It’s an old genre, the tale of the blasé protagonist who only faces ultimate reality in a confrontation with death. First of all, there are the many iterations of the late medieval, early modern Everyman-plays. Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych shares the lightening simplicity of those dramatic treatments.
But I want to consider a more recent treatment, one that affected my wife and her generation that reached maturity in the 1980s (in Switzerland or her similar Austrian setting of Salzburg and Vienna where she turned 22 just before I met her). I’m interested in considering Fritz Zorn’s Mars because it anticipates my own situation, diagnosed as I am with ALS. The autobiographical narrator comes from a wealthy and conformist Zurich family. He grew up accordingly incapable of having any deeply held opinions and therefore likewise incapable of any authentic feelings or convictions. Fritz Zorn is like Richard Wright’s “Bigger Thomas” in Native Son. It’s true that the wealthy Swiss protagonist Zorn exists worlds apart from the young black killer who faces the electric chair. Yet either one only achieves inner autonomy in the face of his impending death. Either realizes only in the face of death that he has been deprived of freedom by a rigid and oppressive system. The one is suffering from privileged conformism, the other from racist oppression. I believe that these two authors addressed a theme that transcended social conditions: namely, the human capacity to recognize truth and live according to its light. Rich or poor, black or white face the same challenge when it comes to truth. Fritz Zorn’s conformist philistine father defends against independent judgment by declaring that things are always utterly “incomparable” We are drawn to the same shallow argument. Why? I suppose that comparing unlike things requires too much thinking.
It’s easy to say that Fritz Zorn is not us. We are not Swiss. We are not rich. And above all the present generation and the generation of our children are anything but conformist. We fetishize difference. We sanctify non-conformity. So where is the likeness? I think that our self-deluded complacency has to do with our moral education. We tell ourselves and we tell our children that we are good people. What we should tell them is that it’s incredibly difficult to be a good person, difficult even to avoid being a bad person. We should warn our children that they will know conflicting interests. There will be double-bind conflicts. The means will pervert the ends. They may find themselves punished for doing what is right and rewarded for opportunism. This will create a moral vulnerability every bit as pernicious as the conformism of the family of Fritz Zorn. We who have engendered this mentality in our children are responsible. We wanted their love so we cajoled and deceived them about the complexity of the moral universe.
In my family, I have never committed or been accused of neglect, abuse, or infidelity. Eight years ago my wife suffered what one calls a “psychotic break”. At first, we were closer than ever, but when I eventually found myself in the position of having to make decisions and undertake measures in our household, where my wife had previously called the shots, crises and double-bind conflicts arose. For example, when I was treated for cancer in Chicago, I tried to persuade my daughter to intervene so that my wife wouldn’t make the dangerous drive to pick me up in icy winter. This gave rise to a terrible scene when my wife and daughter didn’t cooperate. When my wife complained of pain and voiced fears of dying, I tried to persuade my daughter to accompany her mother to the doctor (since my presence was already a threat). This led to even more bitter conflicts. When my son adopted a protein-free fad diet, I ridiculed his charlatan sources. He and his mother wouldn’t talk to me for two years. Eventually, I had to rescue him, severely crippled, in Hawaii (see An Island in Time). My wife and daughter reacted with hatred and shunning. What had been my crime? I was guilty of having been right. In the entire affair, I alone bore any blame. My punishment was terrible: shunning and exclusion from all personal interactions. My daughter reacted with her hard-faced self-righteousness to every plea for understanding. How was this possible? Their mother had always assured them that they were good. My reactions reeked of hard choices. Of lose-lose moral quandaries. They were threatened with the burden of hard decisions and likely guilt. The parents of Fritz Zorn existed in an inner state of immorality. We have created that state in our generation and that of our children. We have failed like the parents of Fritz Zorn but the burden of guilt will be carried by the next generation and perhaps the one that follows.
Signed,
Andrew (Weeks)
Normal Thoughts 