Ramblings

My thoughts on rereading the passage in The Magus of the German occupation of the island.

You start out with a singular thought - an emotion, a word. Perhaps eleutheria, because freedom is too small a word to describe the reasoning behind the rebel's silence or Conchis' own tormented thoughts when he stood in front of a hostile crowd and refused to bludgeon this near-dead rebel, a human, a man. Or perhaps sadistic, because the Germans' thoughts at this time are as intriguing as they are horrifying. Or perhaps my favorite, schadenfreude, which isn't stated explicitly but you can nevertheless feel it there between the pages. Similar in meaning to sadism, but more... humanized, more relatable, at least in my mind. Sadism seems to imply a touch of sociopathy or violence and cruelty. Some of the German soldiers, as a product of their environment, changed enough to feel this. Schadenfreude is something more ingrained, perhaps less learned. And the most intriguing thing is that there is supposedly no exact translation or English equivalent for it. And so how do we can we know exactly what it means? Through words, but not definitions - though the story, and through the characters. And so you take that singular thought, the thought or emotion, and in describing it, by giving it life, you've made connections you'd never even thought of. Human nature can never be so simple as to be able to isolate an idea like schadenfreude. There are moments of intense jealousy, an almost angry violence and soul-crushing despair at the world for what it took from you. Shades of pity woven in at moments, because sometimes through the haze you realize this is a human being, someone with a curly haired little girl and grieving widow who mourn just as fiercely, and who are you to play God?

It grows, and suddenly this isn't words on a page anymore, and becomes something beyond itself - which, really, is the hope of any of our thoughts, and of ourselves.

The book better describes complicated concepts like eleutheria than a dictionary could ever do. Because it's one of my biggest pet peeves when I look up a word, say 'vindication', and all you get is vin·di·ca·tion (noun): an act of vindicating. And what does that mean? Thanks dictionary, thanks.