Hello all!
Here is my story. Writing fiction is something I’ve almost never done so it was strange experience in the sense that this came from free association rather than rational (I hope) deliberation. It was also strange that archaic language cropped up here.
I have a great story to tell you. It’s about how evil came into this world. It all started with three brothers who hated each other. But their hate is not like the hate we know today. For during this time in the progress of humanity, hate was neither an act nor a word, but was a thought. It was something people kept inside at all costs even if it killed them doing so. In fact, this kind of internalized hate killed people all the time. It devoured them like cancer.
Hate was kept inside for one simple reason: externalized hate was thought to anger the powerful Eye in the sky. This Eye watched everything everyone did with a piercing judgmental gaze, mysterious and hungry. It was hungry for hate, and if fed, it would turn everything to ash. So everyone lived in fear of the Eye. They felt it watching and waiting. They felt it like they felt the air that suffocated them but was neither seen nor heard.
The brother that hated each other were like all people who lived during this quaint time. First off, they were polite and at times sweet. So sweet in fact that they made each other and anyone else who had a taste sick. They spoke with a frantic cadence, as if they were afraid to be caught saying something wrong or incorrect (which they did all the time as everyone knew but wouldn’t say). This matched their countenance of nervousness and agitation which left the impression that they were ready to explode like shaken up bottles of beer.
Like all people, the buzzing hateful thoughts devoured the brothers’ consciousness. It was agony but they could not release it for fear of the Eye’s wrath. This pitch of hateful thoughts was even more shrieking when the brothers were together in blood and body for all people during this era shared the peculiar quality of hating those most close. Sure they hated coworkers, clerks, Facebook semblances, and the like. But with these objects of hate, the brothers were able to release stabs of hate through polite banter and, put simply, showing off. Since kinships fell outside this convention of silent attacks, the hate the brothers felt for each other was all the more wild and intense.
These brothers hated each other more than anyone has hates anyone else before because they were nearly the same person. Triplets at birth, they grew up with the exact same likes and dislikes, friends and enemies…They were so identical that the hatred between them blurred into the most intense kind of hatred of all: self-hatred. Now this hatred was multiplied by three and reached a pitch that no mortal could bare. They needed a way to release it without angering the Eye. And they did. They discovered a way of saying what they mean without really saying what they mean. They invented fiction and the story. They learned how to evince their hateful thoughts through the stories they told. And so evil, through untrue-true acts and words, was unleashed onto the world forever.
Hey! Thanks for your post! I was in the same boat as you, coming from a place where I’d never really written any fiction; it definitely was an interesting exercise. I noticed the contradictions in your story, of untruth and truth, and hatred between almost identical beings; were you inspired by Chamberlin’s discussions about contradictions, or did this come naturally and I’m reading with the freshness of Chamberlin on my mind?
While I was reading your piece, I found myself actually thinking about Canadians a bit. When you describe the brothers as being “polite and at times sweet. So sweet in fact that they made each other and anyone else who had a taste sick,” as well as intense hate masking itself in “polite banter” I found myself thinking how Canadian this sounds – to a greater extent in your story, of course. Living in Spain, I found people much more forward. If they didn’t like something they were upfront about it. Coming home, I realized I’d forgotten how much Canadians love to beat around the bush. It became more obvious after my Spanish boyfriend joined me here, hearing his fresh take on “Canadian-ness” – how we are sometimes polite to a fault, where we can be angry, but no one would ever know. There’s this documentary on Netflix called “Very British Problems” that discusses a similar “problem” British people have with not being able to say how we/they really feel and the repercussions of that. With so much of Canadian culture coming over from the Brits, it’s not surprising that Canadians have inherited some of these mannerisms.
I wanted to ask you what inspired you to write your retelling the way you did?
Thanks again for your post!
-Kirsten
Thanks Kristy.
I definitely was pushing Chamberlin’s theme of contradictions to a reducio ad absurdum in my story. Part of me thinks that rejecting the so called philosophical “law of non-contradiction” is soft-headed and goes against a sensible (and empirical) view of reality. Another part of me acknowledges that polar opposites (like good and evil) seem to dissolve upon closer inspection.
Like you, I find Canadians indirect and in fact sometimes enjoy spending times with more reckless types (those you’d never find in university or holding any kind of privileged positions) refreshing for their authentic expressiveness. If you visit Japan, you may find it even more repressive than Canada as it has a strong honne to tatemae culture.
I wouldn’t say anything really inspired me to write this story – it was purely a free association exercise. The themes and critiques must be whirling around my subconscious.
Thanks!
Hi Ryan! Thank for sharing your story! When I first finished it, I was a little unsure what to think. I kept thinking about your last lines:
“They discovered a way of saying what they mean without really saying what they mean. They invented fiction and the story. They learned how to evince their hateful thoughts through the stories they told. And so evil, through untrue-true acts and words, was unleashed onto the world forever.”
While all of us are writing stories about how evil came into the world, and how once a story is told it can’t be taken back, I found that yours really drew parallels between evil and fiction/stories. I didn’t want to agree with this, because I want to believe that stories are good and positive and joyful contributions to the world. I thought about this more, though, and, while stories can absolutely be all of the above, they can indeed provoke evil. Thomas King asks “Do the stories we tell reflect the world as it truly is, or did we simply start off with the wrong story?” This line, along with your story, reminded me of how influential stories can be, and I thought of just how powerful writing can be when it comes to promoting evil- for centuries, writing has been used to promote racism, anti-Semitism, etc., and now social media and the internet is a breeding ground for hatred. There sure is truth to the adage, “The pen is mightier than the sword!”
My contrarian side relishes finding contradictions and counter examples to what seems prima facie sensible. Stories are good and positive and joyful contributions to the world, but like you observed, are also used as tools for hate. Although I also find King’s dismissal of contradictions a bit strained, part of what came out of me when free associating this story was the idea that fictions (or “untruths”) are powerful (albeit a different kind of power from true-truths).
Non of this was premeditated so everything I’m saying is post hoc.
Thanks for you comments!
Hey Ryan,
I really enjoyed your story, I thought it took the formula of this assignment another direction and it was very interesting and unique.
What strikes me the most about this post was the ambiguity of the time this story took place. It is obviously not set in present day – as you stated that it is the story of how hate came into the world, and there is a sort of dystopian feel with the eye and the way people view hate. However what I found most intriguing was the use of modern day terminology, such as describing something as cancer, or referring to facebook, made the setting hard to decipher.
I was just wondering what your intention was for the story’s setting, and if these terms were intentionally placed?
Thanks,
Sandra
Thanks for your insightful comments Sandra.
I was intentionally ambiguous about the setting – it just felt better that way. It was fun combining an oratory style with contemporary references. In hindsight, I sort of get the fun Robinson had and King has when they do the same thing.
Thanks again!