Saturday, November 15, 2008

No Guilt

We're talking at the New Intellectual Forum about guilt tonight, and I volunteered to lead the discussion, so I broke down and have been doing a a little research so I can sound prepared.

Right away, in the context of Rand and guilt, you think about a certain "face without pain or fear or guilt" that appears after the plane crash. 

But I had forgotten that Eddie notices the exact same thing, in the same order, some chapters before:
Do you know what's strange about your face? You look as if you've never known pain or fear or guilt.
I had also forgotten this:
Their eyes were dark and hard and glowing, with no fear in them, no kindness and no guilt.
That's the protagonist of Anthem, admiring his future mate. In this earlier work, one of the trio of troublesome traits was different.

Kindness was disdained,
rather than pain.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for these connections, John. The female lead in the film LOVE LETTERS also seems to meet the description. Although there it is given as a something haywire in the character, it is a fantasy state for the viewer to enjoy.

Stephen