Fact is stranger than fiction?

Last semester when my juniors read “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, many thought something so outlandish could never happen.

When they had stated their disbelief, I shared an essay written by Jackson entitled “On the Morning of June 28, 1948, and ‘The Lottery.’” The essay is about how she wrote the story and the thousands of letters she had received since the story notorious publication in The New Yorker. Here is the final paragraph from Jackson’s essay –

“Curiously, there are three main themes which dominate the letters of that first summer—three themes which might be identified as bewilderment, speculation, and plain old-fashioned abuse. In the years since then, during which the story has been anthologized, dramatized, televised, and even—in one completely mystifying transformation—made into a ballet, the tenor of letters I receive has changed. I am addressed more politely, as a rule, and the letters largely confine themselves to questions like what does this story mean? The general tone of the early letters, however, was a kind of wide-eyed, shocked innocence. People at first were not so much concerned with what the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch.”

The reactions on their faces is priceless.

“Well, there is no way something like that would ever happen today,” a student said.

“Yeah, so other people would like to go and watch,” one student said. “But this wouldn’t happen and why didn’t anyone in the town stop the lottery?”

“Yeah. Someone would have stopped it,” another added.

“There’s no way this could happen today,” others state.

“Oh, really?” I challenged. I recalled how many of my seniors thought the same thing when reading Night .

“Yeah. Nothing like that could happen today,” the first student reiterated.

That is an eternal question.

That’s when I shared with them this story that I came across, ironically, the morning after we finished the story.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26638199/

Note the byline –

Police arrest man in Pa. subway hammer attack
At least 10 other riders witnessed the attack yet no one tried to stop it

Fast forward to second semester, ’09.

We are midway through our American Gothic unit, featuring Edgar Allan Poe’s macabre work.

Students just read “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Black Cat.”

Again, I hear the same responses –

“This could never happen.”

“Why would a person do such things?”

“Why would someone write about such things?”

Oh don’t worry, I have a large faction who are fascinated with Poe and who have thoroughly devoured their way through King’s works and the Twilight books and a host of others as well.

But I chuckle at the naivete of some,

Today, after looking at the reasons for the narrators cruelty in “The Black Cat,” I shared with the class this story, which occurred yesterday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE52A01D20090312

How can we account for such horrific things in our world? What would drive someone to go on such a rampage, even killing an 18 month old child?

This, to me, seems to be the real reason for studying Poe’s work. Can it be blamed on nature or nurture? In “The Black Cat” is the narrator driven to torture, maim, and kill poor Pluto and later his wife because of his alcoholism? Is he mad (as so many of Poe’s other narrators are)? Or is it something even more sinister? Recall what the narrator confesses, “. . . perverseness is one o the primitive impulses of the human heart – one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not?”

Maybe it’s easier to blame such evil on mental deficiencies, alcoholism, drug abuse, child abuse, bullying, and so on. But what happens when there really is no reason for evil? What happens when someone commits an act of evil because they like it or want to?

I think of what a friend of ours told us about two prominent athletes from my home town who caught a cat, took it to the lake, canoed out to the middle, and took the poor caged animal, doused it with gasoline, and lit it on fire. Then they filmed it with their phones while it burned.

What accounts for such cruelty? Where will such an action lead? Beating one’s wife or children? A school shooting? A bloody rampage like the one in Alabama?

Like Poe, I have no real explanation.

Other than it is a horrifically dark part of the human condition.

Recall, the Carthaginians reportedly sacrificed scores of children to their god, Baal. The Romans persecuted the Christians and fed them to lions. The Christians conducted the Inquisition and aided the Crusades. When the New World was discovered, so were an entire array of atrocities. The Mayan sacrifices/ Columbus’ “gold dust rituals.” The U.S. Army giving Native American women and children small-pox infected blankets. The natives, in return, scalping innocent settlers. America’s involvement in WWI led to the discovery of the horrors of Nazi Germany and death camps. Later the atomic bomb. The religious atrocities of the Middle East. Darfur. And on and on and on.

Like Poe, I have no real explanation. But the questions will always be there.