The main conflict of literary works is often based upon the struggle between good and evil, or between virtue and injustice. At the same time, all moral constructs have to a great extent subjective nature and are understood dissimilarly in different cultures. For instance, the concept of justice has a number of interpretations, and the methodology of the present paper will incorporate the perspective of retributive justice, which implies a proportionate response to crime and the natural, fundamental equality of living beings. The present paper argues that whereas in “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt justice is executed fully at the end of the novel due to the fact that all members of the group are punished on the basis of their moral and legal deviations, whereas in “The Bacchae” by Euripides, Dionysus’s wrath results merely from his pride and vanity, so there are no objective reasons for the destruction of his family.
Although Euripides’s play entitled “The Bacchae” was created more than two thousand years and the author was influenced by the contemporary ideas of divine justice, Dionysus’s actions can be barely classified as just from the modern perspective of retributive justice. However, due to the fact that he is the main character of the literary work, it is important to understand his personal reasons for the collapse and catastrophe he brings about to Thebes. First and foremost, Dionysus seeks to pay his relatives back for their failure to recognize his divine background: “ My mother sinned, said they; and in the need;/ With Cadmus plotting, cloaked her human shame/ With the dread name of Zeus; for that the flame/ From heaven consumed her, seeing she lied to God” (Euripides, ls. 35-38). This means, instead of giving Semele a credit for her explanation of her pregnancy, her parents and sisters blame her for amorality and engagement with non-marital relationships with a man; moreover, as she dies, they abuse her light memory by concluding that Semele was killed by Zeus’s thunder for making false statements. They might also have employed the story about Semele for political purposes, as Semele’s example in their interpretation serves as a perfect deterrent of the misuse of the name of the major Olympian deity. However, Dionysus, born by Semele, appears to be an equally powerful god and thus seeks to teach a lesson to those who mocked his divine background.
Dionysus’s second motive for leading his family to insanity is the lack of understanding from their side as he is asserting himself as a powerful deity. In this sense, the main character is perceived as the Other, due to the spread of the idea of the Asian origin of the Bacchian cult. In particular, Pentheus describes Dionysus as a man with Asian traits and a lack of masculinity in appearance and behavior. Furthermore, nobody in Thebes is fully aware of the area of human life Dionysus is responsible for. For instance, Pentheus reduces the cult of this divinity to worshipping wine and the process of drinking (ls. 270-272), so Dionysus forces the inhabitants of Thebes to understand his role in the pantheon in such a cruel way. He is actually infuriated by their voluntary ignorance which consists in the unwillingness to learn more about him and understand him, whereas Dionysus is an embodiment of an important natural and psychological force, which can be described as the change of the state of mind when facing the mysterious or surreal.
Finally, Dionysus seeks revenge for the lack of respect he faces in Thebes. Whereas the other Olympian deities are worshipped in temples and shrines as well as through special events and rituals, he is ignored by human beings. In particular, Pentheus, the leader of Thebes, explicitly expresses his scorn for the god: “To adore this new-made God, this Dionyse,/ Whate’er he be! – And in their companies/ Deep wine-jars stand, and ever and anon/ Away into the loneliness now one/Steals forth, and now a second, maid or dame,/ Where love lies waiting, not of God!” (Euripides, ls.252-260). As one can assume, the power of Dionysus is mentioned predominantly in scabrous jokes, which makes it clear that no one fully realizes and adequately estimates his true capacities. Thus, in order to prove his supremacy over human beings, the deity casts a spell of madness and rage on the whole city.
Although the motives for Dionysus’s actions might seem weighty for the ancient society, nowadays they are not sufficient to justify his crime against the population of Thebes. His desire for power, respect, and recognition point merely to his excessive ambitions and, which he is supposed to suppress considering the enormous responsibility associated with possessing such supernatural abilities. Due to the fact that the modern model of retributive justice does not distinguish between a human and a deity as long as the latter is anthropomorphic, it is possible to assume that Dionysus received his magical power from his father Zeus in order to complete the mission of bringing order to society and becoming its wise ruler. Instead, Dionysus is fully consumed by his unrealized aspirations and brings death, grief, and guilt into his family out of vanity. As he is much stronger, more intelligent, and competent than the other members of the community, he is responsible for bringing enlightenment and order in Thebes; however, instead of assuming his moral responsibility, he lets out his animal aggression and causes his aunt Agave to take the life of her son in the hypnotic state and turns his grandparents into snakes. Objectively, Dionysus takes three human lives and causes mental illness to several people vindicating for discrimination and personal offense. Although his relatives really abuse his dignity, human life and health cannot be viewed as a proportionate pay for wounded pride, so the ending of the play is not characterized by the triumph of justice.
As opposed to the ancient literary work, in the modern novel entitled “The Secret History”, all characters deserve the outcome they receive towards the end of the work. As Julian holds in his lecture, “We don’t like to admit it, but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people – the ancients no less than us – have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self” (Tartt, p.38). As one can assume, the integral aspect of the human existence within the society of other humans is abstinence from following the primitive calls of the animal nature like aggression and physical pleasure, due to the fact that peaceful coexistence of social beings requires compliance to man-made rather than natural laws. At the same time, Henry, Francis, Charles, Camilla, Julian, and Richard seem to violate the moral norms of their society. They perceive themselves as the chosen only on the basis of being enrolled in the closed elitist club of lovers and students of ancient Greek. The members of the higher society including Henry, Francis, Charles and Camille, are so arrogant and conceited that they prefer to remain blind to the world beyond the small college group and seem to exist in the parallel dimension. Therefore, their gift and intelligence are worth nothing as long as they are not committed to the society, where poverty, inequality, and criminality are in “blossom” and which they might be able to improve. Instead, they disregard their parents and caregivers due to their materialistic inclinations to business (Tartt, p. 32), forgetting that they afford their top-class lifestyle owing to this family business, which brought prosperity not merely to their family but also contributed to the positive transformation of the society. In fact, the punishment imposed by the author upon Francis and Camille results directly from their sense of superiority and detachment from the society they are born to Francis, presented in the book as homosexual, is forced by his grandfather to marry an “earthy” woman for the family’s fortune, whereas Camille stays with the sick grandparent and end up lonely. As one can assume, Francis is not accepted as he actually displays little tolerance for those who do not belong to his circle of the chosen, whereas Camille’s solitude is associated with her self-importance and unwillingness to establish emotional connections with others.
The penalty of Richard, the narrator, consists in the eternal separation from Camille, the girl he has strong feelings for, as well as in the stable guilt which he cannot resist: “Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of life exist outside literature? I used to think it doesn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs” (Tartt, p.5). His only noticeable deviation is telling lies and misrepresenting himself in the college group, which implies hiding his working-class family he is ashamed with, and at the beginning of the book, the main character explains that he has been living with shame all these years. Interestingly, he loses his opportunity to express his feelings to Camille and tell her the truth as a result of “fabricating” his life and telling lies.
Charles, Camille’s brother, is condemned to drug addiction, i.e. his physical and mental health substantially deteriorates by the end of the novel. In this case, he receives a fair punishment for his immoral lifestyle, i.e. alcohol and drug misuse, as it turns into a dependency and deeply hurts his soul.
The revealed towards the end of the literary work, Henry, the major moral pervert in the novel, commits suicide. This character approaches both of his murders in the most pragmatic way: after killing the farmer in the drunken Bacchanalia, he in cold blood decides to do away with Bunny who threatens to spread the information about his transgression. The absence of moral suffering and regret proves that Henry is not able to realize the true “wrongness” of violence and crime against humanity. Moreover, due to the fact that he is an unspoken leader of the student circle, this character also serves as a role model for others but he fails to assume the responsibility for shaping the behaviors and worldviews of his peers. Instead, he becomes even more self-indulgent and displays even greater moral degradation after killing Bunny: “…my life, for the most part, has been very stale and colorless Dead, I mean. The world has always been an empty place to me. I was incapable of enjoying even the simplest thing. I felt dead in everything I did…But then it changed…The night I killed that man” (Tartt, p.463). Therefore, Henry not merely fails to comprehend the depth of his offense, but also finds it pleasant and exciting to kill humans. The just penalty for Henry’s murders is extermination, but the true execution of justice occurs when he dies from his own hands, which means that his inner psychological torment appears to be so strong that the character finally directs his cruelty and aggression against his own life.
As one can conclude, the moral evaluation of two literary works against the same criteria, or the principles of retributive justice, demonstrates that Dionysus has no moral right to hurt and slaughter his relatives, as they deserve enlightenment and moral education rather than punishment, especially considering Dionysus’s divine status and his responsibility for the weaker. At the same time, in Tartt’s novel “The Secret History”, all the characters are judged and reprimanded on the basis of their vices including arrogance, vanity, deceptiveness, and cruelty.
References
Euripides. The Bacchae. The Harvard Classics. 2009. Web.
Tartt, D. The Secret History. Penguin Books, 1996.