Humanity is no stranger to horror. The world is an indifferent host to all manner of life-shattering atrocities that leave man, woman, and child alike kneeling in the smoking rubble of their own lives. The human psyche tries to account for and categorize this suffering, to break it down and study the deeper meaning behind it. And while each individual may reach their own conclusions to the ever-present question of why catastrophe has been visited upon them, there is one query that troubles even more deeply: why, amidst so much pain, humans compound their own suffering by being cruel to one another. The answer is understandably complex, but can be understood by examining a few key points. Fear, of both authority and standing apart from the crowd, as
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When an individual comes face-to-face with extraordinary circumstances that are largely out of their control, the normal physiological reaction of fear. But fear of what? When assessing the motivations of the characters of both the biblical Book of Job and Night by Elie Wiesel, a definitive pattern appears. In Job, the friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, are shown to have a frustratingly narrow and harsh interpretation of God and his sense of justice, much to Job’s detriment. Even though Job is innocent and proclaims his innocence loudly, his companions insist, with minor variations in their arguments, that Job simply must have sinned in order to have been punished so cruelly. Why, in Job’s most dire hour of need, do they hound him so relentlessly? As Job puts it, “Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh?” (19:21-22) For ones who claim to be his closest allies, the hard-hearted men certainly seem more akin
When an individual comes face-to-face with extraordinary circumstances that are largely out of their control, the normal physiological reaction of fear. But fear of what? When assessing the motivations of the characters of both the biblical Book of Job and Night by Elie Wiesel, a definitive pattern appears. In Job, the friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, are shown to have a frustratingly narrow and harsh interpretation of God and his sense of justice, much to Job’s detriment. Even though Job is innocent and proclaims his innocence loudly, his companions insist, with minor variations in their arguments, that Job simply must have sinned in order to have been punished so cruelly. Why, in Job’s most dire hour of need, do they hound him so relentlessly? As Job puts it, “Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh?” (19:21-22) For ones who claim to be his closest allies, the hard-hearted men certainly seem more akin