danielma wrote:
If that makes sense (I hope it does...otherwise I'm a crazy man
)
Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. I agree, their crimes are largely about severing all ties with humanity (and therefore all obligations) and about empowerment (murder seems to relieve them temporarily of a kind of deep-seated fear).
Nightrider wrote:Teresa is a deeply damaged person who instead of trying to improve her situation choses darkness instead of light.
Agreed. Teresa was completely repulsive to me by the end, though I found her sympathetic at first (all sympathy evaporated when she
murdered the shopkeeper).
Nightrider wrote:Theres, from the start was always less than human...almost an alien creature.
Almost alien, yes. But I never saw her as less than human - definitely abnormal, damaged, yes.
Nightrider wrote:Once the line is crossed there is no redemption.
Yes, I too see them as beyond redemption.
Nightrider wrote:"Little Star" and it's two main protagonists are a part of the cautionary tale...How not to be...
I don't see any obvious cautionary tale in that there is a story of twists and turns rather than a single mistake that made them what they are. You could view the story as a sequence of situations that couldn't end well (though they end in just about the worst way possible), but that make sit hard to derive a clear moral, apart from something very general like 'murder is wrong.'
Nightrider wrote:
One can debate the complexity of inner workings of T and T all day long, but In the end our actions define who we are.
I think some importance must be assigned to intention - I had toyed with posting something on this in the thread about LTROI and evil, but I might as well post it here. To explain it with examples, I'm thinking of Arthur Miller's play
After the Fall, in which the narrator-protagonist Quentin constantly questions his motives and morality. None of his actions are, in themselves, heinous or even dishonourable, and none of them, even accidentally, had particularly grave consequences either way. Yet he is constantly tormented by moral issues - for example, his second wife attempts suicide and, although he calls an ambulance, etc and cannot be faulted as far as actions are concerned, he actually wanted her to die. Likewise, a friend of his commits suicide and at some level he is relieved because that spares him a series of problems - he had helped his friend, was entirely prepared and able to be of real assistance to him at a cost to himself, etc, but at some level was relieved he didn't have to. He realised that when his friend told him 'You're the only friend I have' he really meant 'Please be my friend' as he saw through his actions, which in themselves were perfectly honourable. Another relevant character in this play is a German woman who, as a girl, acted as a courier for the officers plotting to assassinate Hitler, and did so out of principle (and not to save her own skin because the war was lost), yet is full of self-doubt because she had been loyal before (though she had not participated in any atrocities) and feels survivor's guilt (all her plotter acquaintances were executed; she survived because none of them betrayed her). They are both perennially uncertain of their own good will.
In a similar vein, there's J. P. Sartre's
Le Mur - set during the Spanish Civil War, the protagonist is a Republican soldier captured by the Fascists and, after being summarily sentenced to death, he is given a chance to save his skin if he reveals the hiding place of a certain associate. He gives lies to his captors about it, not caring at this stage whether he lives or dies (and amused by imagining them combing in vain through the hiding place he'd told them), but by a twist of fate his associate had left his prior hiding place and had hidden where the prisoner had made up he was hiding. Thus, although he unambiguously didn't
deliberately betray his friend, as far as outside actions are concerned, he revealed his friend's hiding place (effectively handing him a death sentence) and saved his own skin.
Bli mig lite.
An amazing book! Glad to read your view on it John. Always a smile on my face after seing you words here on the forum. So much respect that you actually care enough to read and write to us. Probably your most devoted fans 
)
...It is that sense of letting go of your history or past and completely freeing yourself and that sense of empowerment that I felt empathy for with regards to Teresa.
