I believe that we may have overlooked important questions thus far after reading the majority of this novel. First and foremost, I consider Carwin to be the source behind the strange voices heard in the novel. When Carwin was discovered by Clara soon after she heard the strange voices coming from her closet (102), I knew Carwin had to be the cause of the voices. However, my main question is why is Carwin tormenting the Wieland and Pleyel families? At this point in the novel, I fail to see any motives behind Carwin’s actions. Is there a reason why he would want Theodore Wieland to kill his wife and children?
Another interesting point I would like to discuss is why Wieland listens to the strange voices, especially the ones that tell him to kill his wife and family. Wieland appears to be a very religious individual. When Clara reads the manuscripts from his trial, Wieland says, “It is needless to say that God is the object of my supreme passion” (187). Therefore, why would Wieland believe that God would want him to kill his family? Did Wieland fail to understand that murder is a horrible crime, considered by some to be an “unforgivable” sin? Perhaps Wieland has become mentally ill after the voices drove him to insanity. Also, we discovered that yet another relative of Wieland and Clara, their grandfather, had died in a mysterious way (203-204). This may provide evidence that mental illness could be a serious problem for this family. Nevertheless, we may never know why Wieland would believe that God wanted him to kill his family or the motivations behind Carwin’s actions.
You ask two very important questions in your post, both of which I believe were intentionally left unanswered by Brockden Brown. Firstly, the issue of Carwin's motivation in tormenting Clara's family, which is somewhat explained by him but in an enormously unsatisfying manner. Carwin blames much of his tendency to use his biloquist "talent" to interfere with the family's affairs on pure curiousity or convenience, but I think their must be something more to it than this. If he was just curious, he could have probably just asked questions since he became fairly close to the family.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Wieland's motives to kill his family, I would venture a very simple answer: he is totally and completely insane. Clearly religious delusions run in his family, as evidenced by his father and grandfather. As soon as his mentality was tested by Carwin's first imitations, it was easy to see that he was becoming unbalanced.