Abashed the Devil Stood, and Felt How Awful Goodness Is

An essay on the difficulty between distinguishing good and evil.

    What is goodness? Take a moment to mull that over, try and penetrate past the surface images and idealistic thoughts that come to mind and really try to get at the heart of that question. Because in a literal sense, goodness is a moral excellence, the ability to distinguish right from wrong. But what is right and wrong? How do we as humans define right and wrong, when if we look back through our own history those very core principals have changed dramatically over the course of our existence. Something as abhorred as slavery was once a common practice, even by some of the so-called Founding Fathers of America. And we, specifically as Americans, tend to have a high opinion of ourselves, at least on the pulp-media-marketing plain. We’re supposed to be worked up when we see images of a waving flag or a soaring eagle, to feel filled with emotional patriotism and the general goodness that America sometimes seems to stand for. But goodness is only an idea, and is more based on the values of one particular culture or society at one point in time.
    Art imitates life, and one of the most well-known and frequently used literary conflict is good vs. evil. It’s the age old debate; the longest running battle, and one that is masterfully explored in Joyce Carol Oates’ story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?. We are presented with Connie and Arnold, and his less important friend Ellie. Whereas Connie is portrayed as young, innocent, and therefore inherently good, Arnold is the opposite. He shows little of his true self, opting instead to fashion himself into just another one of the kids that Connie would see on a daily basis. And while on the surface, this is a story about a man abducting a teenage girl, if we dig a little deeper we can be illuminated to the true heart of the story: The temptation of evil.
    Arnold Friend can easily be transcribed by removing both R’s from the name to create, “An old fiend”. And who is the oldest fiend in the history of man? The Devil, of course, and other allusions to this can be found in the story as well. First off is his sly and manipulative manner, and the way he first comes to Connie with nothing but reassurances, "He spoke in a simple lilting voice, exactly as if he were reciting the words to a song. His smile assured her that everything was fine."(Oates 935). His age, 18, can also be seen as 6+6+6, the notorious mark of the beast. Or the fact that his feet are most likely hooves within the boots he wears, "One of his boots was at a strange angle, as if his foot wasn't in it." (Oates 939), "Evidently his feet did not go all the way down..." (Oates 940). All of this is used to create a subconsciously inserted image of wickedness, and a boogeyman that works on all levels. But Arnold Friend is just a character in a story(albeit a very convincing one), and the kinds of people that he is based on are indeed not the Devil. The terrible crimes perpetrated everyday in the world are done so by human beings, not stygian fiends.
    So are some of us just inherently evil then, to be able to commit such heinous attacks against others like rape, murder, or genocide? It would seem an easy answer, and indeed many our villains from history are often viewed as one-sided, wholly evil people, but I think there’s more to it than that. These figures(Hitler, Vlad III, Ivan the Terrible, Stalin) were all at one point in their lives “innocent” children, so at what point did they become “evil”?
    Stephen Pinker, author of The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, breaks down human nature and our personal choices into three categories. The Blank Slate: The idea that we are all born as a blank canvas and then subsequently shaped by our upbringings and environments. The Noble Savage: Wherein we are born good, but are then corrupted by society. The Ghost in the Machine: Which suggests that each of us have a soul that makes choices free from biology. None of these are definitive answers, because in reality there aren’t any. We don‘t have any more morality today than we did ten thousand years ago. Sometimes in life there simply aren’t reasons for the way people behave, and so we label those actions as evil to explain where they came from.
    And random acts of violence are perhaps the most disturbing. This is probably why the American horror genre has flourished so well with the simple theme of, “Group goes on road trip, runs into crazy sadists, and are killed in viscous and inhumane ways.” In Flannery O’Conner’s story A Good Man Is Hard To Find we’re introduced to The Misfit, a slightly deranged murderer that encounters a stranded family on the road, and kills them. He has a continual conversation with the family’s grandmother, and in one scene he admits, "I call myself The Misfit because I can't make what I done fit what all I gone through in punishment."(O'Conner 958). So even he himself doesn’t necessarily understand why what he’s done is taken so harshly by everyone else. He makes decisions based on what his own brand of morality deems correct. For instance, he has no problem killing the entire family but apologizes for having his shirt off in front of the women. Now in our eyes this is manic, perhaps insane behavior, but to The Misfit it is just another afternoon.
    Distinguishing between good and evil can seem easy when looking at their face value, but they are two sides of the same coin. The difficulty lies in the fact that they are inherently linked together; you can’t have one without the other. Goodness might be what we tell ourselves to strive for, to reach as high as we can for from the corruption and greedy decadence that lies ingrained in our day to day lives, but without the idea of evil, goodness would lose all its meaning.

Reviews

[Joo-ahn Sung]

Though not proposing a brand new idea, the essay does take a very interesting approach to the topic at hand. By taking a literary, artistic approach to the problem, audiences are immediately drawn into the essay, almost as if you are telling the other stories yourself. While expounding on the literary pieces, you do not go into summary, rather, you are able to subtlety give synopsis while analyzing the works. Leaving off on a paradoxical note also deserves to be noted. Very good job.

[Leap]

Well done. I really dig the connections you made with the character Arnold...specifically with the name. I'll have to pick that story up.