Suffer The Children

We were talking about the Children's Crusades the other day and it made me think of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot was the leader of a communist uprising in Cambodia in the 1970s. With his army of teenage boys he successfully overthrew the government and gained complete power. Following this was genocide and the torture of thousands of innocents. Using children as his main source of power, he exploited parents and elders into submission. How could people kill their own children and grandchildren? The scary thing is, though, that children were killing their own parents for basically no reason. Innocent minds were flooded with hatred and insanity from the leader Pol Pot and he transformed thousands of teenagers into killing machines. Pol Pot later died a natural death due to a heart attack at 75. How can this happen? Read the Bible and tell me, please, because I can't figure this one out. Just as in the Children's Crusades when thousands of children died. They are supposed to be the innocent, clean counterparts to the corrupted adults, right? How can they die and be tortured, murdered and mistreated? The same question is asked by Jacob in The Slave: "The windows of the study house overlooked the hill where his wife and children lay buried...His parents, relations, friends had been tortured. [...] One day seated alone in the study house Jacob said to God, 'I have no doubt that you are the Almighty and that whatever you do is for the best, but it is impossible for me to obey the commandment, Thou Shalt Love Thy God. No, I cannot Father, not in this life.'" (Singer 108) He says that he allegedly understands that God is the Almighty and has a reason for his actions, but he is incapable of loving him. Doesn't this show a huge flaw in the religion? If one aspect of belief negates another doesn't mean that the belief is fundamentally flawed? Jacob is unable to love God, which is one of the explicit commandments, because of the suffering God instills upon the Jews. Since they believe that He has a hand in everything, Jews have to somehow justify such immense suffering. How? Jacob doesn't know. I don't know and this is where a major problem lies. How can someone believe strongly in a God (who is involved in every aspect of their existence) that allows atrocities such as genocide and death of innocents to happen.

Jacob's religous fervor is a large part of the reason he is such an interesting character. He wants to believe, so badly, that his religion is infallible, but he can't. Since these questions of theodicy crop up, he is haunted and is unable to justify such suffering. The problem of religious opportunism is huge in this novel and Jacob struggles with it throughout. Every aspect of his religion pales as he watches his fellow Jews pick and choose what aspects of the Torah they wish to follow. The fact that he struggles with this makes him an extremely honest character. He can't imagine, under the watchful eye of God, that children and other innocents would suffer and be murdered by the thousands. I think this book has an exemplary way of portraying the struggle extremely religious people have with theodicy.

The Slave and The Bible and, of course, Unicorns

Oddly enough (actually not oddly at all), as I was reading the Bible today, and as I was reading The Slave, I came upon a subtle connection. I guess what I thought was kind of strange and eerie was the obscurity of the connection.

"God brought them out of Egypt: he hath as it were the strength of a unicorn." Numbers 23:22-23

First of all, I guess I will say that I did not know that unicorns were in the Bible. They seem to be a bit more of a mythological creature, but isn't the Bible mythology, after all? It did seem odd, though, that the people in this time beleived in unicorns and not only this but their power. Now this brought me to the book of Job: "Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilst thou trust him cause his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labor to him? Wilt thou beleive him that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?" Job 39:9-13 And now onto Psalms: "He maketh them also to skip like a calf: Lebanon and Sirian like a young unicorn." 29:6 Now Isaiah 34:7: "And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls, and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness."

The quote from The Slave is this: "He raised his eyes and saw that the sky was once more blue and vernal. The only cloud resembled a single horned beast with a long neck. The mountains looked down on him from a distance, the hills to which he had planned to flee from slavery."

Why is it that unicorns have become fabled as fantasy characters? They are in the Bible, as are bulls, dogs, birds, and countless other common animals. It seems that the unicorns referred to are, in fact, misread as creatures other than regular animals. I suppose this is what the "close reader" would say. I want to beleive that, like the "giants in the earth", the unicorns were some powerful creature that reigned in the time of Abraham, Isaiah and Job. It seems kind of childish, I know, but after all, I do love stories. I think that these unicorns were powerful creatures, sought after for strenght and solace. Maybe they were "just another animal", but perhaps something is being overlooked. It could be that they were rhinos or one-horned deer, or maybe, just maybe, God destroyed them in the flood. This is a stretch, but I found several pictures with unicorns depicted in front of rainbows, so I thought it was funny and ironic.

The reason for my saying that unicorns were sought for strength and solace is because of the passage from The Slave. It seems that Jacob, in his time of great despair when he thinks he is going to be killed, has nothing to help him through. When he looks at the sky, though, he sees a cloud that "resembled a single-horned beast with a long neck". Maybe, these creatures were nothing but clouds or epiphanies. They could have been apparitions that were fabled, even in the time of the Old Testament, that were considered good luck or good omen. I haven't read enough of the Bible to say this for certain...haha that line is blasphemy...no matter how much I read the Bible I am sure I will never know anything for certain.