that story is too much
... In the midst of a project ... coming up for air ...
As a former Army brat, I confess to getting a little teary-eyed when I hear a particularly well-sung rendition of The Star Spangled Banner. It's possible -even probable, in retrospect - unconscious patriotism underlay some part of my lachrymosity, but considering that such a word as patriotism is commonly conjoined with modifiers like "blind" and "foolish" and "bigoted" (and, unfortunately, far too commonly correctly so), I doubt I would have mentioned it.
If I were aware that patriotism were the sole or even a major cause, I would probably have teared up anyway, but I would almost certainly have kept it to myself.
However, that's not what I thought the story was about. I thought the story was about taking rash actions in youth and facing the consequences of them for years beyond anything sensible.
I reflected on some the incidents of my own youth - pulling a knife on the kid in the second grade (and a few things much worse than this that I don't have the stomach to rehash). How might my life have been different had I plunged it into my attacker as I had threatened? With someone younger than yourself, maybe it would seem condescending to compare the actions of a 10 year old with those of a young man (early twenties late teens?), but in the glory of my pompous arrogance, I classify them both as "kids."
I also thought it was a story about the occasional lack of justice in extreme retributive justice.
When I was very young - about 2 - my biological father was sitting on his friend's front porch swing. He saw two men coming towards him and recognizing their intent, jumped up and ran around the house. They pegged him - twice in the head and three times in the heart - as he was bounding the fence into an alley. They each got a paltry five years for it. One of them died in prison and the other got out - to be promptly killed by my uncle, who then spent 20 years of his life behind bars. I suppose his lawyers weren't as good. I saw him very briefly about 10 years ago. He was such a shattered man it seemed to me. He took one look at me and - weird as it seemed at the time - this scraggly, bikergang-lookin' redneck started to tear up hisself. "You look just like your daddy," he said. Ah, well. Another story.
He made the same mistake as Camus' stranger -- failing to recognize and acknowledge the ultimate authority of those who make the decisions. But they taught him. When they said justice had been served, he ought to have accepted it and just gone on to live his life. (Completely irrelevant, but I have a cousin who spent 7 years in jail and 13 years probation for alledgedly selling marijuana. So murder is 5 years if you suck up to the judge and 20 years if you fail to recognize The People as the ultimate arbiter, and selling MJ is worth 7 years.)
On the other hand, when I read literature, I always wonder - am I understanding what this guy is really trying to getting at? Most of the time I'm pretty sure I'm not. Even when I think I'm on to something, I suspect I took a wrong track and am wondering aimlessly.
I guess it *was* a story about patriotism, after all. These other things I thought I saw were phantasms. But, heck, I've made worse mistakes than that in my life.
