"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find
The grandmother in Flannery’s classic short story has an epiphany as she faces the Misfit’s gun barrel - a moment of clarity about what it means to be part of the human family when she blurts out "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children !" before the bullet hits.
That has me wondering about a scene in my WWII novel in which, at the end of the occupation, Quisling faces the firing squad for his conviction as a traitor. Since the novel is omniscient, I theoretically can get inside his head and outside his head easily. The question, though, is whether facing those bullets meant a moment of clarity - an epiphany - or not. If it does then ultimately if one adheres to the Catholic and larger Christian point of view, then there is salvation. The temptation is to rob him of humanity and leave him defiant to the end. That might be consistent with what I know of his writings. Yet he professed a form (his own) of Christianity which presumably would include the notion of salvation.
I am torn between my own feelings of vengeance on behalf of family long dead and a personal belief in redemption. I’ll let it fester a bit longer.
No comments:
Post a Comment