I want to start by stating that I like Abelard! He appears to be a good man and a caring father. I can easily look beyond the fact that he has had a long-term mistress, which is odd because I am not in favor of infidelity, but I consider it an aftermath of a hyper masculine society. Somehow I don't blame Abelard, I blame the society he lives in. I love that Abelard loves his daughters and the protective nature of a father is apparent. I believe that is what fueled his rebellion against Trujillo's intentions with his daughter. That is was made "the Brave Thing" come easily (217).
Abelard's arrest and torture just turned my stomach. It is hard sometimes for me to understand why people would choose to follow an evil man like Trujillo and participate in the torture of fellow human beings. I also feel the same way when I think of Hitler and every other person who seeks to torture and destroy human life. There was an interesting point made in class that people follow because they are afraid not to. That leads me to think that human rationale is always to preserve oneself even if it is at the cost of another. The only reason Abelard was willing to sacrifice himself was for the safety of his daughter. I guess children are the exception to the human rationale for self preservation.
Maybe because it's Easter, but I can immediately think of some other instances, beside a parent-child relationship, in which people have died so that others could live. The rescue workers on 9/11 who went into the Twin Towers and got other people out but didn't make it out themselves, soldiers who give their lives for their country or for their fellow soldiers, the people who protected Jews during the Holocaust and ended up in concentration camps - the list goes on to include people whose jobs don't inherently involve putting their lives on the line but who do it anyway. I'd like to think that everyone has people that they would die for. But yeah, it doesn't really come as a surprise that a father would sacrifice himself for his daughter.
ReplyDeleteI also liked Abelard's character. I think it's interesting to compare the type of parenting approaches that he and Beli had. Abelard wanted to protecting his daughter's from the cruelty of the world. Beli seemed to want her children to understand that life was ugly and people can be cruel. Beli was a prime example of how cruel people could be. I wonder what type of parent Beli would have turned out to be if her mother and father had had the chance to raise her.
ReplyDeleteI liked Abelard as well. The only flaw I found with him (other than the whole adultery thing...) is that he was not proactive enough. He had the chance to get his daughters out before Trujillo's power got to strong, but he did not, he just sat there not doing anything but worrying. However, I like how realistic this makes the story. In reality, people tend to think things are not as bad as they really are. A real person in that situation probably would not have taken such dramatic measures either.
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