Compassion

Compassion in books about murder? Are you kidding me?

I am deadly serious, if you’ll pardon the pun---or don’t, if you’d rather!

Mysteries are all about compassion. Unless we are psychopathic, we become distraught when murder is committed. It frightens and enrages us. Sometimes carnage numbs because the horror is too great and the pain beyond endurance. No matter what the scale of the violence, it leaves us demanding restoration and that requires some form of compassion.

No, I did not mean to say retribution. Revenge sounds satisfying, but our dead remain just as dead and the hole left is just as empty. What we really long for is a deeper and more enduring thing. Think about an entire family massacred, as many suffered during WW II. Revenge is so inadequate, it becomes insulting. What we look for is peace.

So how do mysteries achieve that, albeit in a fictional form? The gift of peace is the supreme form of compassion, just as murder is the ultimate crime. Even in the darkest noir, we find a sense of cosmic justice, a judgement that supersedes law enacted by imperfect people with odd agendas. Think about miscegenation laws, the anti-Jewish edicts of Hitler’s Germany, or how many still promote bigotry, delusional assumptions, or some narrow interpretation of morality. Mysteries bring us some peace because they remind us that true justice can exist and that there are those willing to pursue those goals, even if the price is high.

For me, Brother Cadfael in the Ellis Peters medieval mysteries came very close to cosmic justice when he not only solved crimes but tried to match the punishment to the specific transgression. But in many ways, Cadfael was born in the ashes of WW II. His creator, Ellis Peters, lived through the war in England, which may explain Cadfael’s almost Solomonic sense of justice. The sorrow always remains, but the decision is right and we begin to move on.

So, for what it’s worth, I do think mysteries are about compassion, but isn’t the idea a fun one to discuss…

Comments

[Camille Minichino]

Many years ago, Signorina Mafera made us memorize, in Italian, a chart with every circle of the Inferno -- the sin, the sinners, the punishment. Very satisfying if not compassionate!

[Priscilla]

The Inferno was my favorite, the others growing increasingly boring. Yes, the punishments were so imaginative and really satisfying. Thanks for that post Camille. You made my day.

[Susan Shea]

Most modern crime stories end with the death of the murderer, don't they? Certainly that's my experience as a reader. So it seems the general assumption is "a death for a death" is justice served. I haven't read any Brother Cadfael mysteries in a long time - are you saying, Priscilla, that Ellis Peters didn't always follow that pattern in her stories? I know I have some on the bookshelves somewhere. You've piqued my interest.

[Priscilla]

Read "Monk's Hood", Susan, for a bit of spin on the interpretation of justice. Cadfael is my hero!