Mark Talsma

AP English: Literature and Composition

11 March 2011

Mrs. Kukuk

A Vial of Pain

“A vial of hope and a vial of pain/In the light they both looked the same/Poured them out

on into the world/On every boy and every girl,” croons Win Butler on the title track of Arcade

Fire’s Neon Bible. As the song describes, two very different things – hope and pain, good and

evil – can easily be confused with one another if the perspective is hazy. Wolves in sheep’s

clothing are everywhere one turns, spinning their webs, spreading an influence like an awful,

putrid fungus. Lance Marrow of Time Magazine touches on this idea in his definition of evil. He

states, “The truth about evil that needs attention now is its shallow, deadly, fungus quality.”

Nowhere does this idea ring more true than it does in literature. For every story extolling the tale

of a titanic, evil Goliath, there is a story of true evil lurking right under the surface – and

sometimes, finding its way inside the mind and heart of other characters. For example, one can

refer to the unctuous, sinister Judge Pyncheon of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven

Gables, the tragic hero Othello of Shakespeare’s play of the same name, and the chillingly

uniform, mindless thoughts and actions of Hawthorne’s Puritans in The Scarlet Letter. The evil

residing in these characters is never obvious. Many find themselves oblivious to its influence,

and that is where the wrath of evil truly takes its suffocating, inescapable hold.

In Marrow’s aforementioned essay, he refers to a woman by the name of Hannah Arendt,

who once said, “[Evil] possesses neither depth nor demonic dimension.” Upon reading this

powerful statement, one could right away draw a connection between it and the smirking,
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terrifying personage of Judge Pyncheon, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1851 mystery The House

of the Seven Gables. The Judge, a member of the cursed Pyncheon family and cousin to

Hepzibah and Clifford, the novel’s protagonists, is described as shrouding himself in black

clothing and having a somewhat stern appearance. Most interesting, though, is his smile.

Hawthorne puts it this way: “[One] would probably suspect that the smile on the gentleman’s

face was a good deal akin to the shine on his boots, and that each must have cost him and his

bootblack, respectively, a good deal of hard labor to bring out and preserve them” (House 105).

Hawthorne’s creative use of language here creates this image of an imposing Cheshire Cat of a

man, his smile shallow and fake, a veneer over the evil that lies beneath. In this way, The Judge

falls right into Marrow’s presented definition of evil – “the normality of evil,” as he puts it, the

way that evil can exist in places we would never expect.

This idea is further expounded at a later point in the novel, after The Judge and Hepzibah

have a vicious argument. Hawthorne takes some time here to describe The Judge in detail. It is a

slow, almost mournful description of the source of the evil deep inside him – a secret, one that

even The Judge himself has repressed. Hawthorne writes, “Behold, therefore, a palace! … Ah,

but in some low and obscure nook…may lie a corpse, half decayed, and still decaying, and

diffusing its death scent all through the palace!” (207). This elegant, but deeply sinister

metaphor, beautifully describes the true tragedy of Judge Pyncheon. He is loved by the people he

governs, respected and admired, but those who are tied to his apparently dark past (the other

Pyncheons) cower in fear of him. This is the side of himself that The Judge refuses to face,

instead putting on a façade of normalcy, burying the evil inside of him so deep that he has

forgotten about it entirely. Yet, as Marrow would have predicted, it still spreads outwards like a

fungus that attacks Hepzibah, Clifford, and any other Pyncheon in the house.
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It should be noted, though, that the other characters in The House of the Seven Gables are

able to escape the wrath of The Judge by the end of the novel. Not every literary hero shares this

fate – some falter, some find themselves so deeply entrenched in the evil that they become no

different from the source of the evil. A prime example of this phenomenon is Othello from

Shakespeare’s Othello. Othello is a deeply human character, tragically so, one that many readers

find themselves pitying by the end of the play. However, this does not absolve him from his

transgressions – as W.H. Auden wrote, and Marrow restates in his essay, “Evil is unspectacular

and always human.” At the end of the play, Othello has killed his wife Desdemona, and while his

motives were complex, the act itself was a simple, unadulterated evil.

The source of the evil inside Othello is, of course, Iago – the manipulative, cunning

puppet-master behind the tribulations that occur throughout the drama. By the third act of the

play, Iago is burrowing thoughts of adultery and Desdemona’s supposed whorishness deep inside

Othello’s sensitive psyche. Iago says, “…[C]ertain of his fate, [the cuckold] loves not his

wronger;/But, O, what damned minutes tells he o’er/Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet

strongly loves!” (III, iii, 1819-1821). Iago tells this to Othello in a way that seems like friendly

advice, while in reality, this is a seed planted in Othello’s mind that grows and develops into the

horrific thoughts and actions committed against his wife.

By act IV, the evil within Iago has successfully completed osmosis into Othello – and it

is here that Othello begins to embody evil himself, not just be victimized by it. This is

demonstrated strongly in the way Othello now talks about his wife. He says, “Ay, let her rot, and

perish, and be damned to-night;/for she shall not live: no, my heart is turned to/stone; I strike it,

and it hurts my hand” (IV, i, 2612-2614). It would be impossible to deny the existence of evil

inside Othello at this point in the play. While Iago is undeniably the source of it, it is fully
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developed in Othello now, and he must be held accountable for it. The simple, banal, distinctly

human evil he harnesses is his and his alone.

This, the human element of evil, is not specific to individuals – it can sweep over entire

masses of people, entire societies, and those participating could be none the wiser. This happens

because evil is incredibly addictive, and when the time is right, human nature kicks in and

creates a domino effect, with everyone jumping onto the bandwagon. Regarding this trend,

Marrow states the following: “Opportunistic evil passes like an electric current through the world

and through people.” A particularly dark variation on this theme is that of the Puritans in

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. When Hester Prynne is convicted of adultery and

publicly ridiculed for it by way of an A on her chest, the evil of her alleged “sins” is revealed to

pale in comparison to the wrongdoings of those who criticize her. This is indicated early in the

novel, as Hester stands on a scaffold, exalted above the crowds. One particularly cruel woman

says, “What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her gown, or the flesh on

her forehead? … This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law

for it?” (Scarlet 47). These scathing, fiery words are indicative of the true evil harbored in the

hearts of the Puritans – and Hester, a young woman with little value in vicious Puritan society,

must bear the brunt of this blow.

The Puritans like having this evil – that is notable here. In their society, one so strict and

without room for error, committing these seemingly unimportant sins is necessary for them to

keep order, for the light of human nature to shine through the pores of the skin wrapped taut over

their society. To protect this hypocrisy, the Puritans develop a level of ignorance, which falls in

step with an idea in Marrow’s essay: “A neglected dimension of evil, by the way, is stupidity.”

This is demonstrated after a meteor appears in the sky, in the shape of an A. The Puritans
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absolutely will not believe that this may be related to Hester. Instead, a sexton comes up with

this explanation: “… [We] interpret it to stand for Angel. For, as our good Governor Winthrop

was made an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be some notice

thereof!” (147). The Puritans’ disturbing inability to see a simple truth is indicative of how deep

their evil is set – so deep, that they are incapable of even sensing it. They simply create an

appearance of effortless piety, while deep at their collective core, there is an endless fervor to

keep a society built on lies and oppression afloat.

Lance Marrow’s essay touches on many different facets of evil, and as demonstrated,

Judge Pyncheon, Othello, and the Puritans all show specific examples of certain ideas presented

in that essay. The umbrella that hangs above them all, though, is a simple, implicit idea that

Marrow has – evil is contagious. Whether it be from the inside of a person to the outside like The

Judge, from one person to another like Iago to Othello, or a massive, untraceable plague like the

Puritans, evil cannot be contained. It pours out over the world, and try as one might to stop it, it

will always find another way to reach its goal of destroying all who come in contact with it.

What is scariest about this is that often, those who slip under its influence do not even realize

that it is happening. It is the responsibility of all people, as citizens of the world, to turn on the

lights and closely examine their actions, to determine if they will promote good or evil, hope or

pain.