Guilt

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 Collected Essays (1998)

  On the basis of the work being considered, he is the only man here entitled to be called a novelist at all; and this is not because his novel indicates any very impressive talent or because of any startling insights, but merely because there is at work in Mr. Brand a more sensitive intelligence and a modest honesty and the ability to write a sentence. His story, as a matter of fact, is concerned not so much with Negroes as with the relationship between an ille gitimate adolescent and his strong-willed father; on this level it is more controlled but no more illumi nating than most sim ilar studies produced in our time; and on this level it is not worth much discussion. The incident of the Manh urst family, which adds a kind of violent strength, also tears what there is of the novel to pieces, since it never quite fits in and it diverts rather than broadens our sympathy. To be sure, this is not so much Mr. Brand's defection as it is the inherited response of OTH ER ES SAYS our generation, which is inclined to see in every Negro a fu rious call to arms. Here, nevertheless, Mr. Brand's novel has a valuable ele ment, one which might one day be explored with some profit: his protagonist, the young Albert, battles on the side of the Negroes with no very clear aim and only because he is guilt ridden and anc horless, rejected from that white society in which he was born and with which he struggles to get into step. But his acceptance of the Manhursts is a desperate, tran sient act; it is neither noble nor liberal, it is not "American." His friendship with the Negro family may continue or it may not; in any case, both the battle and the identification have been personal. The Manh ursts do not represent a problem to him, their blackness or whiteness is not his concern. They are human beings to whom he has responded, who have afforded him a shelter for a time.

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

  452 Lecture 67: Charles Dickens Pip’s visits to Satis House fi ll him with dreams of great expectations. Exposure to the wealth of Miss Havisham and the beauty of Estella make Pip a fi gure of the family romance. He feels alienated from his tyrannical sister and intellectually superior to his foster father, Joe, a blacksmith. He is led to believe that his visits to Satis House may make his fortune. Even though he has been told to expect nothing from Miss Havisham after he leaves her house, he thinks that she is the mysterious benefactor who will enable him to become a gentleman. With her, he behaves “naturally” like a prince. He also imagines that she must intend him to marry her adopted daughter, the beautiful Estella. What Miss Havisham offers Pip, however, is not the promise of a dream come true but the prospect of a nightmare. Jilted by her lover years ago, she herself lives in a museum of frustrated expectations. She lives in a great dark house where the clocks are all stopped to mark the moment when her wedding was called off. She still wears her now-faded wedding dress and keeps the wedding cake—all covered with cobwebs. Miss Havisham takes a malicious delight in frustrating the expectations of others. She manipulates Sarah Pocket in particular, making her jealous of Pip’s expectations. On his fi rst visit to Satis House, Pip overhears her telling Estella to break his heart. Just as Miss Havisham is the dark, vengeful double of the beautiful Estella, Magwitch is the criminal double of the would-be innocent Pip. Pip steals on behalf of Magwitch, who rewards him. He steals food and a fi le to aid Magwitch’s escape. He later takes money from a stranger sent to him by Magwitch. He has murderous impulses that he never admits—even to himself. During his fi rst visit to Satis House, he hallucinates the hanging of Miss Havisham, whom he unconsciously sees as the witch guarding the princess. He feels guilty of the brutal attack on his sister. She was struck by the leg iron that Just as Miss Havisham is the dark, vengeful double of the beautiful Estella, Magwitch is the criminal double of the would-be innocent Pip. 453 Magwitch removed by means of the fi le that Pip stole for him. The attacker has grati fi ed Pip’s unspoken wish to punish his sister for her abusive treatment of him. Pip must eventually learn that his dream of rising to wealth and becoming a gentleman cannot be separated from the nightmare of Miss Havisham’s quest for revenge or from the taint of criminal behavior. ■ Dickens, Great Expectations, edited by Edgar Rosenberg. Lucas, Charles Dickens: The Major Novels. Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Kaplan, Dickens: A Biography. 1. What prefi gures the revelation of Pip’s benefactor? 2. Which of the two endings of the novel do you prefer, and why? Essential Reading Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Although everyone in a family may pitch in to help care for a vulnerable child, the major burden of care usually falls on the mother, which can set up serious resentments. Whereas other family members may understand intellectually that their mother or wife is occupied with necessary tasks of caregiving, many can’t help but resent her preoccupation with the needy child. Life grows more stressful for everyone. The father may work harder to bring in extra money for the child’s care. Siblings quietly decide not to ask Mommy for help that may really be needed. Everyone grapples with feelings of loss, disappointment, resentment, or guilt that this child is not, and in many instances never will be, like other children. These feelings arise not only at the child’s birth but repeatedly as the child grows and continues to fall behind other children’s attainments. I have met many people who could not handle these strains and whose divorce was directly caused by the child’s frailty. For example, one young couple carried their autistic son to every medical center in America hoping to find a cure. Finally, they decided to institutionalize him and then divorced several months later. She explained, “Every time we looked at each other we saw Jason, and we felt so guilty we couldn’t stand it.” One of the women in our comparison group, Debbie, was born with a rare muscular disorder that required daily massage and physical therapy. Her parents and siblings took turns administering her treatment all the time she was growing up. She learned to walk at age five using leg braces and crutches, learned to talk clearly after years of speech therapy, and attended public schools accompanied by a personal aide. She’d elected to attend a small, midwestern college that was her father’s alma mater. Her parents had thoroughly investigated the disability program and access at the college and Debbie’s mother stayed on campus for the first three months of school to help set up living arrangements and special assistance services. They’d been understanding and supportive of her slow course through college, punctuated by several extended returns home for additional treatment. Prominently displayed in Debbie’s living room was a large photograph of herself in cap and gown surrounded by her smiling family. She’s now partially self-supporting as a technical writer. When I interviewed Debbie at age thirty-eight, she was living in a specially equipped apartment in the lower part of her parents’ home.

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

  I answer that, The same is not to be said of their own goods which bishops may possess, and of ecclesiastical goods. For they have real dominion over their own goods; wherefore from the very nature of the case they are not bound to give these things to others, and may either keep them for themselves or bestow them on others at will. Nevertheless they may sin in this disposal by inordinate affection, which leads them either to accumulate more than they should, or not to assist others, in accordance with the demands of charity; yet they are not bound to restitution, because such things are entrusted to their ownership. On the other hand, they hold ecclesiastical goods as dispensers or trustees. For Augustine says (Ep. clxxxv ad Bonif.): “If we possess privately what is enough for us, other things belong not to us but to the poor, and we have the dispensing of them; but we can claim ownership of them only by wicked theft.” Now dispensing requires good faith, according to 1 Cor. 4:2, “Here now it is required among the dispensers that a man be found faithful.” Moreover ecclesiastical goods are to be applied not only to the good of the poor, but also to the divine worship and the needs of its ministers. Hence it is said (XII, qu. ii, can. de reditibus): “Of the Church’s revenues or the offerings of the faithful only one part is to be assigned to the bishop, two parts are to be used by the priest, under pain of suspension, for the ecclesiastical fabric, and for the benefit of the poor; the remaining part is to be divided among the clergy according to their respective merits.” Accordingly if the goods which are assigned to the use of the bishop are distinct from those which are appointed for the use of the poor, or the ministers, or for the ecclesiastical worship, and if the bishop keeps back for himself part of that which should be given to the poor, or to the ministers for their use, or expended on the divine worship, without doubt he is an unfaithful dispenser, sins mortally, and is bound to restitution. But as regards those goods which are deputed to his private use, the same apparently applies as to his own property, namely that he sins through immoderate attachment thereto or use thereof, if he exceeds moderation in what he keeps for himself, and fails to assist others according to the demands of charity.

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

  Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above; shewing that this judgment was accomplished not in the common and natural order of events, but mysteriously. But lest we should think that Pilate was altogether free from blame, He adds, Therefore he that hath delivered Me unto thee hath the greater sin. But if it was given, thou wilt say, neither he nor they were liable to blame. Thou speakest foolishly. Given means permitted; as if He said, He hath permitted this to be done; but ye are not on that account free from guilt. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. cxvi) So He answers. When He was silent, He was silent not as guilty or crafty, but as a sheep: when He answered, He taught as a shepherd. Let us hear what He saith; which is that, as He teacheth by His Apostle, There is no power but of God; (Rom. 13:1) and that he that through envy delivers an innocent person to the higher power, who puts to death from fear of a greater power, still sins more than that higher power itself. God had given such power to Pilate, as that he was still under Cæsar’s power: wherefore our Lord says, Thou couldest have no power at all against Me, i. e. no power however small, unless it, whatever it was, was given thee from above. And as that is not so great as to give thee complete liberty of action, therefore he that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater sin. He delivered Me into thy power from envy, but thou wilt exercise that power from fear. And though a man ought not to kill another even from fear, especially an innocent man, yet to do so from envy is much worse. Wherefore our Lord does not say, He that delivered Me unto thee hath the sin, as if the other had none, but, hath the greater sin, implying that the other also had some. THEOPHYLACT. He that delivered Me unto thee, i. e. Judas, or the multitude. When Jesus had boldly replied, that unless He gave Himself up, and the Father consented, Pilate could have had no power over Him, Pilate was the more anxious to release Him; And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release Him. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. cxvi) Pilate had sought from the first to release: so we must understand, from thence, to mean from this cause, i. e. lest he should incur guilt by putting to death an innocent person. 19:12–1612. But the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar’s friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Cæsar. 13. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha.

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

  22 Lecture 4: The Deuteronomistic History Robert Alter uses the terms “historicized prose fi ction” and “ fi ctionalized history” to describe the Hebrew Bible. This does not mean that there are no historical facts embedded in the text. But the text falls somewhere between what we moderns would categorize as “history” and “fi ction.” Alter compares the writer(s) of the “David stories” to Shakespeare’s approach to Henry V . A similar comparison can be made with “Homer’s” relationship to his material. The recognition that the Deuteronomistic History is a literary work, compiled and arranged with an overarching “take” on monarchy and God’s hand in history, has important implications for our understanding of the monarchy and of the roles of the most famous kings, as we can see in the story of David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11–12). David is not admirable in this part of his story. In direct contradiction of a king’s military duty, David is idle at home while his troops are off at war. In direct contradiction of a king’s civic duty, David seduces the wife of one of his soldiers, then arranges for the soldier’s death. David sees Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, bathing on the roof of her house and summons her to him. We are not told what Bathsheba wants or whether David gives her any choice. The only time she “speaks” in this passage is to send David a message that she is pregnant. David’s fi rst reaction is to try to palm the child off as her husband’s; when that doesn’t work, he arranges for Uriah’s death and marries Bathsheba himself. David summons Uriah back from the battle fi eld and tells him to go home and visit his wife. Uriah honors the tradition that a soldier consecrated for war should not engage in sexual relations and, thus, does not see Bathsheba. David then has Uriah placed in the front line of battle, where he is killed. The Lord sends the prophet Nathan to rebuke David. Nathan uses a parable about a poor man with one ewe-lamb to make David realize his guilt. A rich man with many fl ocks took the poor man’s one lamb away and slaughtered The idea that God rewards good behavior and punishes bad underlies a conception of the nature of good and bad fortune, often called the Deuteronomistic Theology.

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

  457 He’s an isolated fi gure who nonetheless reveals himself to the police investigator. When his mother and sister come from the country to see him, he realizes that he can’t talk to them at all. But by questioning Raskolnikov about his article, the police inspector (Por fi ry) nearly gets him to admit his guilt. When Por fi ry asks Raskolnikov if he considers himself one of the “extraordinary” people who have the right to break laws, Raskolnikov says it’s possible. When Por fi ry asks Raskolnikov if he himself would kill and rob, Raskolnikov says only that he would not tell Porfi ry if he did. Suffering throughout the novel, Raskolnikov learns to love. Exemplifying the psychology of guilt as Dostoevsky conceives it, Raskolnikov’s conscience demands that he be punished for his crime. He feels keenly the sufferings of others. He tries to comfort the drunken young girl that he sees on a bench early in the novel. He befriends the shiftless Marmeladov and his destitute family by giving them most of his money. His generosity to the Marmeladov family wins the love of Sonia, Marmeladov’s daughter, who has been supporting the family with her earnings as a harlot, but who sets out to keep Raskolnikov spiritually, physically, and emotionally alive. Raskolnikov cannot bear to see his sister, Dounia, sell her soul for a loveless marriage. To him, such a marriage is no better than harlotry. Raskolnikov steers Dounia away from the exploitative Luzhin and into a marriage with his own friend Razumikhin. Sonia fi nally offers the despairing Raskolnikov the gift of faith. She gives him a copy of the New Testament brought to her by the murdered Lizaveta. Reading together the story of Christ’s raising of Lazarus, she and Raskolnikov experience a kind of epiphany. Sonia commits herself to follow Raskolnikov wherever he goes. She follows him to prison in Siberia. In the light of her devotion, he sees “the dawn of a renewed future.” ■ Suffering throughout the novel, Raskolnikov learns to love. Exemplifying the psychology of guilt as Dostoevsky conceives it, Raskolnikov’s conscience demands that he be punished for his crime. 458 Lecture 68: Fyodor Dostoevsky Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment , translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa V olokhonsky. Frank, Dostoevsky, 5 vols. Scanlan, Dostoevsky the Thinker. 1. How does the Marmeladov family shape the character of Raskolnikov? 2. Why doesn’t Raskolnikov spend the old woman’s money instead of just hiding it away? Essential Reading Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider

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

  464 Lecture 70: Mark Twain his abusive father and the “sivilizing” constraints of life with the Widow Douglas by paddling off in a canoe down the Mississippi River. When Huck meets Jim (Miss Watson’s slave) on an island in the river and learns that he has run away, the two decide to ride a raft together down the river. They plan to ride the river down to Cairo, Illinois, and from there, take a steamboat up the Ohio River to the free states. Though Jim is eager to reach Cairo, Huck is conscience-stricken at the thought that he is aiding and abetting a thief by helping Jim to run away. Bound to the assumptions of slave-holding, Huck’s “conscience” tells him that a slave is a piece of property. But Huck’s heart beats in sympathy for Jim. By the time Twain started writing Huckleberry Finn, he was already well known as a humorist. After schooling in Hannibal, Missouri, and a succession of jobs, including riverboat piloting, he focused his efforts on journalism and humor. Moving to San Francisco in 1864, he started writing humorous sketches for literary weeklies. A year later, Twain began to make his name with a nationally circulated story called “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” From 1867 to the early 1870s, Twain burnished his growing reputation with a succession of mostly humorous books. On a trip to Europe and the Middle East, he gathered material for an irreverent book called Innocents Abroad. He then produced a humorous book about the West and a satirical novel. Roughing It is a droll re-creation of his years in the Nevada Territory. He wrote The Gilded Age, a satirical novel, with Charles Dudley Warner. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , Twain reshaped boyhood memories in ways that refl ect a wide variety of literary infl uences. Tom and Huck reenact the relation between the fantasizing knight and his down-to-earth squire in Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Twain also draws on his own earlier burlesques of Sunday-school stories about the Good Boy and the Bad Boy. Huckleberry Finn differs in many ways from Tom Sawyer. While the dangers in Tom’s adventures are largely imaginary, Huck is truly in danger. Tom’s adventures are quixotic and playful—not at all risky. Huck risks losing his life on the river and defi es the law by helping a slave run away.

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

  465 While Tom Sawyer is narrated in standard American English, Huck Finn is narrated by Huck himself—in ungrammatical vernacular. Huck’s vernacular speech helps to establish his own kind of tough-minded authority, which disdains artifi ce of any kind. Huck comes across as a narrator who knows the difference between truth and lies. Nevertheless, Huck himself is caught up in duplicity. In some ways, he plays the role of Don Quixote to Jim’s Sancho Panza. He tells fabulous stories while Jim keeps a grip on the facts. He tries to make Jim believe that Jim simply dreamed of their being separated in the fog, when in fact they were separated. Never telling Jim about his misgivings, Huck makes him think that he wholeheartedly backs Jim’s quest for freedom. The duplicity persists because the two runaways miss the gateway to freedom. Passing Cairo, they miss the chance to catch a steamboat to freedom for Jim. They ride further south—into a world of cruelty, hypocrisy, and violence. Huck’s sojourn with the Grangerford family exemplifi es this world. Separated from Jim by an accident on the river, Huck is taken in by an aristocratic family and is treated kindly in a genteel house. But the family is caught up in a murderous feud with the Shepherdson clan. The reappearance of Tom Sawyer turns Huck’s agonizing struggle to free a runaway slave into a cruel joke. Reunited with Jim again, Huck has a fresh struggle with his conscience. When Jim is caught and turned over to a farmer who expects a reward, Huck feels duty bound to write a note to Miss Watson Image from Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. Photo by The Teaching Company.

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

  468 Lecture 71: Thomas Hardy By the time he started writing Tess, Hardy had established himself as a novelist of rural English life. Schooled in Dorset, Hardy studied and practiced architecture from age 16 to his early 30s. He moved to London at age 22. There he worked for a fi rm specializing in restoring Gothic churches. But the success of his novels enabled him to become a full-time writer in his native Dorset. After writing poems about Dorset that failed to get into print, he tried writing novels. By 1883, the great success of such novels as Far from the Madding Crowd enabled him to return to his native town of Dorchester, Dorset. There he started writing Tess in 1888. Hardy’s claim that Tess is “pure” prompts us to consider just what this term means in light of her experiences and actions. She is hardly pure in a conventional sense because she loses her virginity to a man that she later serves as a mistress, then murders. As the accident with the horse reveals, Tess’s life is governed not by divine providence but by the cruel indifference of fate. As already noted, the irresponsibility of Tess’s parents exposes her to an accident on the road at night. By an unbroken chain of causes, one accident leads to another. Yet Tess struggles to be self-reliant. Instead of asking for help when she learns that her father cannot drive the wagon, she volunteers to drive it herself. When the horse is killed, she assumes responsibility for the accident. In spite of the fairytale elements in Tess’s story, she has no protector. The only prince in her life is a nag named Prince who is killed. Without knowing anything of the d’Urberville family, her parents send her off to claim kinship with them. When Tess comes home to report that she has met only Alec, her mother urges her to go back in hopes that Tess can use her sexual favors to make him propose. Though she returns to the d’Urbervilles only to earn the money to buy a new horse, she loses her virginity there. Contrary to what some critics say, Tess is seduced, not raped. Hardy makes it plain that she is the victim of “seduction pure and simple.”

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

  THE FULFILLMENT OF THIS PETITIONConcerning the second consideration of this petition (viz., how it may be fulfilled), it must be known that there are two factors in sin: the fault by which God is offended, and the punishment which is due because of this fault. But the sin is taken away in contrition which goes with the purpose to confess and make satisfaction: “I said: I will confess against myself my injustice to the Lord. And Thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my sin” One has no need to fear then, because for the remission of a fault contrition with a purpose to confess is sufficient. But one might say: “If sin is thus taken away when a man is contrite, of what necessity is the priest?” To this it must be said that God does forgive the sin in contrition, and eternal punishment is changed to temporal, but nevertheless the debt of temporal punishment remains. If one should die without confession, not out of contempt for it but prevented from it, one would go to purgatory, where the punishment, as St. Augustine says, is very great. When you confess, the priest absolves you of this punishment in virtue of the keys to which you subject yourself in confession. When, therefore, one has confessed, something of this punishment is taken away; and similarly when he has again confessed, and it could be that after he has confessed many times, all would be remitted. The successors of the Apostles found another mode of remission of this punishment, namely, the good use of indulgences, which have their force for one living in the state of grace, to the extent that is claimed for them and as indicated by the grantor. That the Pope can bring this about, is sufficiently evident. Many holy men have accomplished much good, and they have not greatly sinned, at least not mortally; and these good deeds were done for the common use of the Church. Likewise the merits of Christ and the Blessed Virgin are, as it were, in a treasury; and from it the Supreme Pontiff and they who are by him permitted can dispense these merits where it is necessary. Thus, therefore, sins are taken away not only as regards their guilt by contrition, but also as regards punishment for them in confession and through indulgences. WHAT MUST WE DO?Concerning the third consideration of this petition, it must be known that on our part we are required to forgive our neighbor the offenses which he commits against us. Thus, we say: “As we forgive those who trespass against us.” Otherwise God would not forgive us: “Man to man reserveth anger: and doth he seek remedy of God?” “Forgive and you shall be forgiven.” Therefore, only in this petition is there a condition when it says: “As we forgive those who trespass against us.” If you do not forgive, you shall not be forgiven.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  One is always disproving the accusation in action as futile as it is inevitable. I had not seen this friend-who could scarcely, any longer, be called a friend-in many years. I was brighter, or more driven than he-not my fault!-and, though neither of us knew it then, our friendship really ended during my ministry and was deader than my hope of heaven by the time I left the pulpit, the church, and home. Hindsight indicates, obviously, that this particular rupture, which was, of necessity, exceed ingly brutal and which involved, after all, the deliberate re pudiation of everything and everyone that had given me an identity until that moment, must have lef t some scars. The current of my lif e meant that I did not see this person very often, but I was always terribly guilty when I did. I was guilty NO NAME IN THE STRE ET because I had nothing to say to him, and at one time I had told him everything, or nearly everything. I was guilty because he was just another post-office worker, and we had dreamed such tremendous futures for ourselves. I was guilty because he and his family had been very nice to me during an awful time in my lif e and now none of that meant anything to me. I was guilty because I knew, at the bottom of my heart, that I judged this unremarkable colored man very harshly, far more harshly than I would have done if he were white, and I knew this to be unjust as well as sinister. I was furious because he thought my lif e was easy and I thought my lif e was hard, and I yet had to see that by his lights, certainly, and by any or dinary yardstick, my lif e was enviable compared to his. And if, as I kept saying, it was not my fault, it was not his fault, either. You can certainly see why I tended to avoid my old school chum. But I called him, of course. I thought that he probably needed money, because that was the only thing, by now, that I could possibly hope to give him. But, no. He, or his wife, or a relative, had read the Leonard Lyons column and knew that I had a suit I wasn't wearing, and-as he remembered in one way and I in quite another-he was just my size. Now, for me, that suit was drenched in the blood of all the crimes of my country. If I had said to Leonard, somewhat melodramatically, no doubt, that I could never wear it again, I was, just the same, being honest. I simply could not put it on, or look at it, without thinking of Martin, and Martin's end, of what he had meant to me, and to so many. I could not put it on without a bleak, pale, cold wonder about the future.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I was excited by a heavily built man with thick slicked-back hair, and was showing an implausible degree of interest in the picture hanging just by his right shoulder, when the bell went again. We both turned, though he looked away at once while I, seeing Charles shuffle in, felt my mood lighten with friendliness and a flicker of guilt. I had been neglecting the old boy, and seeing him now in this noisy, confusing place recalled my responsibilities. I went to help him. ‘Ah … ah …’, he was saying, looking regretfully to left and right. ‘Charles! It’s William.’ He took my arm at once. ‘I know perfectly well who it is. What an orgy … Good heavens.’ He gave off, close to, the elderly smell of sweat and shaving-soap. ‘We almost didn’t come,’ he admitted, with what I took for humorous grandeur. ‘I’m very glad you did. I haven’t seen you for ages.’ He was prodding his other hand behind him, like someone searching for the armhole of a coat. ‘This is Norman,’ he explained, as another man, thus encouraged, came forward from his shadow. ‘The grocer’s boy.’ Norman reached round Charles to shake my hand. ‘I’m the grocer’s boy,’ he confirmed, very happy, it seemed, to be remembered by his juvenile role. As he was a man in his mid-fifties I found it hard to place him at first. ‘I used to work in the grocer’s in Skinner’s Lane,’ he said, smiling, nodding, ‘years and years ago, when Lord Nantwich first moved in.’ I cottoned on. ‘And then you joined the merchant navy and sailed all over the world.’ He smiled again, as at the successful recitation of an old tale. ‘I left the service some time ago now, though.’ Service, one could see, was something he was proud of, and his whole manner spoke of it. He was soberly dressed, in an ill-fitting grey suit and shiny casual shoes of a kind that had been fashionable in my earliest childhood (my father had worn something very similar on family holidays). The suit, which was broad in the shoulders and stood off the neck, was the sort of thing that students bought in second-hand shops, and on one or two of the modish boys in this room could have had a certain chic. Norman’s wearing of it was without irony and he reminded me, as the man in the lavatory had reminded Charles forty years before, of a College scout, habituated, stunted by service. His face shone. ‘Norman dropped in this afternoon,’ said Charles. ‘Quite amazing. I hadn’t seen him for over thirty years.’ ‘I sent him a picture of me from Malaya, though.’ ‘Yes, he sent me a picture from Malaya.’ ‘I was surprised Lord Nantwich recognised me, even so.’

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  All else having failed, the aged priest is called from his retreat to perform the exorcism: the young priest is his assistant. The strain of ex orcising Satan proves too much for the aged priest, who has a heart attack, and dies. The young priest, still mad with guilt concerning the death of his mother, taunts Satan, daring him to stop picking on helpless little girls, and enter him. Satan docs this with an eagerness which suggests that he, too, is weary of little girls and hurls the priest through the bedroom window, to his death, and, also, presumably, to eternal dam nation; as to this last point, however, I really cannot be clear. The young priest is tormented by guilt, and especially in reference to his mother, throughout the film: and Satan ruth lessly plays on this, sometimes speaking (through Regan) in the mother's voice, and sometimes incarnating her. And Satan also plays on the guilt of Regan's mother-her guilt concern ing her tailed marriage, her star status, her ambition, her re lation to her daughter, her essentially empty and hypocritical and totally unanch ored lif e: in a word, her emancipation. This uneasy, and even terrified guilt is the subtext of The Exorcist, which cannot, however, exorcise it since it never confronts it. But this confrontation would have been to confront the CHAPTER THREE 571 devil. The film terrified me on two levels. The first, as I have tried to indicate, involved my deliberate attempt to leave my self open to it, and to the extent, indeed, of re-living my ad olescent holy-roller terrors. It was very important for me not to pretend to have surmounted the pain and terror of that time of my lif e, very important not to pretend that it lef t no mark on me. It marked me forever. In some measure I encountered the abyss of my own soul , the labyrinth of my destiny: these could never be escaped, to challenge these imponderables being, precisely, the heavy, tattered glory of the gift of God. To encounter oneself is to encounter the other: and this is love. If I know that my soul trembles, I know that yours does, too: and, if I can respect this, both of us can live. Neither of us, truly, can live without the other: a statement which would not sound so banal if one were not endl essly compelled to repeat it, and, further, beli eve it, and act on that belief My friend was quite right when he said, So, 1ve mttst be ca rejttl lest 1ve lose our faith- and become possessed.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  Often, of course, I had no idea, and he would shake his blind head and pretend to be angry. And really he did teach me to see for myself: I did start to take notice. I remember starting to imitate his expressions of aesthetic pleasure—a rather feminine and troubling language for a fifteen-year-old boy, this charmant and exquis and ravissant, all in French, which was the language of his kind." I nodded slowly with recognition—how music has demanded something similar, like the language of endearments which I never voiced except inside my head. "Well, it was a lesson in real life, and I discovered I needed it, I wanted to come back for more. He was my best teacher, not the brave monks who actually taught us and looked after us through those terrible years . . ." I felt great wide-eyed questions welling up, about what it had been like; and then shamefaced doubts about what could tolerably be asked by someone who knew nothing about it, who had never known anything like it. "Your parents weren't worried about your spending so much time with him?" was all I prudishly came up with. "No, no. It was they who arranged for me to go." I thought Paul was cross with me for a moment, then saw that perhaps it was only with himself. "Put simply: when Orst became too infirm to stay at the Villa he had moved back to his sister's house—now, as you know, our Museum. I'm not sure when he contracted the pox. You probably know there was a great spread of it during the war—it may have been soon after he returned from England, in 1919. I suspect the tertiary stage was very delayed, and when it came it was clearly very prolonged. Anyway, Delphine took him in: she was very tough and capable and . . . unsentimental. That would have been in about 1930. She looked after him with her old servant, who was married to the cook—dear old people. The paintings and most of the contents of the Villa were brought over and stored, a lot of them in this house that we're in now, which had been left to Delphine and which stood unused for years. It was she who made the little passageway that you go through from our sitting-room to my office." "Oh!" I said, with slightly more wonder than I could account for. "And there he stayed, painting until he could see no more and taking a long time to die." This was what Helene had hinted at on our evening walk—it seemed the embodiment of something I had always felt about the old town, and found shadowed forth in many of Orst's eerie Uthographs, a sense of dying life, life hidden, haunted and winter-slow.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  As we’ve seen in all the stories in this book, when parents divorce and become preoccupied with reorganizing their own lives, the children are less protected. There’s almost never room for extra nurturing. More insidiously, there is far less tolerance for distress, weakness, or protest. Behaviors and feelings that have been treated compassionately as part of a child’s vulnerability are now viewed as deliberate, spoiled grabs for attention. Both parents have moved on. Their needs for themselves and for their child have changed. Billy’s lifelong problem became that he did not have the internal capability to successfully adapt to the postdivorce situation. He remained a vulnerable, needy child in a world that could no longer give him what he needed in order to thrive. There are many children like Billy who are born with special needs, including early surgery, medication every six hours around the clock, and regular monitoring of vital signs. It’s hard enough to care for a baby, but those born with handicaps are especially challenging for experienced and inexperienced mothers alike. These include infants and children with heart conditions, asthma, cystic fibrosis, Down’s syndrome, epilepsy, and a long list of other familiar maladies. In addition, many more babies who would have died from rare genetic conditions, including difficult-to-diagnose metabolic diseases, are now being saved by modern medical treatments. Many will live, but they are afflicted with severe mental or physical handicaps that improve very little over time. Other children challenge their parents with developmental disorders such as attention deficit, specific language impairment, dyslexia, or conduct disorder. Finally, there are many parents who adopt children who arrive with severe emotional problems due to lack of early caregiving or whose mothers have abused drugs and alcohol. Such children often have severe emotional problems, including an inability to form close attachments to parents or siblings. Many of them literally cry and fuss for twelve hours a day, rarely giving the baby smiles that help keep parents sane. All such children need an enormous amount of extra help just to survive and grow. Social workers, special educators, and medical professionals who work with vulnerable children frequently report that marital tensions and divorce are much higher in such families. 1 It’s no surprise that the tremendous need for care, coupled with worry about a vulnerable child, puts special strains of physical fatigue and emotional depletion on the couple. It’s understandable that powerful feelings of anger, guilt, and blame intrude into the couple’s intimate life—burdens that carry a high potential for disrupting the family. Although everyone in a family may pitch in to help care for a vulnerable child, the major burden of care usually falls on the mother, which can set up serious resentments. Whereas other family members may understand intellectually that their mother or wife is occupied with necessary tasks of caregiving, many can’t help but resent her preoccupation with the needy child. Life grows more stressful for everyone.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  In the case of my new-found friend, Andy, and I, we were able, lucki ly, to laugh together. We were both baffied by Richard, but still respectful and fond of hi m-we accepted from Richard pronouncements and attitudes which we would certainly never have accepted from each other, or from anyone else-at the time Richar d returned from wherever he had been to film Natil'e Son. (In which, to our horror, later abundantly justified, he himself played Bigger Thomas.) He returned with a brainstorm, which he outlined to me one bright, sunny af ternoon, on the terrace ofthe Royal St. Ger main. He wanted to do something to protect the rights of American Negroes in Paris; to form, in effect, a kind of pressure group which would force American businesses in Paris, and American gov ernment offices, to hire Negroes on a proportional basis. This seemed unr ealistic to me. How, I asked him, in the first place, could one find out how many American Negroes there were in Paris? Richard quoted an approximate, semi official figure, which I do not remember , but I was still not satisfied. Of this numb er, how many were looking for jobs? Richard seemed to feel that they spent most of their time being turned down by American bigots, but this was not really my impress ion. I am not sure I said this, though, for Richard often made me feel that the word "frivo lous" had been coined to describe me. Nevertheless, my objections made him more and mor e impatient with me, and I began to wonder if I were not guilty of great disloyalty and indifference concerning the lot of American Negroes abroad. (I find that there is some thing helplessly sardonic in my tone now, as I write this, which also handicapped me on that distant afternoon. Richard, more than anyone I have ever known, brought this tendency to the f(>re in me. I always wanted to kick him, and say, "Oh, come off it, baby, ain't no white folks around now, let's tell it lik e it is. ") Still, most of the Negroes I knew had not come to Paris to ALAS, POOR RICH ARD look for work. They were writer s or dancers or composers, they were on the G.I. Bill, or fellowships, or more mysterious shoestrings, or they worked as jazz musicians. I did not know anyone who doubted that the American hiring system re mained in Paris exactly what it had been at home-but how was one to prove this, with a handful, at best, of problematical Negroes, scattered throughout Paris? Unlike Richard, I had no reason to suppose that any of them e\'en wanted to work for Americans-my evidence, in fact, sug gested that this was just about the last thing they wanted to do.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  man? Someone who plucks or someone who doesn’t need to? Not sure I’d want to be the one any more than the other. I knew Eve knew, knew she smelled that girl on me just as I did, even after all the soaping. Wasn’t even that there was any thing to smell, just that when I touched my wife it was like I had gloves on, like a film had settled over my fingers so they’d advertise their little infamy. Tried to hide it that night by tonguing her two times to the end—probably gave myself away right there. Women always know when you’re enjoying it, and when you’re just doing it out of guilt—you learn that after a while. I remember the first time I went south on a woman: pulled her out behind a grain silo and down in the mulchy field and had her knickers at her ankles like I knew which fucking end was up and how to make out all the mes sages my pecker was trying to send me. She kept saying Lick it, lick it, and no way was I about to ask for a little explanation so I just put my whole face in there, put it in there just like an armless man would eat spaghetti. And that’s how I felt, all armless and handless and eyeless, just a nose and a tongue poking around, trying to get a sense of things. I came to like it, thought it was kind of my secret weapon. It wasn’t like sex, where some men treat the thing like a ten-trial Olympic event while others do it like they were punching a time card. Kissing pussy, it’s more like you can’t really do a bad job—like Christ mas or something where just the intention is good enough. I’d tell those farm girls that I was gonna eat them out like a dog cleaning a can. And they’d let me all right. I think that’s why all the married ones liked me so much: their own husbands had long since stopped trying, didn’t give out none of the pre ferred love and sometimes didn’t even stick it to them either. Always felt like I had that up on other men; they just let the days pass by, didn’t even think about how a little here and

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  The father may work harder to bring in extra money for the child’s care. Siblings quietly decide not to ask Mommy for help that may really be needed. Everyone grapples with feelings of loss, disappointment, resentment, or guilt that this child is not, and in many instances never will be, like other children. These feelings arise not only at the child’s birth but repeatedly as the child grows and continues to fall behind other children’s attainments. I have met many people who could not handle these strains and whose divorce was directly caused by the child’s frailty. For example, one young couple carried their autistic son to every medical center in America hoping to find a cure. Finally, they decided to institutionalize him and then divorced several months later. She explained, “Every time we looked at each other we saw Jason, and we felt so guilty we couldn’t stand it.” One of the women in our comparison group, Debbie, was born with a rare muscular disorder that required daily massage and physical therapy. Her parents and siblings took turns administering her treatment all the time she was growing up. She learned to walk at age five using leg braces and crutches, learned to talk clearly after years of speech therapy, and attended public schools accompanied by a personal aide. She’d elected to attend a small, midwestern college that was her father’s alma mater. Her parents had thoroughly investigated the disability program and access at the college and Debbie’s mother stayed on campus for the first three months of school to help set up living arrangements and special assistance services. They’d been understanding and supportive of her slow course through college, punctuated by several extended returns home for additional treatment. Prominently displayed in Debbie’s living room was a large photograph of herself in cap and gown surrounded by her smiling family. She’s now partially self-supporting as a technical writer. When I interviewed Debbie at age thirty-eight, she was living in a specially equipped apartment in the lower part of her parents’ home. Personable, cheerful, and realistic, she told me that other, less fortunate people with her medical condition were wheelchair-bound and lived in full-time residential institutions. “Almost all of my memories as a child are of me together with my family,” she said. “I was always with them and they took care of me when I was sick. Anything I’ve needed, they try to help. I know they’ll be there for me no matter what happens.” Debbie said that sometimes she wishes she could be more self-sufficient, get out more with her friends, and maybe even marry and have children. A tinge of rebelliousness surfaces in her voice: “Right now I think my parents are too involved in my life. I see a lot of them. I like having them near, but I think they’re too close, and they worry about me and want to know too much.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  And still more. The divorce disrupted your life. It came suddenly, unexpectedly, but you realized it was caused voluntarily by the people you loved best and trusted the most. You concluded again, logically and sensibly, that nothing is stable. Anything could happen and change is probably for the worse. Since your parents assured you that things would be better but they weren’t, you drove your feelings underground even more—where they became more powerful. Like most children, you kept all these terrifying conclusions to yourself because you loved your parents and you didn’t want to upset them. They were so upset already. And finally, like a child, you blamed yourself for the breakup. You must have done something bad to drive them apart. You thought you were the most powerful villain responsible for the family disaster. If your parents were fighting over you and if you hadn’t ever been born, then they wouldn’t have quarreled. You don’t deserve to have good things happen. You certainly don’t deserve to love or be loved. There is a remedy for these feelings. It may not extinguish the fears, because they are too firmly rooted in your mind, but it can surely mute them. Try your best to understand that what you felt was right for a small child to feel. You were an intelligent and loving child who was trying to protect your parents and yourself. You didn’t want to burden them with your anger or your fears so you kept them all to yourself. But what was sensible then makes no sense now. You’re an adult who is able to handle all the things that frightened you as a little child. You’re no longer helpless in the night. Of course love is always chancy. But not loving is worse. Trusting is always risky. But not everyone will betray you. Some changes may bring disaster but some storms pass over or never arrive. An adult can cope with feelings that may overwhelm a child. There are other remedies. Knowing that you aren’t alone is helpful. You’re one among millions. It can be helpful to meet other children of divorce in groups or to seek individual therapy. Living with these inhibitions and fears is very serious. It cuts deeply into your life. But it does not have to be. With self-understanding, you can close that door almost shut.