Impressions of Evil

This is an essay that my late brother wrote for his Critical Reasoning class in 2001 (picture is original artwork done by Jared Dennis)

Evil was not always real to me. I was vaguely aware of it on certain levels but it was mostly confined to an ambiguous intellectual concept that failed to impact me on a practical level. It was something "out there" outside of my inner world and consequently outside of my desire to meaningfully contemplate or care about. I knew of Hitler and the Holocaust, Stalin and his political purges, slavery, war, and genocide but these where rare cases in my mind. The majority of people would not, could not, conceive of and carry out this brand of abhorrent, hateful evil. People are basically good and all that. This is not to say I thought the world to be made of apples and roses and that there were not people who were "bad", but "bad" and "evil" were worlds apart in my book. I had met plenty of bad people and had myself been hurt by them. Still, I did not believe there was any true malice involved. That was the key difference; these bad people were merely tainted with an excess of selfishness and acted mostly out of idiocy or ignorance. Surely the chances of me running into true evil in my normal, daily life were slim to none. If by some stroke of misfortune I did, certainly I would know by the evil person's depraved appearance. Evil people were a different breed and would therefore obviously stand out in contrast to the "decent" people who comprised the vast majority of the human race. It simply never crossed my mind that the disease of evil could take host in anyone. It never seemed possible that this sickness, malignant and inherited, could and does lurk in the dark corners of everyone's heart, my own included.

I encountered evil, was stripped of my illusions, made aware of its true nature, and had its indelible impression left on my heart when I had just turned fourteen years old.

I'll never forget Mitch. I did not know him very well except as the son of the principal of my school, and his occasional beautifully sung solos in church. Mitch was a model family man and took his religion very seriously. He had a great sense of humor, a kind heart and deeply loved his children. Things began to change, however, with the arrival of a new teacher at our school who also became a member of our church (as was mandatory since the two were interlinked). His name was Darrin and he was something of an oddity among the teachers at my school: he was likable.Darrin had an encyclopedic knowledge of all things rock and roll, was engaging and disarming in presentation, and rode a Harley that could be felt before it was heard. Unlike most teachers, he was not afraid to become friends with students and seemed to put up no false pretenses or unspoken barriers between himself and us, his adoring flock. Young, charismatic, and good looking, he was the object of many young girls affections and a role model for us boys at a time when authentic direction was desperately lacking. I connected with him right away as our temperaments where eerily similar. Our love of humor and loathing of all things boring (especially boring people) provided the foundation for a spontaneous, but deep, friendship. Darrin became a quick friend of the family; soon my recently graduated, eighteen year old sister became one of the many young women who fell under the spell of his powerful, magnetic personality. Mitch and Darrin became close friends as well. At the time I could not understand it. Mitch was a great guy, but with his clean cut appearance and somewhat stuffy demeanor he was the antithesis of the individualistic rebel that Darrin and I believed ourselves to be. What did he see in Mitch? What was the basis of their friendship? Only later, too late, would I learn that it was their mutual dissatisfaction with their wives in particular, and responsibility in general, that led to their destructive friendship. Mitch's devotion to Darrin was based on many of the same reasons that caused guys at my school to look up to him. Mitch was sick of being a stuffy "church" type, sick of feeling inadequate, sick of having to grub for status. Mitch wanted to be the man Darrin appeared to be. Ultimately, his sickness and sadly misguided desires would lead to tragedy and my own harsh education on the nature and very real existence of evil.Life went on normally for me, all the while I was stupidly unaware of the explosive mixture of passions and personalities occuring right in front of me. Much too self-absorbed at the time to see clearly the looming disaster, I floated through life blind. Reality has a way of dropping the hammer at times like these; when it hit, everyone in its path was destroyed or crushed. As the ignorant youth I was, unbelievably perceptive and dull at the same time, the acute celerity and unexpectedness of the events that would occur shook me so violently that all my beliefs would soon be re-evaluated.

Mitch came from a large family and the whole clan had flown out of state for the funeral of Mitch's grandmother, the beloved matriarch of the family. Mitch was happier than anyone had seen him in a long time; he was the warm center of the grieving family and everyone was comforted by his reversal in mood. While the rest of the family stayed behind after the funeral, Mitch left two days after, citing some business trouble he had to take care of. Mitch flew home, lined the bathroom with towels, climbed in the tub and shot himself through the heart with a shotgun his father had given to him as a child. A brief note was left for his ten year old son on the locked bathroom door saying to make sure that his mother did not see him and explaining that he had made sure to leave his head intact for the funeral. Soon after this Darrin resigned from his post as Biblical History teacher and moved to Seattle to work construction. It did not end there though. My sister, who had been good friends with Mitch, suddenly announced she was going to move to Seattle and hold Darrin to his promise to divorce his wife and marry her. Obviously her revelation of an affair between her and Darrin was a huge blow to our family, she was not even nineteen yet. The revelations kept coming. I learned that Mitch too had planned on leaving his wife and family for a girlfriend he met at work but the weight on his conscience proved too great. It came to light that the pastor of our church (also the iron-handed ruler of the school) had know about both Mitch's and Darrin's affairs and had covered it up as best he could to prevent his own embarrassment and that of the church. Darrin had been his golden boy, the one he was training to replace the current assistant pastor. Mitch and his family were pillars in the church and his suicide was seen more as blow to our pastor's stature than as the horrible tragedy it was. Evil had never seemed so real to me.The final blow against my previously held notion that mankind is basically good came when Alan (Mitch's father, our principal, and a genuinely good man) stood before the student body to announce the death of his son. My thoughts swirled and my heart raged at all the recent events and just as I was thinking that maybe it was just the adults who where evil I heard a noise that normally would have been comforting and joy filled. It was not though, it was as grating on my ears as nails on a chalkboard and sent a sick feeling throughout my entire body. It was laughter. Behind me, I could here three of my own classmates cracking jokes and laughing while I watched tears stream down Alan's face and heard his voice crack whenever he mentioned the name of his youngest son. I have never looked at people (as a group or as individuals) the way I used to, and never will. Some say evil is in our minds, that it has no objective reality, yet in that brief period I saw it and heard it and felt it. I will never forget the ugliness; it is impressed forever on my heart.