Violence in Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre and Die Verlobung in St. Domingo - Essay Example

? Violence in Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre and Die Verlobung in St. Domingo Violence cannot be described plainly without the use and referral to the spheres surrounding and thus affecting Mankind. These include - Cultural socialization, Religious guidance, Economic control and Political power. Each of these has profound impacts and effects on Man’s individual and communal life with the survival of the individual depending on the community and that of the community depending on the individual. The two works: - Schiller’s ‘Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre’ and Kleist’s Die Verlobung in St. Domingo best illustrate the nature of violence in society: here being exemplified from the German peoples’ perspective. This has been influenced in a myriad of ways that have seen the German nation-state undergo dynamic changes; this being from the Pre-World War 1 era, during WW1 and WW2, the period in between, and afterwards; characterized by the Cold War and ‘the fall of the USSR’. All this resulting to a unified German nation-state, never mind the differences in the German people socialization: formerly East (Soviet/Communist) Germany and West (Western/Democratic) Germany. This differentiation in the model of socialization of a society has profound effects on the social conduct of the social fabric. These can either be positive i.e. liberal, democratic space with good living standards and abidance to the ‘Rule of Law’ or negative; aspects that would result to racial segregation, gender inequality, the ‘Superiority-Inferiority’ Complex, discrimination and violence amongst a host of other negatives (Bell, 2005, p 234). Schiller’s work: - “Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre” is focused on the ironies in life exemplified by the Lead character; Christian Wolf. Its setting is in the German nation-state He was the son of an innkeeper whose father had passed away, thus he assisted his mother in the family business up to his 20th birthday. He was free and idle for many an idle hours, earning a sort of notoriety as a loose kind of person. Complaints from grown up girls over his audacity to his reverence by the town lads added to his stature. He was short, with curly black hair, had a flat nose and a swollen upper lip, put out of place by a horse’s kick earlier in life (Hart, 2005, p 112). These character traits added to his appearance that seemed to be repulsive scaring all the women away while adding to the material wit of his comrades. This in mind, he tried his best to gain that, which had been denied to him by nature; he was determined to please, sensual to even persuading himself to thinking he was in love. The girl in mind however mistreated him; nevertheless, she was of poor background. He was needy as his efforts to produce an effective exterior appearance ate into his chunk of savings gained from the inn business. Thus, he turned to the only business he knew best: -‘poaching.’ His gains in this business were faithfully handed over to his mistress; Johanna. Another admirer of Johanna, Robert; was a hunter in the Forestry service who, filled with envy, sought to find out the reason for Christian Wolf’s change of prospects. In time, after the enactment of a severe edict, Joseph, having tracked Wolf’s whereabouts soon discovered from where the money came from (Hart, 2005, 198). Wolf was apprehended, and only through the sacrifice of all of his possessions did he escape the punishment meted out; this he did by way of paying a fine. Thus, Robert triumphed in the end having removed his rival from his path, with Johanna’s favors ending. Wolf was now a beggar who knew his enemy well and was offended by his enemy’s possession of Johanna. He was scathed in his pride, with necessity, jealousy and hunger raging together against his sensitiveness. This drove him out into the wide world; passion and revenge being the only factors holding him together/ retaining his sanity. With no other way out, he returned to the poaching business, but as fate would have it, Robert’s vigilance, redoubled, was to be his undoing. He was caught and this time he experienced the full force of the Law (Bell, 2005, 164). He had nothing to give for his freedom and was thus sentenced to do some prison time. This imprisonment has great and profound effects on his character, with his stubbornness increasing. The absence from Johanna having increased his passion, upon his release, he heads to his town of birth presenting him-self to her. He was however shunned by all he came across. Necessity, finally subduing his pride and therefore overcoming his sense of personal weakness, was to drive him to look for work to gain a daily wage. The farmer to hire him scorned at him due to his short stature that he associated with weakness. The stout bony frame of a rival applicant was decisive in earning him the job, the patron unconcerned by Wolf’s feelings. Next, he applied for a herdsman job but the peasant farmer could not trust a jailbird (Bell, 2005, 135). Frustration came from the rejection of every effort he put at all the different places he went and thus his fall back into poaching again; this time still apprehended due to the watchful eye of his enemy. This double committing of the offence had the effect of increasing the offence’s magnitude. The judges on their part sought guidance from the Constitution: - ‘Book of Laws’ and not from the offender’s state of mind/ his situation/experience (Bell, 2005, p 45). The anti-poaching decree needed an example satisfactorily enough to provide a perfect example and Wolf was thus condemned to three years of hard labor. How he was when he went in and on completion of the sentence were different. The following quotes best exemplify his experiences: - “I entered the fortification, as an erring man, and I left it – a villain. I had still possessed something in the world, which was dear to me, and my pride had bowed down under shame. When I was brought to the fortification, I was confined with three and twenty prisoners, two of whom were murderers, while all the rest were notorious thieves and vagabonds. They scoffed at me, when I spoke of God, and encouraged me to utter all sorts of blasphemies against the Redeemer. Obscene songs were sung in my presence…” (Hart, 2005, 35) There was not a day in which some career of shame was not repeated, in which some evil project was not hatched. At first, I shunned these people, and avoided their discourse as much as possible; but I wanted the sympathy of some creature, and the barbarity of my keepers had even denied me my dog. The labor was hard and oppressive, my body weak; I wanted assistance…. I wanted compassion also, and this I was forced to purchase with the last remains of my conscience. Thus did I ultimately become inured to what was most detestable, and in the quarter of the year, I had surpassed my instructors. I now thirsted after the day of liberty, as I thirsted after revenge…. I considered myself the martyr of natural rights, the victim of law….” (Hart, 2005, p 23) He ended up continuing with poaching, using gun and ammunition as his preferred tools of trade, killing all game that he came across; selling a small quantity at the border while the rest of it rotted away. This he did for several months until one day, out in the woods he stumbled upon his adversary Robert also aiming at the same prey. Upon this encounter was a great coldness and the feeling of revenge reawakened in him. He for some time deliberated between the prey and his enemy, an invisible hand over him, ready to change his destiny. It contested between conscience and revenge, with the latter winning. Thus, his enemy lay dead on the ground. This act finally pulls him into the criminal world where he associated with other like-minded elements. This separated him from the rest of society (Bell, 2005, p 24). Henrich von Kleist’s work: “Die Verlobung in St. Domingo” was written after the end of slave trade by both the British and Americans. It touches on such issues as equality in rights, identity and in justice. It brings out the interdependence between Mankind in his social setting to be able to preserve His identity. This was principle informing the notion of “Us” and “Them”; one knows oneself by knowing who he/she is not. Society is pinned on the principles of Individualism and Competition, which inadvertently need the notion of “Otherness.” (Mehigan, 2011, p 69) This means expressing the traits of ‘supremacy’ over others; this through the formation of associations i.e. joining either the majorities or the minorities. This superiority can be expressed in terms of sheer power/force/coercion, if not then in terms of being morally right, being wiser, knowing and being better or at least, possessing the privilege of feeling insulted rightly. Thus there is the indulgence in partisanship be it in politics, economic and social interactions to religious discrimination. In such situations, the necessity of the basic needs tend to outweigh the prevailing issues. The instruments of power and power politics include truth and justice, morality and wisdom (Mehigan, 2011, p 24). It is set on the island of San Domingo (Haiti), which passed from the hands of Spain into the French hands in 1697; becoming wealthy due to its flourishing agricultural sector. It had vast sugarcane plantations that depended on the European crave and taste for sugar and sugar by products for its trade. It also had lesser plantations that grew coffee, indigo, cotton and coffee for export (Bell, 2005). This venture went hand in hand with the ill treatment of slaves, which was in the very least, quite harsh. Slavery was seen as a form of business opportunity that was carried out by the white settlers; the slaves being composed mainly of black Africans and a portion of the mulatto. In the year 1788, there were some 27,000 white settlers, 21,000 freed mulattoes (those of mixed heritage i.e. one black and one white parent) and 405,000 slaves on the island (Bell, 2005, p 198). In 1790, the mulattoes sent a party to the Paris Constituent Assembly, to obtain their political rights. The whites were unwilling to grant this request, due to this affront on their pride, this resulting in an uprising of the blacks and mulattoes that led to the French granting the slaves their rights and liberty in 1791. Haiti was recognized as an independent state in 1825 upon the payment of an indemnity. Though an independent government was put into place, the social differences continued with the already established system of minority rule, by the French, taking root. This system was supportive of a minority group ruling over the mass illiterate poor, this being with threats and violence. Because many planters had provided for the education, military training and entry into the French army of their mulatto descendants (their mixed-race children), the descendants founded the elite minority in Haiti after the revolution (Bell, 2005, p 187). With the coming of the war, Haiti Revolution, many of these mulatto descendants had already acquired considerable chunks of land becoming wealthy due to the social capital they had gained. Therefore, many of them had identified with the French settlers more than with the Black slaves and formed their own social circles. They dominated the political and social spheres while most of the black African Haitians were rural peasant farmers. In the 1820’s the Haitian state’s future was “mortgaged” practically to French banks, this being due to the massive reparations/indemnity that the Haitian black citizenry had been forced to pay so as to end the nation’s economic and political isolation in global trade and to receive French recognition. The reparations were to be paid to the former slave owners/settlers. There is reason to believe that these reparations may have permanently affected Haiti’s wealth and economic distribution (Bell, 2005, p 123). In Schiller’s work: - “Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre” , violence is seen to be expressed in the way the society at large treats this person by the name of Christian Wolf; who due to nature or fate is characterized by a short and ragged stature. Due to the harsh economic times he results to poaching, which is also a violent act against a living creature, to sustain himself. He is able to sustain himself for some time thus being responsible for many deaths in terms of wild animals as prey. Jealousy, by a rival over Wolf’s only love, Johanna, leads to Robert finding out the source of his livelihood. It is only by the sale of all he had that Wolf is able to escape sentence by way of a fine. Rejected after losing it all and ending up poor, and faced with the harsh economic times, he tries his luck at daily manual work for a day’s wage (Hart, 2005, 324). Twice is he denied a job; in the first instance due to his short and weakling stature and in the other due to his criminal record. He ends up resulting to poaching but is apprehended again. Because this was a second time offence, the judges sentence him to prison and hard labor. This was because of the judges’ decision (a form of violence) to teach the public a lesson by making an example of Wolf. Upon release, he tries to fit back into society but is shunned by all. He returns to his preferred tool of trade, a gun, gunpowder and metal balls. This he uses to sustain himself in poaching (violence), until he stumbles by chance on his adversary. Weigh between conscience and revenge, the latter takes the better part of him with the result being his killing of Robert (violence.) He is to later meet with others like him, with blades stained with blood, thus expressing the notion of violence (Bell, 2005, p 242). In Henrich von Kleist’s work: “Die Verlobung in St. Domingo”, the presence of large-scale plantations irrigated for their cash crops, required manual labor that was easily provided for by the thousands of black African slaves. Their treatment was harsh/violent and at times resulting to deadly consequences. Due to the population dynamics, the white settlers were outnumbered by the black African slaves; to a ratio of roughly 1:10, thus they had morbid fear of a slave rebellion (Mehigan, 2011). There was thus the extensive use of threats of physical violence against the enslaved population, as a control/deterrent tool. Here violence being treated as a repellant or control tool. Violence was in the form of whippings and more extreme torture such as burning and castration. There were frequent violent conflicts between escaped slaves and their masters. If caught, the slaves would in turn be severely and violently punished. In turn, slaves would conduct violent raids on the plantations. The mortality rate was higher here due to the living conditions and disease in the slave camps. In the revolutionary wars violent deaths occurred while, the impact of the segregation fermented by the passing of discriminatory laws added to the number of those who met their deaths in a violent manner. Most of the Mulattoes were also born out of an often-violent encounter between their African mothers and the white settlers who often sought sexual favors indiscriminately from their black African female slaves; this mostly without the women’s consent (Mehigan, 2011, p 143). The plot that Schiller uses in his story undeniably betrays distrust that people have in social institutions that existed in the day. The story puts much blame on institutions of the government in tracing the brutal attack of Christian wolf who was a good but poor man. He was also not physically attractive. The treachery employed by a rival led to Christian’s arrest because he had been engaged n minor poaching. The legal system including the court and the correctional facility that he is put in change him in to an accomplished and hardened criminal (Bell, 2005, 183). As the autobiographies are revealed, several other striking likenesses emerge in that course. The innermost situations that influence the development of the story are nearly identical. For instance, each young protagonist face is created in a way that depicts its ability to determine fortune. Wolf is an example of this manifestation. In his youth, a horse kicks him, and his face is disfigured and becomes ugly. This makes girls to avoid him because he is no longer attractive. He thinks of a way through which he can compensate for his misshapenness (Hart, 2005, p 135). He does this by pleasing the girl he loves with gifts. However, since he is poor, such gifts are mostly acquired fraudulently. The deformation on his face thus leads him indirectly to a life full of robbery, into murder and anguish. The monster's kismet in Frankenstein is more directly attributable to his looks. His ugliness makes him choose the most inhumane treatment possible that manifest in stoning, beating, mockery and shooting. This treatment drives him in to despair and then to brutal misanthropy. Wolf says, “…There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth to this insupportable misery…” (Hart, 2005,p 132) Upon his return to his native village after the second imprisonment, wolf offers a certain boy some money. He has ravage thoughts of revenge and hates all human beings. He perceives himself as a martyr and a victim of circumstance and glaring injustice. However, the young boy moves him to compassion and to some form of kindness that makes him think of offer the child the charity he did not intend and had never had in his life. The boy's contempt makes him admit that it grieved him more than the time he had spent as a prisoner and that the experience asphyxiates the smallest bit of human kindness he had with him. He says, “…I had nothing farther to lose, and nobody to care for; I had no farther occasion for the least good quality, because nobody believed I had one left." Shortly thereafter, Wolf kills his former rival, a murder which leads to flight, more crimes, and eventual capture…” (Hart, 2005, p 134). The motive of the monster that made him approach the child in Frankenstein is seen as slightly selfish as opposed to some sort of kindness. His wish is to kidnap the boy and make him his friend. However, the same capricious mix of emotions clearly shows his actions. He has an overwhelming urge to submit to violence and vengeance against any person that he comes into contact (p. 138).this urge is attached to a fleeting but intense need for human companionship and love. He says, “…Suddenly, as I gazed on him, an idea seized me, that this title creature was unprejudiced. . ." (Bell, 2005, p. 138). When the boy reacts screaming and cursing Wolf, saying kill the monster's last hope for love, wolf responds by making the boy his murder prey. The developments showed in interactions that happen in this scene show the violence that happen in Schiller’s story. They capture every detail from the change of a good man to an evil and violent man who no longer cares about humanity. “….Urged by this impulse, I seized on the boy as he passed, and drew him towards me. As soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before his eyes, and uttered a shrill scream: I drew his hands forcibly from his face, and said, 'Child, what is the meaning of this? I do not intend to hurt you; listen to me….he struggled violently, Let me go, he cried monster ugly wretch….he child still struggled, and loaded me with epithets which carried despair to my heart: I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead at my feet." (Hart, 2005, p. 139) Kleist’s novel tells a story of a disastrous relationship between a Swiss who is an army soldier and a mixed race slave daughter. It also reveals her transformation from a black prostitute to a white virgin bride because she abandoned her black heritage and took up the white heritage, to embrace the light. For instance, she considers the white world as a pure and fulfilling life. She breaks up the world into a black and a white dimension. In this case, white represents everything that is good while black represents all that is bad and evil. The basic schematic of color draws analogous relationship between Kleist and Florence (Mehigan, 2011, p 346). The Machine becomes easy because of the quintessence of personal characteristics where Kleist and Florence use a similar kind of racism on color. The mixed raced woman’s mother for his hesitation in leaving the darkness - evil - of the night to enter the house of a black woman mocks the white soldier in Kleist’s novel. However, instead of making this scenario a critique of racism, Kleist decides to show the reader that the black woman represents an evil monster, in consonance with the slave leader. This ensures that the perception of whiteness as good and desirable and blackness as the personification of evil and devilish characteristics remains intact (Bell, 2005, p 157). Tmesis" a Greek word for the cutting of a composite, for instance, Ruck-Zug and Lichen has been used by Kleist to present violence in the novel. This specific metaphorical action happens often in violent appropriations and translations. It is linked to the cutting guillotine and the disfigured transpositions of the crossing symbol of the cross in the logic brought forward in Kleist’s narrative. Is Herr Stromlo, returns to Switzerland after a long period. He is the O-hemi and had the ability to do so because he had mastered the stream that exists inside his body that no one else in the story is still ready to come to terms with. In addition, even if this were the case, it would not offer any consolation to anyone. This is because the mastery has its cost in the sense that the stream shrivels into a Stromli or a little creek if it turns out to be better. The reader can see a connection to Gustav's "Oheim, Herrn Stromli," that is the complement of the ferocious combination of rivers that separates itself as Congo Hoango (Bell, 2005 p 34). Gustav's tremendous and dramatic position implored in the novel, exposure to existential dangers, and his symbolic participation as a figure of reading tend to entice the reader of the story into the suicidal ensnare in the relationship with the reading strategies of the male protagonist in the story together with his complete value system. In this standpoint, the monstrous suicide that occurs at the ending of the story becomes an extremely critical implication that shocks the reader and puts him into a sort of reconsideration of the interpretive wishes and concerns. After killing his fiancee, Toni, Gustav shoots himself because he believes that she betrayed him. He kills himself by placing a pistol into his mouth, from an angle that the narrator describes as, “…his skull is shattered and clinging in parts to the walls…” The suicide is a narratological outcome of the insistence of Gustav on the practical primacy of a theorizing and interpreting consciousness that is placed on it and the representations of integrity placed on linguistic forms, which can be interpreted in the form of a critical corrective plan of a hermeneutic dismantling of language form (Mehigan, 2011,p 109). In conclusion, the treatment of violence in Schiller’s Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre and Kleist’s Die Verlobung in St. Domingo is evident and handled in different ways. in Schiller’s Der Verbrecher aus verlorener it is done through social and government institutions and their failure in handling the tensions that arise in the behaviors of people like wolf who are considered abnormal in a certain manner. In Kleist’s Die Verlobung in St. Domingo, violence is interpreted in terms of color differences between black and white. This is a racist interpretation in the sense that black is considered bad and evil while white is considered good and desirable. Schiller’s ‘Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre’ and Kleist’s Die Verlobung in St. Domingo best illustrates the nature of violence in society: here being exemplified from the German peoples’ perspective. This has been influenced in a myriad of ways that have seen the German nation-state undergo dynamic changes References Bell, D. M., 2005. The German tradition of psychology in literature and thought, 1700- 1840. London: Cambridge University Press. Hart, G. K., 2005. Friedrich Schiller: crime, aesthetics, and the poetics of punishment. Delaware: University of Delaware Press. Mehigan, T., 2011. Heinrich Von Kleist: Writing After Kant. London: Camden House. Read More