Aubrey Wallen Literary Journal and Papers

Author: Aubrey Wallen

  • Good and Evil in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov

    Good and Evil in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov

    Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov had three sons and an illegitimate fourth, all of whom he failed to serve as a paternal figure. Through his life Karamazov corrupted the innocence and livelihoods of his posterity through a long list of violations to morality including: the abandonment of his posterity, the hoarding of his family estate as gained through marriage, the abuse and destruction of two wives, the usurpation of his eldest son’s romantic life, and the constant disrespect for his offspring’s prospects or pursuits. Karamazov, a man who failed to fulfill the role of the father left the desire for revenge and consolation embedded in his lineage, of which four differing “sons” demonstrate the potential consequences and means of continuing on past a broken family and childhood. Dostoevsky’s novel culminates in the trying of Dmitri Karamazov for the murder of his father despite a lack of clear evidence which ends in a miscarriage of justice that condemns Dmitri to Siberia despite his innocence as revealed by the confession of the fourth abandoned and indentured son, Smerdjakow.

    The representation of a family conflict in a mass trial allows Dostoevsky to comment both on the Russian individual, religiosity within society, and the Russian justice system which social pressure and moral judgment corrupt. The court trial, written in the style of entertainment, critiques the Russian justice system and the fallible nature of witness due to social pressures for the positive representation of one’s character. The trial’s speakers seem much more concerned with their own representation than the truthful conclusion of the case. Dmitri, though by no means innocent, did not murder his father, and yet must face the punishment for it, while the actual murder’s reputation remains untarnished in death after committing suicide despite having confessed the murder to Ivan. Further, while no real evidence could be brought against Dmitri, no evidence could be brought in his defense either. Thus, Dostoevsky’s critique of the judicial system emerges. After the murder of a man, the idea of escape for the criminal was inconceivable, leaving the people searching for the culprit of which there were only two options, Dmitri and Smerdjakow, whom even the prosecutor claimed to feel poorly accusing. Neither man had an alibi and had access to the manor on the night of the murder, which despite not proving either as murders created an infallible suspicion. In the end, Dmitri, who undoubtedly appeared more suspicious considering his frantic and insane manor, bloody, fights with his father, and public reputation as a scoundrel, faced conviction. While in most circumstances the conviction of a man known to beat and threaten murder to his father seems reasonable, the case was complicated by Smerdjakow’s confession. He admitted to Ivan that while Dmitri had beaten his father he had never murdered him, a claim he confirmed by admitting to his own murder and robbery of Fyodor Karamazov, the father that abandoned him. However, the revealing of this claim in court was written off as insanity in Ivan in response to the stress of losing a family member and watching the trial of his brother. Confession was overthrown by the guilt insulated by convicting a dead man to a murder and thus, allowing the murder to go unpunished. 

    Given the circumstances, a truthful conviction seems impossible. The Karamazov family’s affairs were beyond complicated as well as beyond immoral, so much that no one brother remained unscathed from the tumultuous spirit of the Karamazov name. The entire case was shrouded in obscurity and conflicting stories, as well as supported by evidence that was often disproven. And yet every viewer’s opinion was absolute. The women wished for Dmitri’s release, likely due to his flirtatious nature that enticed him to them. The men all wished for his conviction to punish his cruel murder of his father. A case with no clear truth or absolute outcome placed a determinedly innocent man in prison for the rest of his life due to blindness by a society obsessed with justice through condemning evil. Likely such strong opinions emerged from the immense valuation of one’s character and intelligence. Every member of society determines themself to be right while fearing saying or doing the wrong thing for being labeled a scoundrel. It is in this environment of intense convictions that a polarized community falsely convicts a man, leading to the notion that Dostoevsky’s real critique is of the allusion of truth created by social conventions. When the preservation of reputation overpowers morality and truth, a society loses sight of actual good and evil, a point further provoked by the lack of innocence in the entire Karamazov family. Thus, it is not that good and evil no longer exist, but that the complication of modernity makes their recognition almost impossible as every individual is composed entirely of both. 

    While Smerdjakow completed the final murder, Dmitri still beat his father, Ivan still left town in hopes that Dmitri murder Fyodor, and Alyosha ignored his spiritual superiors warnings of a darkness in Dmitri’s soul that would lead to violence. No member of the corrupt family maintains total innocence in the affair, and yet only once faces conviction and only two’s names are mentioned as suspects. Thus, the court system, in addition to being unreliable, fails to encompass the entire banality of evil for only the illegal is condemned by the law and not the immoral. While this is not to say that Dostoevsky believed that morality should be used in the implementation of governance systems, he clearly saw a lack of protections against immorality within governing. Not every criminal is evil, while not every innocent man is good. Thus, the actual action of punishment fails to show the righteousness of a character, despite its role in a society obsessed with the outward portrayal of morality. 

    In addition to praying the limitations of the justice system, Dostoevsky’s novel also strives to determine the actual meaning of what good or evil is in existence as well as if any person is actually good. The closest representation of goodness in his work is Alyosha, but like everyone else Alyosha has faults and isn’t the perfect idealistic monk that he wishes to be. He, follows a religion on which other characters cast doubt and believes in his own righteousness, and yet never condemns his seemingly guilty brother or anyone for the murder of his father. In fact, Alyosha never shows any grievance for his father, focusing instead on an ailing boy and his own spiritual pursuits. A novel which condemns the murder of a father by his son offers no condemnation of the neglect of the same father, nor any punishment for the father who neglected his children leading to such a circumstance. The only concern is the upmost crime of murder with no consideration for the others. Were no murder to be committed abuse and interfamily conflict would have gone unobserved and even during the case the family’s circumstances are only mentioned in Dmitri’s quickly ignored defense. No one individual is inherently good in Dostoevsky’s world, but that does not mean that he supports the nihilistic ideal of good and evil not existing. Rather, Dostoevsky sees people as complex beings who all participate in good and evil acts. Dmitri, who beat his father, also offers the peasantry handfuls of money, has a reputation of honesty, and feels immense guilt for a past theft he committed. The character who Russia views as evil clearly isn’t just evil, but a person, showing that while the idea of good and evil isn’t non-existant, that it also doesn’t encompass the individual as no one person can be defined by a single category. 

  • Miscommunication of people and of nations: Virgina Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

    Miscommunication of people and of nations: Virgina Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

    World War I left disillusionment and pessimistic realism across Europe in its wake. Perhaps it was the personal ramifications of death of friends or family on the majority of Europeans, the rise of the first anti-war agitation groups prior to the war, or the great economic costs that took years to rebcover from. Historians and political scientists disagree on what made WWI the most impactful on public opinions turning away from support of war as a necessity of human nature up until the second World War, but no matter, the result is the same. The first World War led to a fracturing of European ideaological and cultural ideals and initiated the shift from romanticism and heavenly idealization of our world to a deep rooted mistrust, pessimism, and disillusionment with modern society. Death touched families across Europe tainting the glamour of the relatively peaceful century proceeding the War, though with edging tensions, and the question of how to rebuild society from such a calamity arose. It was in this deeply fractured world that Virginia Woolf wrote Mrs. Dalloway, a novel that as if soul-searching investigates the wounds of isolation on experience and understanding through the life of Mrs. Dalloway in which social conventions and propriety prevent true happiness or honesty. It is this analysis of the ruinsome nature of secrecy, untruthfulness, and poor communication that parallels Woolf’s advice for Europe in rebuilding, that advice being to emphasize the importance of human connection that fear and hatred long-since stole. 

    Mrs. Dalloway follows the life of an English society woman, married to a conservative parliament member and those she encounters in her life. Taking place in a single day, the tale describes the world and experiences evoked by it in precise detail and eloquent metaphors that in their complexity and idyosycracity seek to depict the extent of the human mind with all its juxtapositions. Sentences extend alongside the scattered nature of human experience, placing the reader in tandem with her purpose, to encourage connection, a goal that she fulfills through careful description of various characters inner worlds. A random couple on the street transforms from an odd family that only goes to town to see doctors into real people, a soldier suffering from a nervous disorder that he tells no one about and his hat making wife who only wants her husband back from seeming hysteria. A former suitor, Peter, transforms from a lost friend and regret into a troubled gentleman with chaotic love affairs, a judging nature, and a wide world knowledge who hasn’t forgotten his first love, Mrs, Dalloway, either. Richard, an unfaithful husband transforms into a misunderstood man who simply love his wife ans wishes to buy her flowers, though Mrs. Dalloway remains convinced he loves another, Lady Burton. Essentially the overarching thread through each character that Woolf introduces is their penchant for miscommunication. Characters, whether too scared, embarrassed, or judged for their their truthful desires or feelings, chose to avoid repercussions by living in isolation. Even, Mrs. Dalloways who married a wealthy man that loves her admits her unhappiness by the novels end for she feels suffocated by middle class expectations and eternally regrets her surpassing of Peter’s proposal due to his lower station, despite him being a man she cared far more for than for her husband. As a result, only the reader knows the extent of each character’s turmoils which society forces them to shield their true experiences from the world. 

    This isolation through miscommunication or secrecy causes despair and loss, which while not on the same scale as a multi-continental war offers a metaphor for the reasons that extended devastation last. Each character fails to connect with their community due to a lack of communication, much like the bonds between European countries failed to recover from the first World War, leading to remaining prejudices long after which escalated into further conflict of WWII. Mistrust permeated the relationships between cultures, between citizens and governments, and even between people within communities. Of course Mrs. Dalloway never provides the solution for these fractures, as to ask one literary work to resolve the destruction of European warfare would be laughable, but Woolf’s work does diagnose a massive source of discontent after the WWI and possibly before, societal limitations on communication. Honesty and human connection form integral parts of the human experience, and for them to be limited by social repercussions and devestations removes a source of human happiness. Thus, Woolf’s novel in diagnosing a source oh discontentment offers a possible diagnosis of the root of European fracturing after the world wars, posing that for united reconnection of the world must precede the total restoration of it.

  • Dostoevsky’s Demons

    Dostoevsky’s Demons

    Dostoevsky’s Demons begins with 400 pages exploring the Russian bourgeois and the frivolous and fickle nature of social conventions that do nothing but create confusion and misfortune for the characters. Stepan can not confess love, nor reject a marriage he does not want without social repercussions just as a lame woman can not escape her abusive brother or share her hidden unconsummated marriage due to her station. The entirety of the novel takes place in a game of social etiquette obscuring truth and making it easy to eliminate the value of life from one’s conscience as these conventions serve to eliminate meaning by making life seemingly pointless. This pointless feeling created by strict conventions that remove one’s innate connection from experience and the natural world, entering them into a nihilistic perspective.

    Within the novel a nihilist rebellion seeks to overthrow the Russian aristocracy, being headed by Pytor Stepanovich. The group makes their first movement by usurping a reading at a ball hosted by the governor’s wife in an attempt to destroy her credibility and invoke chaos and outrage before continuing on a spree of murders, each concealed by the tight secrecy of the Society. Their goal is to destroy the aristocracy as that is the essential first step to overthrowing the society they disdain. However, beyond destruction, there appears no set aim of the Society. They simply want to destroy a social system that values some more than others based on false conventions manufactured to uphold said conventions. They want to destroy it and to incite chaos, and yet have no ideas for what would make a better organized society. The Society functions on nihilistic whims and vengeance, but with no value in meaning, they offer no counter solutions for betterment. Further, this aimless society blindly follows Pytor Stapanovich’s personal ambitions as he as a person offers the most inspiration to those who have no ideals to inspire them. 

    Pytor Stepanovich’s charismatic and calculating manner however, doesn’t just strive for the destruction of society but facilitates a fascist leadership for the rebellion, a fascist leadership that nihilistic philosophy paves the way for him to uphold. He forces members of the Society to murder one of their own, burns a portion of a city to the ground, and forces a man to commit suicide and confess to the Society’s crimes on his death note. All of these ruthless acts are in the name of the destruction of the old society, designed to create chaos and from the ruins Pytor believes a new better society will grow, but with no values to govern the new society Pytor’s rebellion becomes pointless destruction headed by murderous fascism. Dostoevsky’s work is known for its condemnation of nihilism and Pytor’s failed attempt to facilitate a nihilist social movement which results only in death and fascism embodies this condemnation. In writing Demons, Dostoevsky sought to show how the elimination of meaning has dangerous repercussions. Without meaning, the idea of evil disappears and Pytor can continue to manipulate and murder people without consequence. Without meaning a social movement has no motivation and thus a controlling individual can corrupt and control an entire ideological system for their own gain. A nihilistic society thus, removes the regulation that protects the humanity of a society and the protections provided  by pre-organized institutions. This is not to say that the Russian aristocracy should have been upheld and that a society that opposes such an institution is wrong, but that in order for a social movement to take place that there must be ideological goals and aspirations in separation from any one individual.

  • Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain

    Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain

    The most recurrent annoyance I had while reading Thomas Mann’s  The Magic Mountain was my inability to understand the purpose of Hans Castorp spending his seven years at the Berghof Sanatorium, which while not a flaw in the writing should be examined as the strongest potential for Mann’s intention. Clearly, Castorp was indoctrinated by the Berghof’s culture and attached to its patients, perhaps even to the carefree lifestyle compatible with his bourgeois aspirations, but no matter the explanation he was man spending years of his life in a Sanatorium of which he only departed come the onset of World War One. It was in the Sanatorium under a Doktors diagnosis of a wet cavity in the protagonists upper body that Castorp gained admission for an extended stay at the Berghof which lasted for seven years during which he lost contact with his life in the flatlands due to both death and time. The Berghof negated the possibility of any other possible means of existence for Castorp until 1914 when the Sarajevo assassination initiated Europe’s fracturing and the death of the bourgeois lifestyle which Hans enjoyed atop the Mountain. 

    A Sanatorium which served as more of an enabler of a labourless, bourgeois lifestyle for Hans until its destruction in 1914 then seems to serve as a nationless center of intellectual and philosophical debate across the many cultures and values of its inhabitants. Patients visited the Berghof from Germany, Russia, Mexico, Poland, Sweden, and so on. These people of a variety of cultures lived together in a Sanatorium atop a mountain that though located in the Swiss Alps belonged to no nation in actuality. The Sanatorium was suspended from any sense of nation, place, time, or any other connection to reality, allowing for the freedom to engage in intellectual discourse that would have been frowned upon due to social conventions of any one place with a predetermined set of values. The Magic Mountain, while not actually magic, provided a separation from customary social conventions that enabled a vast expansion of ideas amongst its patients, a privilege that was only afforded them by their ability to dedicate years of their life and a constant expenditure to the Berghof. 

    Thus, a stay at a Sanatorium which never actually cured its patients of their ailments becomes appealing for far different reasons than just laziness or indoctrination. Rather, Hans Castorp sacrificed years of his life to the Sanitorium in exchange for intellectual freedom, making his extended break from reality into the most fulfilling years of his life. He no longer studies engineering, a pursuit that only held motivation in monetary value, and expands his brain into the humanities and other sciences under the tutelage of an Italian humanist, Settembrini. The reader then, in following the tale of Hans enters a world of intellectual stimulation that serves as an argument in favor of humanistic ideals of encouraging the constant permeating of oneself with knowledge, even beyond what one is culturally familiar or comfortable with. Through repeating descriptions of the monotonous arganization of the daily routine at the Berghof Mann furthers this invitation as with a structurally repeating the plot the novels source of pleasure becomes the discourse of the inhabitants who all represent varying cultures or ideological systems. Thus, Mann’s novel offers proposes the sharing of knowledge in separation from cultural divisions and judgments as caused by national prejudices and growing tension before the onset of WWI as the ideal means of living and the privilege of the bourgeois. 

  • Coast to Coast

    Coast to Coast

    From the striped plateaus, burnt red by western sun,

    dull blades of sandstone carved by the ocean’s hands,

    scattered with green spruce, firs, and dried sagebrush,

    and waterfalls trickling down slick stone bands,

    where I watched horned goats pounce on vertical cliffs 

    and climbed cave-bound rockslides in the dirt cloud’s midst. 

    From the Pacific’s rain-steeped tea of salt and mountain air 

    brewing fresh sprout lichens on cedar bark,

    where deep green mountains basked in sheets of fog,

    obscuring the ever fading horizon line,

    where I fed seagulls at the pier from dirt caked palms,

    and learned to sing to pitch with cawing birds.

    From the moss and willow strung foliage of the south,

    draped arches over murky green canals,

    swarming mayflies evading lumpy frogs,

    algal blooms coating the surface of the deep Bayou,

    where alligators basked scorched on flattened grass

    and I found adventure, swimming under docks.

    From the snow coat hills of the frigid north, battered

    by icy wind that buried broken life,

    with only oak and pine to counter the constant white

    until yellow buds explode in spring’s first breath

    where deer leave hoof prints in fresh snow each dawn,

    and I cleansed the Earth’s dirt lodged beneath my nails.

    From the east’s walls of trees that locked away the sky,

    but crumbled where the world met the shore,

    warmed by gulf storms rippling up the sea,

    waves disappearing behind the curve of the Earth,

    where sea birds dipped where the sky met the sea, 

    and I wished to wander forever, in distant depths.

    From the flat, muddy banks framing the Mississippi, 

    encircled by cotton fields, bordered by twig-like trees,

    where flowers bloomed duller each spring,

    basted in ship’s gray fog,where cranes 

    stood on single legs, submerged in puddled fields,

    and I left the caravan that carried me, to journey on my own. 

    My roots are sprawled and broken, ripped apart in shifting ground,

    grasping on to rocks on mountain tops,

    nourished with the sea of forest air,

    shouting, stretched in webs and moss,

    burying into snow until the season’s thaw, 

    forever fighting towards an eroding shore,

    and severed in the muddy flats that were never home.

    My roots are crawling, wandering to the world’s end,

    and maybe one day they’ll dig in deep,

    to find the ancient soil down below.

    Perhaps one day they’ll tie me home,

    but for now I’ll wander everywhere

    to see the world’s hidden coves.

    I’ll wander everywhere and travel coast to coast. 

  • That Moment

    That Moment

    The lights dim. The music starts, some sort of song specifically engineered to release Oxytocin into your bloodstream. The camera pans up and down the actor’s bodies as they hold their noses close enough to brush and yet, never kiss, as if that single touching of the lips would suspend all the suspense that the filmmakers dedicated hours to making. Hollywood has boiled romance down to a scientific art. They make a grand declaration or sacrifice—run across an airport, blare a radio beneath their window, apologize for every thing they’ve ever done wrong—and then softly they whisper, “I love you.” And just like that the adrenaline races further than it did before. It’s the moment of perfect intimacy that some directing genius dedicated their life to manufacturing, in a single film shot of a camera lens. It’s at this moment that they look in love, the most vulnerable, and so they do what everyone wants. They explore and taste and roam with their eyes sealed shut and their breath heavy. They learn each other in the most physical of ways, and the audience is meant to swoon at their filmed consummation.

    No one has ever told me they loved me. No one has offered me any heartfelt speeches, but I’m no stranger to physical vulnerability. That’s all they ever want, to touch, to taste, to try, to roam. The bed sheets crease and the room grows hotter. Two bodies entwined and yet, every time I fear that if I touch too soft, or look too high that they’ll pull away from me. I know that’s never what they want, for me to promise that I love them, to tell them that I care. We’re just bodies, and this is just life, and we’re just having fun, so who fucking cares.

     I’ve never seen my parents kiss, but I’ve seen my father hold my mother. The way their bodies molded together, two individuals not yet defeated, holding each other together. He held her hand and brushed her hair from tear born eyes. He softly kissed her forehead, soft and sweet and nothing more. I want someone to want to hold me, to touch my hair because it’s soft, to kiss my cheek or nose with no intent of wanting more. I want them to hold my soul within their hand and to feel as calm as she did when he held her. It’s the kind of moment that would never make it to the Hollywood screen. It’s boring and tame, perfectly mundane. No one writes that they want to be held. Everyone just wants to be loved, but for me, I think to be held, just once, would be enough.