Despair

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  25. When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: 26. Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. 27. But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. 28. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. 29. And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. 30. And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last. GLOSS. Having spoken in parables concerning the increase of the teaching of the Gospel, He every where endeavours to spread it by preaching. Hence it is said, And he went through the cities and villages. THEOPHYLACT. For he did not visit the small places only, as they do who wish to deceive the simple, nor the cities only, as they who are fond of show, and seek their own glory; but as their common Lord and Father providing for all, He went about every where. Nor again did He visit the country towns only, avoiding Jerusalem, as if He feared the cavils of the lawyers, or death, which might follow therefrom; and hence he adds, And journeying towards Jerusalem. For where there were many sick, there the Physician chiefly shewed Himself. It follows, Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? GLOSS. This question seems to have reference to what had gone before. For in the parable which was given above, He had said, that the birds of the air rested on its branches, by which it might be supposed that there would be many who would obtain the rest of salvation. And because one had asked the question for all, the Lord does not answer him individually, as it follows, And he said unto them, Strive to enter in at the strait gate. BASIL. (in reg. ad int. 240.) For as in earthly life the departure from right is exceeding broad, so he who goes out of the path which leads to the kingdom of heaven, finds himself in a vast extent of error. (int. 241.). But the right way is narrow, the slightest turning aside being full of danger, whether to the right or to the left, as on a bridge, where he who slips on either side is thrown into the river.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. de Patre et duobus Filiis.) After that he had suffered in a foreign land all such things as the wicked deserve, constrained by the necessity of his misfortunes, that is, by hunger and want, he becomes sensible of what had been his ruin, who through fault of his own will had thrown himself from his father to strangers, from home to exile, from riches to want, from abundance and luxury to famine; and he significantly adds, But I am here perishing with hunger. As though he said; I am not a stranger, but the son of a good father, and the brother of an obedient son; I who am free and noble am become more wretched than the hired servants, sunk from the highest eminence of exalted rank, to the lowest degradation. GREGORY OF NYSSA. (ubi sup.) But he returned not to his former happiness before that coming to himself he had experienced the presence of overpowering bitterness, and resolved the words of repentance, which are added, I will arise. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) For he was lying down. And I will go, for he was a long way off. To my father, because he was under a master of swine. But the other words are those of one meditating repentance in confession of sin, but not yet working it. For he does not now speak to his father, but promises that he will speak when he shall come. You must understand then that this “coming to the father” must now be taken for being established in the Church by faith, where there may yet be a lawful and effectual confession of sins. He says then that he will say to his father, Father. AMBROSE. How merciful! He, though offended, disdains not to hear the name of Father. I have sinned; this is the first confession of sin to the Author of nature, the Ruler of mercy, the Judge of faith. But though God knows all things, He yet waits for the voice of thy confession. For with the mouth confession is made to salvation, since he lightens the load of error, who himself throweth the weight upon himself, and shuts out the hatred of accusation, who anticipates the accuser by confessing. In vain would you hide from Him whom nothing escapes; and you may safely discover what you know to be already known. Confess the rather that Christ may intercede for thee, the Church plead for thee, the people weep over thee: nor fear that thou wilt not obtain; thy Advocate promises pardon, thy Patron favour, thy Deliverer promises thee the reconciliation of thy Father’s affection. But he adds, Against heaven and before thee. CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) When he says, Before thee, he shews that this father must be understood as God. For God alone beholds all things, from Whom neither the simple thoughts of the heart can be hidden.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  We could find no way out of our common trouble, for we had been forbidden-and on pain of death-to trust, or to usc, our common humanity, that con frontation and acceptance which is all that can save another human being. Blacks know something about black cops, too, even those called Mister, in Philadelphia. They know that their presence on the force docsn 't change the force or the judges or the lawyers or the bondsmen or the jails. They know the black cop's mother and his father, they may have met the sister, and thcyknow the younger, or the older brother, who may be a bondsman, or a junkie, or a student, in limbo, at Yale. They know how much the black cop has to prove, and how limited THE DEVIL FINDS WORK arc his means of proving it: where I grew up, black cops were yet more terril)·ing than white ones. I think that it wasT. S. Eliot who observed that the people cannot bear very much reality. This may be true enough, as far as it goes, so much depending on what the word "people" brings to mind: I think that we bear a little more reality than we might wish. In any case, in order for a person to bear his lite, he needs a valid re-creation of that life, which is why, as Ray Charles might put it, blacks chose to sing the blues. This is why Raisin in the Sun meant so much to black people-on the stage: the film is another matter. In the theater, a current flowed back and forth between the audience and the actors: flesh and blood corroborating flesh and blood-as we say, tes tifYing. The filmed play, which is all, alas, that Raisin is on film, simply stayed up there, on that screen. The unimagina tive rigidity of the film locked the audience out of it. Fur thermore, the people in Raisin arc not the people one goes to the movies to sec. The root argument of the play is really tar more subtle than either its detractors or the bulk of its admirers were able to sec. The Defiant 011cs, on the other hand, is a fi lm, with people we arc accustomed to seeing in the movies. Well: all except one. The irreducible difficulty of this genuinely well-meaning film is that no one, clearly, was able to foresee what Poi tier would do with his role-nor was anyone, thereafter, able to undo it-and his performance, which lends the film its only real distinction, also, paradoxically, smashes it to pieces. There is no way to believe both Noah Cullen and the story.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  A generation of future lawyers grew up hoping to become the courageous Atticus, who at one point arms himself to protect the defenseless black suspect from an angry mob of white men looking to lynch him. Today, dozens of legal organizations hand out awards in the fictional lawyer’s name to celebrate the model of advocacy described in Lee’s novel. What is often overlooked is that the black man falsely accused in the story was not successfully defended by Atticus. Tom Robinson, the wrongly accused black defendant, is found guilty. Later he dies when, full of despair, he makes a desperate attempt to escape from prison. He is shot seventeen times in the back by his captors, dying ingloriously but not unlawfully. Walter McMillian, like Tom Robinson, grew up in one of several poor black settlements outside of Monroeville, where he worked the fields with his family before he was old enough to attend school. The children of sharecroppers in southern Alabama were introduced to “plowin’, plantin’, and pickin’ ” as soon as they were old enough to be useful in the fields. Educational opportunities for black children in the 1950s were limited, but Walter’s mother got him to the dilapidated “colored school” for a couple of years when he was young. By the time Walter was eight or nine, he became too valuable for picking cotton to justify the remote advantages of going to school. By the age of eleven, Walter could run a plow as well as any of his older siblings. Times were changing—for better and for worse. Monroe County had been developed by plantation owners in the nineteenth century for the production of cotton. Situated in the coastal plain of southwest Alabama, the fertile, rich black soil of the area attracted white settlers from the Carolinas who amassed very successful plantations and a huge slave population. For decades after the Civil War, the large African American population toiled in the fields of the “Black Belt” as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, dependent on white landowners for survival. In the 1940s, thousands of African Americans left the region as part of the Great Migration and headed mostly to the Midwest and West Coast for jobs. Those who remained continued to work the land, but the out-migration of African Americans combined with other factors to make traditional agriculture less sustainable as the economic base of the region. By the 1950s, small cotton farming was becoming increasingly less profitable, even with the low-wage labor provided by black sharecroppers and tenants. The State of Alabama agreed to help white landowners in the region transition to timber farming and forest products by providing extraordinary tax incentives for pulp and paper mills. Thirteen of the state’s sixteen pulp and paper mills were opened during this period.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  289 Marlowe creates many characters and, like Shakespeare, uses doubling—his characters play more than one part. Marlowe’s most famous play is Dr. Faustus. The story itself has its roots in biblical and classical literature. The plot may go all the way back to the story of Simon the Magician, found in the New Testament. The Simon story is a probable spinoff of the classical myth of Daedalus and Icarus. Faustus tells the tale of a learned scientist who sells his soul to the devil. Dr. Faustus is unsatis fi ed with his worldly accomplishments and wants to gain magical powers. Faustus conjures a devil, Mephistophilis, and commands him to offer Lucifer a deal— Faustus’s soul in exchange for 24 years of Mephistophilis’s service. Faustus travels throughout Europe with Mephistophilis. A major theme of the play is that the material is transient and, therefore, incapable of creating lasting happiness. When 24 years have passed, Faustus despairs of his salvation. At the play’s end, Faustus conjures up Helen of Troy, who symbolizes the destructive consequences of valuing the material above all else. The fl eeting nature of the happiness brought about by the material is emphasized by the structure of the play itself—the audience witnesses 24 years of material pleasure pass in 2 hours. Faustus’s last speech is Marlowe at his best: “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?” Faustus’s damnation can be read on a number of levels. One could argue that Marlowe’s reasons for damning Faustus are purely dramatic. The damnation serves as an impetus for Faustus’s compelling blank-verse speech at the end of the play. It is more dramatically impressive to have the main character dragged off to hell than to have him be redeemed. It is also possible, however, that Faustus does not repent because he cannot—he is addicted to sin. Faustus cannot break his habits. He is a sin junkie. “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.” 290 Lecture 42: Christopher Marlowe It is also possible, however, that Faustus does not repent because he cannot— he is addicted to sin. Faustus cannot break his habits. He is a sin junkie. “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.” ■ Bevington, Shakespeare, xxix–xliii, “The Drama before Shakespeare.” This section of Bevingtons’s “General Introduction” ends with a discussion of Marlowe. Kuriyama, Christopher Marlowe, A Renaissance Life. The reader should fi rst skim the book, then read selected chapters. Marlowe, Dr. Faustus. 1. In what ways can Dr. Faustus be seen as a critique of materialism? 2. How do Faustus’s travels allow Marlowe to discuss contemporary political issues? Questions to Consider Essential Reading

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  550 Lecture 82: Albert Camus Born into poverty, Camus made his name as a philosopher and novelist by the time he was 30. Though born and raised in poverty, he thrived in school. His father died less than a year after Albert’s birth, and he was raised in Algeria by his illiterate mother, who worked as a cleaning woman. Recognizing Albert’s potential, a teacher at his primary school gave him extra instruction and helped him win a scholarship to secondary school. At age 23, he completed a diploma thesis in philosophy and had already begun to display an astonishing variety of talents in politics, journalism, philosophy, drama, and literature. In 1942, Camus published his second novel and a philosophic essay that may be read as the key to the meaning of the novel. In “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus writes that the plight of Sisyphus exemplifi es absurdity—in the sense of profound irrationality—and, thus, prompts the question of whether or not life is worth living; in answer, Camus argues that a lifetime of struggle must be its own reward. In The Stranger, a man named Meursault kills another man for no apparent reason; he’s condemned to death not simply for murder but also for refusing to mourn the death of his mother. Emptied of hope at the end, he opens his heart to the indifference of the universe, happy only in the sense that Sisyphus is content with his resolution to face the futility of hope. Writing The Plague during the years of the Second World War, Camus implicitly treats the plague as a symbol of war. Although the word plague is often used as a metaphor for war, here it serves as a symbol of war. A metaphor is a lens through which we are able to see something in a particular way, but a symbol demands to be looked at fi rst on its own terms. By showing Albert Camus. United Press International; New York World-Telegram & Sun Newspaper.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Why? At seven years old I was certainly not a card-carrying Communist, and no one had told me not to recite "with liberty and justice for all." In fact, my father thought that I should recite it for safety's sake. But I knew that he believed it no more than I, and that his recital of the pledge had done nothing to con tribute to his safety, to say nothing of the tormented safety of his children. How did I know that? How does any child know that? I knew it fr om watching my father's f. . 1ce, my father's hours, days, and nights. I knew it fr om scrubbing the floors of the tenements in which we lived, knew it fr om the eviction no tices, knew it fr om the bitter winters when the landlords gave us no heat, knew it fr om my mother's f..1ce when a new child was bom, knew it by contrasting the kitchens in which my DARK DAYS 795 mother was employed with our kitchen, knew it fr om the kind of desperate miasma in which you grow up learning that you have been born to be despised. Forever. It remains impossible to describe the Byzantine labyrinth black people find themselves in when they attempt to save their children. A high school diploma, which had almost no meaning in my day, nevertheless suggested that you had been to school. But today it operates merely as a credential for jobs-for the most part nonexistent-that demand virtually nothing in the way of education. And the attendance certifi cate merely states that you have been through school without having managed to learn anything. The educational system of this country is, in short, designed to destroy the black child. It does not matter whether it de stroys him by stoning him in the ghetto or by driving him mad in the isolation of Harvard. And whoever has survived this crucible is a witness to the power of the Republic's edu cational system. It is an absolute wonder and an overwhelming witness to the power of the human spirit that any black person in this country has managed to become, in any way whatever, edu cated. The miracle is that some have stepped out of the rags of the Republic's definitions to assume the great burden and glory of their humanity and of their responsibility for one an other. It is an extraordinary achievement to be trapped in the dun geon of color and to dare to shake down its walls and to step out of it, leaving the jailhouse keeper in the rubble.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Consequently, Trina never received any financial aid or services from the state to compensate her for being violently raped by one of its “correctional” officers. In 2014, Trina turned fifty-two. She has been in prison for thirty-eight years. She is one of nearly five hundred people in Pennsylvania who have been condemned to mandatory life imprisonment without parole for crimes they were accused of committing when they were between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. It is the largest population of child offenders condemned to die in prison in any single jurisdiction in the world. — In 1990, Ian Manuel and two older boys attempted to rob a couple who were out for dinner in Tampa, Florida. Ian was thirteen years old. When Debbie Baigre resisted, Ian shot her with a handgun given to him by the older boys. The bullet went through Baigre’s cheek, shattering several teeth and severely damaging her jaw. All three boys were arrested and charged with armed robbery and attempted homicide. Ian’s appointed lawyer encouraged him to plead guilty, assuring him that he would be sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The lawyer didn’t realize that two of the charges against Ian were punishable with sentences of life imprisonment without parole. The judge accepted Ian’s plea and then sentenced him to life with no parole. Even though he was thirteen, the judge condemned Ian for living in the streets, for not having good parental supervision, and for his multiple prior arrests for shoplifting and minor property crimes. Ian was sent to an adult prison—the Apalachee Correctional Institution, one of the toughest prisons in Florida. The correctional staff at the prison processing center couldn’t find any uniforms that would fit a boy Ian’s size, so they cut six inches from the bottom of their smallest pants. Juveniles housed in adult prisons are five times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, so the staff at Apalachee put Ian, who was small for his age, in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement at Apalachee means living in a concrete box the size of a walk-in closet. You get your meals through a slot, you do not see other inmates, and you never touch or get near another human being. If you “act out” by saying something insubordinate or refusing to comply with an order given to you by a correctional officer, you are forced to sleep on the concrete floor of your cell without a mattress. If you shout or scream, your time in solitary is extended; if you hurt yourself by refusing to eat or mutilating your body, your time in solitary is extended; if you complain to officers or say anything menacing or inappropriate, your time in solitary is extended.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. The house of the devil is the world which lieth in wickedness, (1 John 5:19.) which he builds upon the earth, because those who obey him he drags down from heaven to earth; he builds without foundation, for sin has no foundation, standing not by its own nature, for evil is without substance, which yet whatever it is, grows up in the nature of good. But because the foundation is called so from fundus, we may not unfitly understand that fundamentum is placed here for fundus. As then he who is fallen into a well is kept at the bottom of the well, so the soul falling away remains stationary, as it were, at the very bottom, as long as it continues in any measure of sin. But not content with the sin into which it is fallen, while daily sinking into worse, it can find no bottom, as it were, in the well to which it may fix itself. But every kind of temptation increasing, both the really bad and the feignedly good become worse, until at last they come to everlasting punishment. Hence it follows, Against which the stream did beat vehemently. By the force of the stream may be understood the trial of the last judgment, when both houses being finished, the wicked shall go into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal. (Mat. 25:46.) CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. Or they build upon the earth without foundation, who upon the quicksand of doubt, which relates to opinion, lay the foundation of their spiritual building, which a few drops of temptation wash away.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The failure of the protest novel lies in its rejection of lite, the human being, the denial of his beauty, dread, power, in its insistence that it is his categori zation alone which is real and which cannot be transcended. Many Thousands Gone I T IS ONLY in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understand ing of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story. It is a story which otherwise has yet to be told and which no American is prepared to hear. As is the inevitable result of things unsaid, we find ourselves until today oppressed with a dangerous and reverberating silence; and the story is told, compulsively, in symbols and signs, in hieroglyphics; it is revealed in Negro speech and in that of the white majority and in their different frames of reference. The ways in which the Negro has aff ected the American psychology are betrayed in our popular culture and in our morality; in our estrange ment from him is the depth of our estrangement from our selves. We cannot ask: what do we really feel about him-such a question merely opens the gates on chaos. What we really feel about him is involved with all that we feel about every thing, about everyone, about ourselves. The story of the Negro in America is the story of America or, more precisely, it is the story of Americans. It is not a very pretty story: the story of a people is never very pretty. The Negro in America, gloomily referred to as that shadow which lies athwart our national lif e, is far more than that. He is a series of shadows, self -created, intertwining, which now we helplessly battle. One may say that the Negro in America does not really exist except in the darkness of our minds. This is why his history and his progress, his relationship to all other Americans, has been kept in the social arena. He is a social and not a personal or a hu man problem; to think of him is to think of statistics, slums, rapes, injustices, remote violence; it is to be confronted with an endless catal oguing of lo sses, gains, skirmishes; it is to feel virtuous, outraged, help less, as though his continuing status among us were somehow analogous to disease-cancer, perhaps, or tuberculosis- which must be checked, even though it cannot be cured. In this arena the black man acquires quite another aspect from that which he has in lif e. We do not know what to do with him 19 20 NOTES OF A NA TIVE SON in lif e; if he breaks our sociological and sentimental image of him we arc panic-s tricken and we feel ourselves betrayed.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  You very soon, without know ing it, give up all hope of communion. Black people, mainly, look down or look up but do not look at each other, not at you, and white people, mainly, look away. And the un iverse is simply a sounding drum; there is no way, no way whatever, so it seemed then and has some times seemed since, to get through a life, to love your wife and children, or your friends, or your mother and father, or to be loved. The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass, and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. And if one despairs-as who has not?-ofhuman love, God's love alone is left. But God-and I felt this even then, so long ago, on that tremendous floor, unwillingly-is white. And if His love was so great, and if He loved all His children, why were we, the blacks, cast down so DO WN AT THE CROSS far? Why? In spite of all I said thereafter, I found no answer on the floor-not that answer, anyway-and I was on the floor all night. Over me, to bring me "through," the saints sang and rejoiced and pray ed. And in the morning, when they raised me, they told me that I was "saved." Well, indeed I was, in a way, for I was utterly drained and exhausted, and released, for the first time, from all my guilty torm ent. I was aware then only of my relief. For many years, I could not ask myself why human relief had to be achieved in a fashion at once so pagan and so desperate-in a fashion at once so unspeakably old and so unutterably new. And by the time I was able to ask myself this question, I was also able to see that the principles governing the rites and customs of the churches in which I grew up did not differ from the prin ciples governing the rites and customs of other churches, white. The principles were Blindness, Loneliness, and Terror, the first principle necessarily and actively cultivated in order to deny the two others. I would love to believe that the prin ciples were Faith, Hope, and Charity, but this is clearly not so for most Christians, or for what we call the Christian world. I was saved. But at the same time, out of a deep, adolescent cunning I do not pretend to under stand, I realized immedi ately that I could not remain in the ch urch merely as another worshipper. I would have to give myself something to do, in order not to be too bored and find myself among all the wretched unsaved of the Avenue.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  We will need every ounce of moral stamina we can find. For everything is changing, from our notion of OTH ER ESS AYS politics to our notion of ourselves, and we are certain, as we begin history's strangest metamorphosis, to undergo the tor ment of being forced to surrender far more than we ever re alized we had accepted. Harper's, February 1961 The New Lost Generation T HIS is an extremely ditlicult record to assess. P.erhaps it !;>egins for me in 194 6, when my best friend tQoLhis li_fe. He was an incandescent � grd bo� Jof\n_y���ty-fo� whose future, it had seemed to all of us, would unfailingly be glo rious. He and I were Socialists, as were most of OJII: friends., and wear eamcd _ofQ6}Tktopia4 and-WQfked -toward it. We may have evinced more conviction than intelligence or skill, and more youthful arrogance than either, but we, neverthe less, had carried petitions about together, Jo ughLlandlords together, worked as laborers together, been fired together, an astarved together. -- - - - But for some time before his death, troubles graver than these had laid hold of my friend. Not only did the world stub bomly refuse his vision; it despised him for his vision, and scourged him for his color. Of course, it despised and scourged me, too, bur I was different from my friend in that it took rrt�arly no time to despise the world right back_and dec! de. th;tLLwould a<;:COJ!IP!i�h,_ i!l time, _ _ \vith patience and cunning and by becoming indestruqible, what I _ _might nci"t, ii1 the mo me -nt,- achieve by force �r persuasion. My friend did not despise anyone. He really thought that people were good, and that one had only to point out to them the right path in order to have them, at once, come flocking to it in loudly rejoicing droves. Before his death, we had quarreled very bitterly over this. I had lost my faith in politics, in right paths; if there were a right path, one might be sure (I informed him with great venom) that whoever was on it was simply asking to be stoned to death-by all the world's good people. I didn't give a damn, besides, what happened to the miserable, the unspeak ably petty world. There was probably not a handful of decent people in it. My friend looked very saddened by these original reflections. He said that it seemed to him that I had taken the road which ended in fascism, tyranny, and blood. So, I told him, have you. One fine day, you'll realize that people don't want to be better. So you'll have to make them better. And how do you think you'll go about it? 659 660 OTH ER ES SAYS He said nothing to this. He was sitting opposite me, in a booth, in a Greenwich Village diner. What about love? he asked me.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The sad truth is that he has probably taken refuge from this exceedingly disturbing question in the arbitrary decision that Negroes are just like everybody else . But, obviously, and especially in this context, this is no truer than the sporadically old-f ashioned notion that Negroes are inferior to everybody else : sporadically, because fashions in thought-in the breast and in the world-are subject to bewildering and shameful cycles. We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied belief s we thought were ours. And this is the danger of arriving at ar bitrary decisions in order to avoid the risks of thought, of striking arbitrary attitudes. If the attitude is a cover, what it is covering will inevitably be revealed. And exactly this, in fact, has happened so often that there is another, and very crucial difficulty encountered in interracial communication, in attempting to discover not JVhat, but JVho the Negro is. In the first place, popular belief to the contrary, it is not enough to have been born a Negro to understand the history of Negroes in America. And, whereas whites have a complicated social machinery and a natural-and culti vated-me ntal and spiritual laziness operating to keep far from them any sense of how Negroes live; Negroes, beginning with the natural desire to escape the humiliations, the downright persecutions, which Negroes endure, end, often enough, by despising all the other Negroes who have brought them to this condition-a condition which they spend incalculable amounts of energy blotting out of their conscious minds. But they, naturally enough, therefore, also hate all whites, who make the world as bleak for them as does a cloud before the sun. This universal hatred, turning inward and feeding on it self , is not the least ghastly aspect of the heritage of the Amer ican Negro, for all that it remains, by its nature, so hidden. It is, for one thing, the absolute death of the communication which might help to li berate both Negroes and whites. And all this, according to Mr. Furnas (and in the words of Abraham Lincol n) because of the "little woman who made this big war." Well, of course, not quite. Mr. Furnas, who clearly cannot stand the "little woman," makes the point that she was able to have such a tremendous effect because she was 612 OTH ER ESS AYS a mildly gifted woman who mirrored the assumptions of her time-and pl ace-so perfectly.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer: unbelief belongs to the intellect, whereas despair belongs to the appetitive power. Further, the intellect is concerned with universals, whereas the appetitive power is moved in relation to particulars, since appetitive movement is of the soul towards things which are in themselves particular. Now one who rightly appreciates something in its universal aspect may yet be wrong in his appetitive movement, owing to a faulty estimation of a particular instance of it. For one must pass from appreciation of the universal to desire for the particular through the medium of one ’ s estimate of the particular, as is said in 3 De Anima, text 58; just as one can infer a particular conclusion from a universal proposition only through an assumption about the particular. It is due to this circumstance that one who rightly believes something in universal terms may yet be wrong in his appetitive movement towards a particular thing, if his estimate of the particular has been corrupted by habit, or by passion. Thus the fornicator, who chooses fornication as something good for himself, has at the time a false estimate of the particular, even though he may retain an appreciation of the universal which is true as a belief, namely, that fornication is a mortal sin. Similarly, one who continues to believe truly, in universal terms, that the Church can remit sins, may still undergo the movement of despair through having a false estimate of the particular, namely, that he is in such a state that he cannot hope for pardon. In this way there can be despair without unbelief, just as there can be other mortal sins without unbelief. On the first point: an effect is removed not only if the first cause is removed, but also if a secondary cause is removed. Hence the movement of hope can be taken away not only by the removal of the universal estimate of faith, which is as it were the first cause of the certainty of faith, but also by the removal of the particular estimate, which is as it were a secondary cause. On the second point: it would be unbelief to think, in universal terms, that the mercy of God was not infinite. But he who despairs does not think thus. He supposes that there is no hope of divine mercy for himself, owing to some particular disposition. The answer to the third point is similar. The Novatians deny in universal terms that there is remission of sins in the Church. ARTICLE THREE Whether Despair is the Greatest of Sins1. It seems that despair is not the greatest of sins. For there can be despair without unbelief, as was said in the preceding article. Unbelief is the greatest of sins, since it corrupts the foundation of the spiritual edifice. Hence despair is not the greatest of sins.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  462 Lecture 69: Leo Tolstoy Vronsky will legally belong to Karenin. Though Dolly tries to persuade her to get a divorce, she won’t do it because it would mean giving up her son. Even after she agrees to request a divorce, Karenin refuses. Waiting in vain to hear from Karenin, she blames Vronsky for all her sufferings and convinces herself that he loves someone else. Though in the end she believes that by killing herself she can punish Vronsky and regenerate his love for her, she destroys him and leaves the reader with only the promise of a happy marriage between Kitty (whom Vronsky once rejected) and Levin. ■ Tolstoy, Anna Karenina , translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa V olokhonsky. Bayley, Tolstoy and the Novel. Wilson, Tolstoy. 1. Why does Tolstoy juxtapose the story of Anna Karenina with the story of Levin and Kitty? 2. Tolstoy takes his epigraph for Anna Karenina from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (12:19). How does this epigraph apply to the novel? Essential Reading Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  551 how pervasive and relentless a plague can be, Camus implicitly represents the effects of war. War furnishes the context for Camus’ novel. Starting it in the summer of 1941, when much of Europe was already occupied by German troops, Camus published The Plague in 1947, barely two years after the war ended. Explicitly comparing plagues to wars, the narrator says at one point that both can take us by surprise and both commonly last longer than we expect them to. Because the plague suggests that the universe is totally indifferent to humankind, or even malevolent, the novel asks whether or not human beings can do anything effective against it. The authorities’ fi rst steps seem only to aggravate the misery of the plague. In closing the gates, they turn all the town’s inhabitants into prisoners or exiles. In forbidding letters, which may spread infection, they cut off the inhabitants from virtually all communication with those they love. Rather than sounding anguished, the narrator seems to be the detached author of a “chronicle,” but his detachment seems only to intensify our pain. In treating the individual inhabitants of the city as potential victims of a common fate, the novel challenges the basic tenets of Modernism. Modernism spotlights the lonely desperation of the isolated self. This novel dramatizes a plight shared by all members of a community. In doing so, it offers each one at least the solace of knowing that he or she does not face the plague alone. Struggling against the plague, the doctor inspires others to join the battle against it, even as he rejects both despair and the solaces of Christianity. Rieux inspires others to join the battle against the plague. When a journalist named Rambert begs for permission to leave the town, the doctor tells him, “…we’re all involved in it and we’ve got to accept it as it is.” Later in the novel, having tried again and again to get himself smuggled out of Oran, Striving to heal in a time of plague, the doctor stands for the novel itself, which attempts to show that a common affl iction can lead us to work together against plagues of all kinds and recognize all that we share.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  557 But if nothing awaits us in the afterlife, the act of waiting is absurd. Philosophically, absurd means irrational—a nut that cannot be cracked. According to Jean-Paul Sartre, the founding father of French existentialism, waiting is absurd if the object waited for—God, revelation, or salvation— is suppressed. Though it teases us with references to Christian faith, the play represents human existence as a condition of radical uncertainty. At certain points, the play suggestively refers or alludes to Christianity and divinity. Didi tells Gogo at one point that they made “a kind of prayer” to Godot, who promised only to think it over. The tramps discuss the two thieves who were cruci fi ed along with Christ, one of whom was saved. But the references are made to signify despair as much as hope. Beckett told his fi rst director that he took the name Godot from godillot, the French word for hobnailed boot; the name may be Beckett’s subtle way of kicking us all in the teeth with the promise of a God who makes us wait forever. Because only one of the four evangelists says that one thief was saved, the tramps take no comfort from the Gospel story and instead propose to hang themselves from the one thing available: a tree. Caught between despair and hope, Didi and Gogo stand on the brink of uncertainty. Beckett took his cue for the play from a statement about the two thieves that he attributes to Augustine. “Do not despair: one of the two thieves was saved.” “Do not presume: one of the two thieves was damned.” Paradoxically, Didi and Gogo talk of hanging to keep their spirits up. Nietzsche once observed that the thought of suicide has enabled many a good man to get through the night. Didi tells Gogo that while they might have jumped from the Eiffel Tower 50 years ago, when they were “respectable,” they wouldn’t even be allowed to climb it now—as if suicide were a genteel pursuit.

• From Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition (2004)

  547 war and business. Mother Courage herself says that the religious pretexts for the Thirty Years’ War scarcely hide its commercial aims. But in commending the intelligence of those who make war for profi t, she fails to realize that no ordinary person can profi t from it. Though Brecht has carefully explained the lesson that he wanted his audiences to take from the play, it moves us precisely because it fails to do exactly what Brecht said he wanted it to do. Dismayed by reviews of the fi rst (Zurich) production that praised the “vitality” of Mother Courage, Brecht himself directed the Berlin production to stress her mercantile craftiness. She blindly believes in the profi t to be made from the war. In seeing only her sufferings (according to Brecht), the Berlin audience failed to see her crimes—her participation in war profi teering—and her failure to learn anything from the war. In blaming the audience for misunderstanding his title character, Brecht presses us to adopt the “intentionalist fallacy.” This is the belief that we can judge a work of literature according to the author’s intention. Normally, we have trouble getting access to that intention outside the work itself. Because Brecht wrote at length about his intentions, he challenges us to judge his stated aims against our own experience of the play. The sheer complexity of the title character resists any formula that would categorize her as a “battle fi eld hyena.” On the one hand, she deplores peace because it may ruin her business, and she won’t give linen to bind up the wounds of bleeding peasants. On the other hand, she’s dismayed by what the war does to her children. On the one hand, she fails to save the life of her son by haggling over the size of the bribe she offers for him, and she denies that she knows him when his body is brought to her. On the other hand, given that she may be killed if she admits knowing him, must we conclude that her “hardness” destroys her humanity, or does it subtly lead us into the unspeakable depths of her anguish? In Brecht’s Mother Courage, the title In writing about the Thirty Years’ War, Brecht seeks not only to show that war can devastate Germany but also to expose the unholy alliance between war and business. 548 Lecture 81: Bertolt Brecht fi gure herself becomes a battlefi eld where the struggle for profi t and the need to survive wage endless war with maternal solicitude. ■ Brecht, Collected Plays, vol. 5, edited by Ralph Manheim and John Willet. Hayman, Brecht: A Biography. Bentley, Seven Plays by Bertolt Brecht. 1. To what extent do Brecht’s plays refl ect his Marxism? 2. Explain why you agree or disagree with Brecht’s assessment of Mother Courage. Essential Reading Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The boy, for example, who had stolen the sweater did receive a six-month sentence. It seemed to me that all the sentences meted out that day were excessive; though, again, it seemed that all the people who were sentenced that day had made, or clearly were going to make, crime their career. This seemed to be the opin ion of the judge, who scarcely looked at the prisoners or lis tened to them; it seemed to be the opinion of the prisoners, who scarcely bothered to speak in their own behalf ; it seemed to be the opinion of the lawyers, state lawyers for the most part, who were defending them. The great impulse of the 11 4 NO TES OF A NA TIVE SON courtroom seemed to be to put these people where they could not be seen-and not because they were otfended at the crimes, unless, indeed, they were offended that the crimes were so petty, but because they did not wish to know that their society could be counted on to produce, probably in greater and greater numbers, a whole body of people for whom crime was the only possible career. Any society in evitably produces its criminals, but a society at once rigid and unstable can do nothing whatever to alleviate the poverty of its lowest members, cannot present to the hypothetical young man at the crucial moment that so-w ell-a dvertised right path. And the fact, perhaps, that the French are the earth's least sentimental people and must also be numbered among the most proud aggravates the plight of their lowest, youngest, and unluckiest members, fi>r it means that the idea of reha bilitation is scarcely real to them. I confess that this attitude on their part raises in me sentiments of exasperation, ad miration, and despair, revealing as it does, in both the best and the worst sense, their renowned and spectacular hard headedness. Finally our case was called and we rose. We gave our names. At the point that it developed that we were American the proceedings ceased, a hurried consultation took place between the judge and what I took to be several lawyers. Someone called out for an interpreter. The arresting officer had forgot ten to mention our nationalities and there was, therefore, no interpreter in the court. Even if our French had been better than it was we would not have been allowed to stand trial without an interpreter. Before I clearly understood what was happening, I was handcuffed again and led out of the court room. The trial had been set back for the 27th of December. I have sometimes wondered if I would ever have got out of prison if it had not been for the older man who had been arrested for the mysterious petty larceny.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Trina had filed a civil suit against the officer who raped her, and the jury awarded her a judgment of $62,000. The guard appealed, and the Court reversed the verdict because the correctional officer had not been permitted to tell the jury that Trina was in prison for murder. Consequently, Trina never received any financial aid or services from the state to compensate her for being violently raped by one of its “correctional” officers. In 2014, Trina turned fifty-two. She has been in prison for thirty-eight years. She is one of nearly five hundred people in Pennsylvania who have been condemned to mandatory life imprisonment without parole for crimes they were accused of committing when they were between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. It is the largest population of child offenders condemned to die in prison in any single jurisdiction in the world. — In 1990, Ian Manuel and two older boys attempted to rob a couple who were out for dinner in Tampa, Florida. Ian was thirteen years old. When Debbie Baigre resisted, Ian shot her with a handgun given to him by the older boys. The bullet went through Baigre’s cheek, shattering several teeth and severely damaging her jaw. All three boys were arrested and charged with armed robbery and attempted homicide. Ian’s appointed lawyer encouraged him to plead guilty, assuring him that he would be sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The lawyer didn’t realize that two of the charges against Ian were punishable with sentences of life imprisonment without parole. The judge accepted Ian’s plea and then sentenced him to life with no parole. Even though he was thirteen, the judge condemned Ian for living in the streets, for not having good parental supervision, and for his multiple prior arrests for shoplifting and minor property crimes. Ian was sent to an adult prison—the Apalachee Correctional Institution, one of the toughest prisons in Florida. The correctional staff at the prison processing center couldn’t find any uniforms that would fit a boy Ian’s size, so they cut six inches from the bottom of their smallest pants. Juveniles housed in adult prisons are five times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, so the staff at Apalachee put Ian, who was small for his age, in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement at Apalachee means living in a concrete box the size of a walk-in closet. You get your meals through a slot, you do not see other inmates, and you never touch or get near another human being.