Part 1

lecture outlines “varieties of evil” in the figure Uriah Heep of Dickens’ novel, David Copperfield. In the novel, seek out, cite and explain at least two of them at work in Uriah Heep. (appx. 250 words.)

Part 2:

lecture considers “atmospheric” evil (failed humanity, “monsterousness”) in the evil (failed humanity, “monsterousness”) figured in the early-formation of both Victor Frankenstein (the scientist doctor) and his creature. In the novel, seek out, cite and explain at least two examples of the “early-formation” of evil at work in either of these characters. (appx. 250 words.)

MATERIAL:

In our last module, among other things, I aimed to emphasize something that might be comprehended essentially (and traditionally) as a theological (and/or biblical) point of view.. a point of view about the eternality, the universality, the timelessness of “the conflict of good and evil.”

In other words, implied in evil understood as an “eternality” is the axiom that evil is never not there, and never not understood, experienced and known as being in competition with an oppositional force, namely “goodness” and/or “redemption,” at least in the account of pre-modern and indeed theological thought.

Numberless thinkers, philosophers, poets, priests, prophets, artists, composers, et. al, have taken up “the conflict between good and evil” as an eternal theme.

And I aimed to imply that when “evil in the world” is represented purely in and of itself, unsullied, un-challenged by an oppositional “good in the world” — in this case, the system of evil is “closed” –versus in an “open system” of evil in which evil is represented as existing (whether implicitly or explicitly) in conflict, in competition, in opposition with an opposite “good” or “redemption” in the world.

Last week I also highlighted another aspect, another visage, another species of representation of evil —

Evil Caused by Bad Upbringing, By the Absence of an Exposure to Love in Early Life

Steven Berkoff, our chief scholarly / professional authority from Module 2, expresses it this way:

“[Villans are] who may have had very little love in their early life, and therefore they have no pattern, no way of expressing love, because…love is a uniquely human thing…it’s got to be learned…and [a villain] is like an undernourished tree that can only give off bad fruit… the milk of human kindness does not run through the villains veins…the milkman didn’t leave [the milk of human kindness: Love] there that day.”

I invoke Berkoff’s characterization for this module for two reasons:

1 – in the interest of compelling us to use one general-basic definition of this particular species of evil for this module; and…

2- in the interest of focusing our X-Ray vision on this (and only this) species of evil in one of our module’s texts: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which the origin of evil is partly represented not as something “intrinsic,” but as something learned, or, in other words, as a species of “upbringing,” something acquired in the early stages of life.

Varieties of Evil in the Character of Uriah Heep in Dickens’ novel “David Copperfield”

One Guardian essay argues that in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, “we get our first glimpse of one of the greatest villains ever to stalk the pages of a book.”

How or on what grounds is “Uriah Heep” often envisioned as “the greatest” — or at least one of greatest — villains of literature?

First, according to the Guardian, Uriah Heep embodies our worst traits. In other words, Uriah Heep embodies the worst traits of entire populations of persons from all times and all places. This being one of the reasons that Dickens’ is credited as the inventor of one of literature’s worst villains: that he awakens readers’ consciousness (or consciences) to the possibility that we, in one or another sense, are, latently, ourselves Uriah Heeps. This might be represented in literature, as in Dickens’ work, as a form of influence in which what we see in Uriah Heep might also be seen as the latent life of a certain segment of the population, a entire societal segment which might vaguely reveal “Uriah Heep-like” subterranean urges, whether consciously or not.

Second is that Uriah Heep is obsequious: he pretends to be convivial as part of his design of deceiving, inflicting evil onto, his interlocutors. According to the Guardian essay: “It is the name of a man who will tell you he is the ‘umblest person going’ while scheming to lord it over you. The name of a man you don’t want to touch. A man indeed, whose very touch will ruin your day – as the character of David Copperfield learned to his expense: “As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting up the office; and feeling friendly towards everybody, went in and spoke to him, and at parting, gave him my hand.”

Third is that Uriah Heep gets an almost sadistic thrill being and feeling and knowing himself as superior to (or smarter, wiser, more clever than) other people.

[For one part of our module assignment we’ll seek out the representation of the above varieties of evil in Dickens’ David Copperfield; and for the other part of our module assignment we’ll comprehend certain evil varieties as outgrowths of experiences experienced in early phases of human formation… as is indicated below.]

All of the above three villainous traits have roots, implies Dickens, in experiences that Uriah Heep experienced early in life — or have roots in experiences that Uriah Heep did not experience early in life, such as the experiences of love and compassion. As the character David Copperfield observes of Heep: “a miserable childhood can easily turn a boy into a monster.” And with our eye on the so-called “monster” in Mary’s Shelley’s Frankenstein, we will explore this dimension of upbringing — this experience of early life, early formation — as an experience that preconditions our characters either in the direction of an upstanding human person or in the direction of what Shelley has named a “monster.”

Evil: A Tale About Frankenstein’s Unloved Creature

It has been argued that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a tale about a creature in whom — and around whom — evil comes to have sway and influence…all on virtue that the creature has not been loved in his period of foundational development as a human…his early life.

In other words, in the figure of Shelley’s “monster,” the human fails to come to the fulfillment of its humanity, for because evil IS failed humanity; and thusly the creature comes to become sub-human, a.k.a, evil; but in the portrayal of Shelley, the monster becomes monstrous and subhuman on virtue of something monstrous and subhuman, on virtue of some “dark matter” in both his so-called “parent” (or “maker”) and in the people of the surrounding community.

It’s universal “human condition” that is Shelley’s subject: not merely a “psychological condition.”

So now I should offer here one caution: you guys can easily find a lot of explication on online about the depiction of “parent-child tensions” in Shelley’s work, and you should know that most of these explications belong to the pedigree, the discipline of modern psychology. And you should know that Shelley’s business is essentially not the business of modern child psychology, or modern childhood development. Shelley’s business, rather, is to cut to the core both of what it might mean to be a “human” as such and “creator” as such (the figure “Victor Frankenstein”) — a “modern day Prometheus,” someone who steals fire from the gods in the interest of healing the whole of humanity.

In other words, Shelley’s subject is not a “psychological condition” that comes to evince evil but rather her subject is the “human condition” as such…something germane to, something which has application to, something which has sway and influence in all humans from all times and places. If we are reading carefully, we will see that in Shelley’s work, for example, that first the humanity of Victor (the “creature’s maker”) had come to be eroded before he would come to erode the humanity of his creation: it’s something about humanity at large that fails the doctor’s humanity, and consequently, by a kind of logic of “chain reaction,” it’s by Victor’s failed humanity that the humanity of his creation / creature comes to experience itself as a failed humanity —

…the chain reaction of evil, in Shelley’s account, is not a chain reaction of evil that flows from Victor to his creature; the chain reaction of evil in the novel is a chain reaction that flows from something dark in the universal humanity of the entire population of the world of the novel, and the total universal humanity conditions, first, Victor’s humanity (and also conditions his vocation as a scientist, “creator”) and, second, that same “dark matter” conditions the creature’s humanity, understood as a kind of outgrowth and a simulacrum of his maker’s reality. So it cannot be stressed enough again, the true source of evil (failed humanity) in the novel is not Victor’s manque (failed) humanity but the manque (failed) humanity of the total environment and all of the people in it.

For part 2 of our assigment in this module we will be seeking out passages (citing them and explaining them) in Frankenstein that comprehend evil as a form dark nuturing — as form of dark (failed) upringing, but I ask that we at least try to give special X-Ray attention to Shelley’s way of representing that evil an evil that is not just in persons and transmitted as a chain reaction between persons: rather I ask that we at least try to give special attention to Shelley’s way of representing the source of evil — the source of failed humanity — as, in one word…

….atmospheric

***

Evil and Theological Free-Will (versus Scientific Determinism)

The last (side) point I’d like to raise is a point that we will revist in later modules: it involves another aspect of evil in connection with upbringing: that evil can be both (I) theological (eternally intrinsic / innate) and at the same time (II) learned (the consequence of bad nurturing, bad upbringing, lack of an exposure to love in early life).

Thus, the relevant question is the following:

If the final cause of evil is theological — by which the tradition assumes evil to be intrinsic, in some measure, instrinsic to all nature and all human nature — than how come evil appears in some people and not other people?

One traditional answer — and indeed it’s a theological answer — to the above question is something Shakespeare would have believed: that all humans possess free-will, and by free-will philosophy, one can say that evil is only allowed sway and influence over our daily lives if we freely permit evil to have sway and influence over our daily lives.

Which implies that if we disbelieve in “traditional” (pre-modern) free-will philosophy, then by that choice of disbelief it would be impossible to say “no” to evil’s sway and influence over our lives, whether it be either learned or intrinsic.

In other words, with the repudiation of a free-will philosophy, comes the possibility of arguing that evil is “determined” by what is known as the philosophy of “scientific determinism”– which pressuposes that a character like Uriah Heep would simply not have the powers of humanity in himself to freely choose by free will to end the sway and influence of evil over his life. This reflection on free-will versus scientific determinism is just food for thought for future modules…not necessarily for this module.