Monday, September 10, 2007
Excerpt
"Perhaps the greatest relief of all, though, was that I still thought of myself as a good man. I'd assumed what had happened at the edge of the nature preserve would change me, affect my character or personality, that I'd be ravaged by guilt, irreversibly damaged by the horror of my crime. But nothing changed. I was still who I'd always been. Pederson's death was just like the money; it was there whenever I thought about it, but then when I didn't, it was gone. It made no difference to my life in a day-to-day sense unless I called it up myself. The key was not to call it up." - From A Simple Plan by Scott Smith
I'm a huge fan of the film version of A Simple Plan, and I'm rapidly turning into a fan of the book as well. This passage got me thinking about murder, a person's capability of committing it, etc. For those of you who haven't seen the movie or read the book, the first murder in both is largely an accident that gets out of control.
At any rate, living in a world where the concept of murder is pretty loosely defined - thou shall not kill except in war, the death penalty, the movies, etc. - it makes you question your values. I suppose I'm like a lot of people - I'd only kill another human being under specific circumstances: mess with my child or my wife, try and kill me, break-in to my house, etc. Other than within those parameters, I don't think I could kill for revenge. I've always thought the best revenge was to simply let people live their own lives, karma has a way of taking care of the rest. There hasn't been a war in my lifetime that I felt strongly enough about to do something over - Afghanistan coming the closest, but even then I knew we'd fuck it up, which we did.
I don't think I could be a hit man, though I have achieved hit man status on Grand Theft Auto, I don't think I could be an executioner, a soldier, or the person who orders them to kill. I have driven under the influence more times than I care to admit, which has the potential to kill. I don't currently own a gun, though I do plan on getting at least a shotgun - not so much for human burglars but those of the Ursine variety, I have the same policy for bears as I do for humans in that respect.
Anyway there's no point or moral or whatever to this entry, that quote just got me thinking is all. If anything, I'm just puzzled over the definitions of death; murder, execution, war...it's all killing. Is it all murder?
Thou shall not kill...unless you have a good reason.
Labels: Excerpt, Movies, Random
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