alien in the army and became an alcoholic. What he did to avoid his fellow soldiers evil behaviors, such as derisions and humiliation, was not any good to him. He Sahin3became an alcoholic and made his body suffer with alcoholism. He could not withstand all those soldiers, hence he retorted himself and took revenge from his body. In addition to this, Abel faced isolation in most of his lifetime. He was isolated within the village where he lived too, He did not know who his father was. His father was a Navajo, they said, or a Sia, or an Isleta, an outsider anyway, which made him and his mother and Vidal somehow foreign and strange (Momaday 11). After his mother and brother died, his grandfather was only one left in his family. Therefore he was the most damaged of his family, Abel is the most damaged of the three. In part, he began wounded when his father abandoned the family and left Abel to feel like a foreigner among his people. Next, Abel s mother and then is elder brother Vidal died (Pink Monkey). Abel was badly influenced by all these terrible incidents, and he was going crazy. In his book Louis Owens mentions about Abel s psychology as schizophrenia in the form of a rubble of distinct and unrelated signifiers. This seems very expressive, because Abel did not talk too much through the novel and he seemed to be a very introverted person. In definition a person who is schizophrenic, may have hallucinations, delusions, incoherence and flat affect (Yahoo Definitions). This might be a good reason why he thought that everyone who made a bad action on him was evil. In addition to this, he treated women like sex devices and had no emotion for women. This looks like a flat affect, which is a symptom of schizophrenia. Therefore, there is a high probability that Abel had psychological disorder.
On the day of the Feast, Abel participated the chicken-pull contest and lost the contest to the albino, He can no longer read the signs of the community, and he fails Sahin 4and is humiliated by the victorious albino (Louis Owens 100). Because the albino humiliated Abel and made everyone laughed at him, he thought that the albino was evil. In fact there were seven or eight other contestants and they all lost the contest (Momaday 37). Therefore the town people did not laugh at only Abel. However Abel was the only one who felt so humiliated and wanted to take his revenge from albino who was the winner of the contest. In fact the albino gave no harm to Abel except winning the contest, however Abel due to his schizophrenic behaviors thought that the albino did win the contest to harm Abel and he thought of the albino as evil. Therefore he killed the albino to get rid of evil, however what Abel did was much more evil than winning a contest, and as a result he became the real evil, Acting in the manner of an Ahab, Abel attempts to destroy evil, and evil is turned back upon him as a result. In attempting to destroy evil, Abel has become one with it, accepted its seed (Louis Owens 103). After murdering the albino, Abel was put in jail. While he was in jail, a corrupt cop, Martinez, beat him to death. By then, the corrupt cop became evil and Abel s mission was to destroy the evil, Martinez extends the evil presence of the Albino (Louis Owens 113) That shows that he had not understood that he could not kill evil, a physical disintegration paralleling his psychic disintegration- Abel has again made the mistake of confronting rather that acknowledging and avoiding evil. Abel s lesson is that evil cannot be killed (Louis Owens 113). What Abel needed to learn was that evil could not be killed, and as long as he tried to defeat evil he became one. In conclusion, Abel spent his life trying to get rid of evil, but in the end he ended up being one. AS long as he tried to defeat it, evil came to his face. What Abel needed to Sahin 5do was to avoid evil as opposed to confront it. Due to his psychological disorder, Abel was not able to made clear decisions and this can be an excuse. But there are a lot of people in the world who are not psychologically disordered and still act in the same way as Abel. It is not to solution to get rid of evil actions around us by confronting in evil way. In that way we become evils, and this obviously increases the number of evils in the world. Sahin 6
Momaday, N.Scott. House Made of Dawn. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1966.Owens, Louis. Other Destinies.Duncan, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma, 1992.Pink Monkey. House Made of Dawn . 27 March. 2001