In chapter 23, Carwin reveals to Clara that, as most of the class suspected, he is indeed the source of the mysterious voices. The whole of chapter 23 is occupied with his explanation of his actions and their (supposedly) non-criminal motives. The one voice that Carwin does not claim, however, is that which convinced Weiland to murder his family. While this may seem believable, as another probable explanation of Weiland's actions, divine intervention, has been proposed, comparing Weiland's vision with the face Clara saw in the same night shows that Carwin's involvement in both is likely.
Clara states that, when she saw the face in her house, "the eyes emitted sparks, which, no doubt, if I had been unattended by a light, would have illuminated like the corruscations of a meteor" (168) Later, in Weiland's testimony before the court, he points out that he, unlike Clara, is indeed without a light, and only a few lines later describes an irradiation that "did not tire or lessen" and "some powerful effulgence" that "covered [him] like a mantle" (189-190). In my opinion, Brockden Brown is almost making the similarity between these occurrences too obvious. It seems that he wants us to draw similarities between these two descriptions and subsequently question Carwin's denial of involvement in Weiland's crimes some time later.
As far as possible motivation for confessing to all the voices but the one heard by Weiland, one possibility stands out. Throughout his speech to Clara, Carwin makes a point of trying to convince her that his intentions were not of a criminal nature. While in the other instances, a believable non-criminal motivation could be fabricated, it would be hard to come up with an innocent motivation for convincing someone to kill his wife and children. If Weiland were telling the truth about his motivation in his other acts of biloquism, this explanation is invalid. If, however, he was only trying to vindicate himself of the "name of desperate or sordid criminal" by any means possible, he may have felt that not admitting to manipulating Weiland was the only way he could convince Clara of his innocence intentions (234).
I was definitely questioning Carwin's story as well and was thinking that he had some input in Wieland's fit. Along with the light that you talked about I also was thinking about this:
ReplyDeleteWe already know that Carwin is conniving and manipulative so I do not believe that it is past his character to be involved with Wieland's sudden insanity. On page 188, Wieland talks about he kept wandering from his path along the way to Clara's before he had his vision. Now this way be a stretch, but I believe that it is very likely that Carwin was the cause of this wandering. We know now that he likes to hide in bushes and scare people to death so why wouldn't he have seized the opportunity considering Wieland was alone.
However, I do believe that Carwin just began the craziness and not necessarily told him to kill his wife and kids. Since this is coming from Wieland, Carwin may have said and meant something completely different but Wieland just interpreted it in his own way and therefore we have to get the story that Wieland decides to tell. On page 230, Carwin tells Clara that she misinterpreted the conversation in her closet and if she had listened carefully that she would have known that it was not a plot against her life. This same thing could have happened with Wieland and he just interpreted Carwin's words differently.
I think the one of the most important things we need to consider related to Carwin is motive. Brockden Brown has chosen to depict Carwin with strikingly contrasting descriptions. It seems that I (along with Clara) cannot help but remember the first impression Carwin made and the trust, interest, and respect he gained at the beginning of the novel. When he went to Clara to confess and apologize for all the harm he had done and all the hurt he had caused, his appeal in many ways reached back to Clara's first impressions of him, so while feeling a sense of disgust for his character I simultaneously could not help but also feel a twinge of sympathy for the person he was (possibly) trying to be. I think this response is exactly what Brown was trying to create: a conflict that is not only between characters but within oneself.
ReplyDeleteWhen we consider Carwin’s motives I find it interesting that the only purpose for his action (so he claims) was curiosity. This seems to tie quite nicely to the Garden of Eden story yet again. I suspect that Adam and Eve might similarly claim that their motivation for eating the forbidden fruit was nothing other than curiosity, although it seems that perhaps the desire for power and knowledge was a key motivation in both situations. While Adam and Eve desired to have Godly knowledge of good and evil, Carwin desired knowledge of the accuracy of Clara’s (and perhaps Humanity’s) self assessments. Obviously the desire for knowledge is not a crime; however, both Adam and Eve and Carwin deliberately acted against principles they knew to be right (against God himself and against a self-will to refrain from manipulative and deceiving acts) in pursuit of this personal gain.