The Book Discussion Group
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| The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allen Poe. Poe's story (under
20 pages in most editions) concerns Roderick Usher, a reclusive neurotic
who lives with his sister, Madeline, in an ancient mansion. The narrator,
a childhood friend, is called to help Usher through an emotional crisis.
During his visit, the sister dies and is buried in a cellar vault. The
burial proving premature, Madeline claws her way out, returns to the living
quarters, and hurls herself into her brother's arms, precipitating their
deaths, the collapse of the house, and the horrified flight of the narrator.
Often considered a metaphoric representation of the narrator's own inner
journey, the story invites the reader into a tangle of psychological and
philosophical speculation. One consideration: what place has reason in
the constitution of man and the cnduct of his affairs? Are we at the mercy
of irrational processes - and do we prefer to be? |
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| The Grand Inquisitor, a portion of The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor
Dostoyevskii. Here's a famous passage, claimed by existentialists as a
seminal work. It's a fable, told by one character in the novel to another,
about the return of Christ to earth during the Spanish Inquisition. The
Inquisitor is an elderly Cardinal in charge of burning heretics. When
Christ returns, the Inquisitor has Him arrested, then meets with Him in
His cell. Christ doesn't speak a word; the Grand Inquisitor explains to
Him why He has no right to return to earth and take away the "freedom"
which he left his people: the freedom to believe or not believe, without
the aid of miracles. It is the Inquisitor's view that this freedom is
responsible for most human misery; the Church represents the only humane
solution: to create unity of belief based upon the surrender of freedom.
This is the only hope for happiness, albeit an illusory happiness that
ends in oblivion. The Inquisitor is especially persuasive when he argues
that mankind's bloody history results from the flight from freedom into
institutions that satisfy the need to be part of a belief system shared
by many others - family, church, nation. The Inquisitor is no Christian,
he's probably fairly described as an athiest (or is he?), but his views
can be felt as a purifying challenge to Christian belief, if you let them
sink in. |