Inhumanity of Heroes in GBF

This post is a double post for the week – I went back through my posts and realised I may have still been one short.  I hope it can still count.

For a long time upon reading this book, I was struck by the failures of people we call humans in this book – priests who secretly renege on their conservative, sacred and mediaeval vows of chastity to pursue what in that age were considered deviant sexual acts, jailers who had no respect for the humanity of their inmates, cutthroat inmates, etc, etc, etc.

I hung on to this theory, but was constantly reminded of Ms. Anne, the Commandant’s pen-pal.  While I tried to rationalize her away, saying she was merely a box of letters who had no real life analogue, I felt like I was cheating myself, that she was meant to be real and pure, that she was there to break this theory and prove that somewhere in the world of man is someone who is clean enough to be considered a hero – which I will call a decent specimen of humankind.

But the amazing occurred.  We learn near the Commandant’s overthrow that perhaps Ms. Anne has never existed, but was merely the letters of another man.  This – or that she has grown tired or afraid of the Commandant, and found it best to hide herself away by pretending she had became lost. 

In either situation, either a man is committing a large fraud on the Commandant, or a woman is being weak – by not directly confronting the Commandant and stupid – by not recognizing the handwriting thing.

In either case, Ms. Anne is no longer an incredibly pleasant image of humanity.

sooo… WOOPS DEARY ME I THINK I JUST FOUND A CONSTANT THEME IN GBF?  I don’t see any heroes around…