Thesis
Morals in a layman’s language are good ethics with which people adhere to either publicly or privately. Morals do show a discrepancy from one culture to another; however, they do echo good virtues overall. Both Faerie Queene Book II and In Cold Blood are good representations of morality for good virtues as well as the total opposite of it, immorality for sin.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
In cold blood is a book that looks at an atrocious murder of a rich farmer, Herbert Clutter along with his wife and two children in Holcomb Kansas in 1959. After the murders, the killers got arrested, tried and eventually executed. Capote interrogated local residents as well as the investigators who handled the case for all the relevant information that led to the creation of In cold blood.
In cold blood, Mr. Clutter’s public eminence is one example that represents religious, social as well as financial morality. The fact that he was appointed to be in charge of the eight-hundred-thousand dollar Methodist church building committee is one hell of a responsibility that calls for good morals to be able to handle it effectively.
To be trusted with large sums of money for a church project best represents religious as well as financial morality. Apart from being in charge of the building committee for the church, Mr. Clutter was also once a member of the Federal Farm Credit Board. Such positions are only reserved for people with good social, religious, legal as well as financial morals in the community. The other aspect of morality is the close-knit family of Mr. Clutter and the great children that are upright in character and adored by the locals. The thanksgiving dinner for the family reunion is also one case in point that represents religious as well as social morals for the Clutter family (Capote, p. 5).
Mr. Clutter’s interaction with his servants does represent good social morality especially in today’s world where masters simply give orders and expect results. But on his part, Mr. Clutter, much as he is the employer, he is a team player who works alongside his employees. When it concerned the well-being of his children, Mr. Clutter was strict but reasonable. A case in point is when his daughter Nancy came back late from a late-night show, Mr. Clutter was more concerned about the boy who dropped her home instead of her lateness. He cautioned her daughter about her boyfriend who was catholic while the Clutters were Methodists which according to him was a mere waste of time since the two will never get married due to their religious differences. This represents social as well as sexual morality (Capote).
With a sick wife and a housekeeper coming in on weekdays only, Mr. Clutter learns how to cook despite having enough money to hire household help. Along with his young daughter they handled the cooking quite effectively. Apart from cooking regular meals in his house, Mr. Clutter was quite good at baking bread. As a matter of fact, he was one of the best bread bakers in his community. Despite being an excellent cook, Mr. Clutter ate very little and never smoked nor took spirits. Mr. Clutter’s circle of friends as members of the First Methodist church of garden city also avoided both stimulants as well as spirits (Capote).
Mr. Clutter also emphasized the same to all his family members as well as the rest of the laborers that worked on his farm. As a matter of fact, Mr. Clutter always made it a point to find out if any of the job applicants take spirits or stimulants. This was further emphasized on the work contract whereby all his employees signed that should they find in possession or smelling of alcohol, their contracts are instantly terminated. All this represents good family values and therefore represents good religious morality (Capote, p. 6).
Mr. Clutter as an employer was renowned for paying his employees well, giving frequent bonuses to his employees, commitment to charity work as well as level-headedness. This is a true measure of not only financial, social, legal, but also religious morality. Mr. Clutter’s compassion and readiness to give his only resident employee a morning off to take his sick child to the hospital is just remarkable. More so, he was even ready to offer any other type of assistance if the employee needed it. This represents a very high social as well as religious morality (Capote).
Mr. Clutter always loved his River Valley farm and everything that was on it. Once his wife jokingly said “my husband cares more for those trees than he does for his children,” this was how Mr. Clutter loved his farm. Once a small aircraft crashed into his peach trees, Mr. Clutter filed a lawsuit even before the pilot could get out of the aircraft. This represents legal morality as Mr. Clutter loved and cherished everything he owned.
When Mr. Clutter was busy patrolling his expansive farm, he came across hunters from Oklahoma who had not paid Mr. Clutter for them to hunt, however when they offered to pay for hunting rights, Mr. Clutter let them hunt without paying and headed home. This represents financial morality for the landowner who is not greedy to jump at every opportunity to make money (Capote, p. 56).
In a tinny town of Holcomb, Kansas on November 15, 1959, without a motive, four members of the Clutter family were brutally murdered by a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. The killers left no clue as there was no perceptible motive. However, the murders were reconstructed and the investigation led to the apprehension, trial and execution of the killers (Capote, p. 419).
Faerie Queene Book II by Edmund Spenser
From a distance, The Bower of Bliss and Garden of Adonis may appear morally similar due to their geographical form; however, the two gardens depict very different classes of human life. Garden of Adonis is a representation of good morals while The Bower of Bliss depicts sexual immorality, sin.
To stimulate wasteful useless lust by use of art is what is condemned in The Bower of Bliss, but there is great admiration for the garden. Just as there is deformity when one goes into The Bower of Bliss, the vine bending under the weight of golden grapes image indicates nature’s deformity by deception. By trying to overdo the most interesting features of the golden ivy, it ends up with excess goodness to a morally unsound point. The replication of sensations is as good as pornographic in nature. This represents sexual morality (Spenser, p. 42).
On the other hand, The Garden of Adonis is a contrasting one with natural goodness that is not exaggerated unlike the Bower of bliss. The Garden of Adonis does not have any of the artifices, but only natural Art. The Garden of Adonis represents sexual as well as religious morality due to its reality that is not over-emphasized as in the Bower of Bliss. In Garden of Adonis, the gates are guarded by the real ‘Genus’ but not a phony one as in the case of the Bower of Bliss (Spenser).
The Garden of Adonis is one that witnesses the cycle of regeneration as only grownups enter through its gate and small kids leave the garden, unlike the unproductive lust experienced in the garden of Bower of Bliss. It may appear as if old age to babyhood is recycled, or maybe it could be just their souls are the ones that get recycled. This is the best example that represents religious morality when people entering the Garden of Adonis with sins they have carried on their shoulders for a long time are offloaded once they are in the Garden of Adonis and come out forgiven and clean like young babies (Spenser, p. 48).
The Garden of Adonis is a symbol of the plutonic life principle where bodily decay during their lifetime is again restored after they enter this garden. This also indicates that the Garden of Adonis is fruitful and a storehouse of some sort for the different forms of life. This indicates that the Garden of Adonis is a place where religious as well as sexual morality is upheld. All the people who visit the Garden of Adonis are people who share and enjoy normal and realistic love which is not given in excess to a point of sickness (Spenser, p. 80).
The love experienced in the Bower of Bliss garden along with its excessive and unproductive pleasures is a total contrast to the unwavering love and happy state only experienced in the Garden of Adonis. Even the name Bliss implies extreme and transitory sensation. The people who visit it are only interested in wasteful and lewd sex, just for the sake of it as nothing productive or fruitful comes out of it as it lacks real love. The people who visit the Bower of Bliss have no interest in procreation as in the case of those people who visit the Garden of Adonis. Because of the sexual immorality in the garden of Bower of Bliss, the spirit, as well as the will-power of a knight, is sapped leaving him with no interest to pursue his true calling in life (Spenser, p.73).
Under some kind of spell, with her misguided and lustful mind, the queen of the garden is an enchantress with the ability to twist men into pigs. Only men with experience as well as sound knowledge are able to resist this phony lure of the enchantress. These are men who are role models in society who uphold very high sexual morality in society. The sight of ‘naked Damzelles’ bathing, gets Guyon very aroused and gets him enchanted almost immediately. Guyon is in danger but luckily the Palmer pulls him away despite Guyon’s education into temperance. Despite the Bower of Bliss garden being ruined by artifice, not all of its pleasures were tainted, in verse 75, the song ‘lovely lay’ only advocates taking pleasure in life while it lasts (Spenser, p.80).
Conclusion
In life, there are people with different virtues. There are those who are role models for society such as the Clutter family and the garden of Adonis that best represent morality, good virtues. While on the other hand, there are those who are a menace to society with their evil deeds such as the quadruple killers and the Bower of Bliss that represent immorality, evil deeds.
Works Cited
- Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood. New York: Transaction Publishers, 2006.
- Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. New York: Penguin Classics, 1978.