Just finished reading through chapter 23 and my man Carwin has confessed to being the origin of the voices, some of them anyways. In his confession he makes himself out to be a nosy idiot who keeps digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole he’s dug with his biloquistic abilities. The chapter ends with Carwin’s surprise to see Catherine’s dead body on Clara’s bed, or rather that’s the way he tells it.
So Carwin is saying that he’s responsible for all the voices preluding the Weiland Massacre, and he is remorseful but he had no part in Theodore’s craziness. He alludes to the fact that maybe his actions ignited the crazy within Theodore, so in that case he (Carwin) is somewhat responsible. Or my man could be lying about everything and he might have ordered the hits directly. Who knows, all I know is that T. Wielend is mad crazy.
I think Wieland was on the verge of killing Clara when he noticed her in the room in chapter 22. Clara describes his features as those of a man who was satisfied with his current situation. He sees her and there’s a moment where, I think, he heard another command from “God” telling him to kill her, but he is reluctant and exclaims “Have I not sufficiently attested my faith and my obedience? She that is gone, they that have perished…” (p175) obviously referring to his Wife and Children. Complete madness has taken over him; my man is on a killing spree, even though he was reluctant he would have gave in. Clara owes her life to the crowd that arrived at the scene. Clara didn’t hear any voices in that particular scene; if she did she left it out of the story. That’s the moment where I knew that he had lost it. Later on when Weiland is confessing his deeds he says “I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed. I gazed upon it with delight. Such was the elation of my thoughts, that I even broke into laughter…”(p195) That quote belongs on a game show under the category; things a crazy man says.
Even if Carwin did manipulate the voices that Weiland heard I still think he’s crazy. Who does that? Who kills everyone they love? I think that his father’s way of life and his inexplicable death psychologically scarred him and the rise of these strange events sparked something in his psyche that transformed him into a madman. First and foremost the question I asked was why was he looking for a sign from God. What text did he read that led him to believe that God would speak to him? There’s a very short list of people who’ve had the privilege, Adam, Eve, Moses, and maybe a couple more. I’m not a pro on the Bible but I don’t believe God asks for innocent human sacrifices on the regular. Sure he wiped out a lot of people in the first testament, but they had it coming…amIright? These were good people he killed. Weiland’s downfall was his faith, ironically enough faith means believing in something without proof, Weiland got what he thought was his proof and because of his faith he killed the most precious beings in his life.
I would have to both agree and disagree with you on the fact that Theodore Wieland is crazy. When I first read the part where he kills his family after supposedly hearing a voice from God, I assumed he was crazy. Though much of the class assumed that, though Carwin denied that it was his voice that drove Wieland to kill his family, it really was him, I originally disagreed with that. I was under the impression that Wieland had heard the supposed voices from God in his head. However, I would not have disagreed that Carwin planted the seed in Wieland that eventually drove him crazy. It was Carwin's use of his gift on Wieland that started the whole process of him going crazy. Now, after reading the end of the book, I am still trying to decide if Wieland was crazy or not.
ReplyDeleteAt the end when he is in Clara's bedroom, he starts of with a crazed demeanor whilst he is trying to kill her. However, once Carwin confesses that it was his voice all along, even when Wieland was prompted to kill his family, it seemed to me that for a second Wieland questioned himself and his actions. This is evident when Clara says on page 253 "The words of Carwin had shaken his belief, and he was employed in summoning the messenger who had formerly communed with him, to attest teh value of those new doubts." For several minutes after, Wieland seems to be lost as to what he should do. He seems to be swaying back and forth between sacrificing his sister for God or giving it all up and admitting his wrong actions. In his final action of killing himself I feel that he had seen the error of his actions and either felt overwhelming guilt for killing his entire family or felt his actions were so horrible the only thing left to do would be to kill himself. So the initial question still stands, was Wieland crazy or just misled by Carwin? My final conclusion was that he was crazy, but for no other reason than the fact that Carwin planted the seed of craziness in his head with his ventriloquism.