Sexism and God Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology

Sexism and God Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology

By Rosemary Radford Ruether

ISBN: 080701205X

I picked this up at a book sale, because the title sounded interesting to me. However, I didn’t notice the fine print at the bottom. At the bottom is a review from the Philadelphia Inquirer, which basically praises the author for being a Christian feminist. This wasn’t the kind of book I was expecting; I was expecting a broad discussion, and not the perspective of one religious group.  However, I tried reading it anyway, because I thought it might still be interesting.

My interest in the book quickly plummeted, though. The first sentence of the introduction mentions that the textbook arose from the author’s “own teaching.” (p. xiii) She basically says that she came up with everything by thinking about it and discussing it in her lectures. To me, this seems rather narrow-minded and self-indulgent. After all, in a lecture with students, she’s there to give them guidance, and it’s not meant to be an educational debate. She then mentions an activity that her class does, and her thinking behind it, which seems to explain her overall view:

“Students have continued to write feminist parables, myths, and midrashim. Such creative writing is not just an “exercise.” It goes to the heart of my understanding of inspiration and religious authority: God did not just speak once upon a time to a privileged group of males in one part of the world, making us ever after dependent on the codification of their experience.

On the contrary, God is alive and with us. The Holy Spirit continues to speak, and we are mandated to continue the dialogue. […] We may recall the dominant memories of our ancestors and also uncover repressed ones, the ones that came from women and marginalized men. But we must also reconstruct meaning for ourselves today, not only in intellectual systems but in the sparking of primal stories that spring up from our own experience, drawing upon a storehouse of cultural symbols and images.” (p. xiv-xv)

Here’s another paragraph to help further explain her views:

“One way of rethinking our religious symbols is to recognize them as circular rather than linear representations of history. We should start where we are, in our present situation, rather than working “from beginning to end.” The starting point for feminist theology, perhaps all theology, is cognitive dissonance. What is, is not what ought to be. Not only that, but what we have been told is, is not always what is, and what we have been told ought to be, is not always what ought to be.” (p.xviii)

So, basically, she insists that rewriting/reimagining the Bible is a process that’s guided by divinity. God/the Holy Spirit will help you to find the truth, and whatever you come up with—based on your own experience and reflection—is equally valid. In fact, what you come up with may be more valid in some cases, because not everything that people accept on hearsay is true.

The issue I have with this, is that this is essentially a contradictory thought-process. It seems like she’s bending over backwards to try and get her reasoning to comply with her religion. She holds Christianity as true, and seemingly as better than other religions. However, she also thinks that its gotten many things wrong, and implies that Christianity’s been unjustly dominated by privileged men who obscured God’s words. The presented way to solve this is to rewrite Christianity by using one’s own mind. 

Once someone rewrites a story with their own mind, it becomes a fan-fiction. It is no longer the original work, but how someone wished that it went. A work reimagined is not the same. This is often apparent when books get made into movies. Thus, changing the Bible’s sexism to empowering tales of womanhood seems like a rather desperate leap. Claiming that it shouldn’t have been in the book that way in the first place, or that it meant something else all along, is arbitrarily rewriting and justifying it. One could argue that God/Holy Spirit guides all Christians, and thus whatever is newly written or interpreted is equally true, but that doesn’t erase the contradictions or answer who’s right when they happen. Furthermore, I know that several branches of Christianity believe in constant evil influence—via Satan/devils—and that only further complicates the issue of who should be believed in a Christian context.

So, basically, I don’t think that her taking a fan-fiction-friendly approach to Christianity makes sense. It’s simply creating a new story while trying desperately to hold onto a beloved, traditional story. Historically, many religions have absorbed the beliefs of others over time. Many once-pagan beliefs can be found in the monotheistic religions of today, and they in turn absorbed beliefs from other cultures. Yet, she does mention this, too:

“The expansion of the range of cultural contexts, the spread of a much more vast planetary and cosmic history, explodes the small world of parochial Christian theology with its defined parameters. There is no way of knowing what will happen as we enter into these enlarged realms and begin to live in them imaginatively. Perhaps our traditional Christian stories, deeply re-thought, will still “work,” as one story among many others from parallel cultures which each accept their own finitude and limits. Or perhaps we are in the process of reshaping a new global story from the many stories that have lived in separate worlds until now.” (p. xix)

This seems to mitigate her views, as if she is okay with Christianity changing into some new form, after all.  However, what she says in that excerpt is different than what she said in the earlier excerpts. Previously, she spoke of people making up their own mythologies, and coming to individual truth via the Holy Spirit/God.  In the above excerpt, she spoke of cultural contexts and knowledge shaping a new global story, instead. People writing their own stories and interpretations can lead to cultural blending over time, but there’s a difference between blending existing belief systems into a “global story,” and writing up new interpretations. Thus, what she’s said so far is muddled.

I decided to read on. After all, I had only read her introduction. The next part is titled, “The Kenosis of the Father: A Feminist Midrash on the Gospel in Three Acts.” (p. 1)

A midrash is basically a reimagined story from the Bible. It’s told in order to critically examine a Bible story, in order to explore its meaning, and it fills in gaps which are only hinted at. So, in a midrash, events and personalities that were only hinted at can be written about in detail.

In the author’s midrash, God is sitting annoyed on his throne. He’s angry at women for having a “seductive form” (p. 1) which caused the “Sons of Heaven” to rebel and fall to Earth. As he’s mulling over his problems, “The Queen of Heaven” appears. He goes on about how he “crushed her rule a millennium ago,” and wonders how she could still reign. She responds, “No, Sabaoth, my Son. I am the Mother of gods and humans, Creatrix of all things. I am your Mother, too.” (p. 2) She goes on and he suddenly feels guilty, wonders if he’s gone about ruling humanity all wrong, and so he goes and impregnates Mary with Jesus in order to make things right.

I didn’t think that was a good story. Besides the way it was written, it doesn’t seem like a Christian story any longer, and it doesn’t make sense either. I don’t see the point in trying to cling to Christianity and the Bible’s accounts in such a way, because it seems like a ridiculous attempt to reconcile belief and reason.

I skipped ahead to Chapter 1, to see if it would be any better. It’s titled, “Feminist Theology: Methodology, Sources, and Norms.” It often seemed poorly thought-out to me. For example, she says:

“If a symbol does not speak authentically to experience, it becomes dead or must be altered to provide a new meaning.” (p. 12-13)

Basically, by “symbol” she essentially means everything which a religion says has extraordinary meaning. 

However, if it were true that symbols had to speak authentically to experience, then life would be a lot simpler. For example, how could people believe that they could wash away sins in water, via baptism? After all, people otherwise don’t believe that they can wash off unphysical things. Thus, this is a practice which doesn’t speak authentically to their previous experience, but it alters their belief via faith. People want to believe that a Creator who loves them would allow for their salvation, and so they can believe in such a cleansing process. Thus, I think a more accurate idea is this: if a symbol does not speak to one’s emotions, it becomes dead or must be altered to provide a new meaning. I think a belief in a religious symbol comes from ones’ emotions. I could be wrong, but that’s how I think of it, and she didn’t convince me of her point of view before she moved on to other points. Since accepting this point is a foundation for her later points, that’s a problem.

She also references other things at random, which she doesn’t back up well either:

“In earlier societies in which there was much less sense of individualism […]” (p. 13)

What “earlier societies” is she talking about? How were they less individualistic? She doesn't say.

“Moreover, feminist theology is no longer limited to Christianity.” (p. xvi)

It would have been interesting to know when it started, and how long Christianity had a monopoly on the subject. However, she doesn’t say when or how or why; she just expects her readers to take what she says on faith.

I think that this could have been an interesting book, because of its subject matter. However, I don't think the author expresses herself well: she’s often illogical, sounds confused, and doesn’t go into detail when it would be interesting to hear her do so. She seems excited about her subject, but not concise or convincing, and so I found the book annoying to read and not worth the time.

Summary: The author believes reimagining Christianity to be a less sexist religion is a good idea. She tries to explain her point of view, and to convince others of it, but doesn’t word things well. So instead of seeming interesting, the book is dull, confused, illogical, and uninteresting. I didn’t think it was worth the time to finish reading.

1 out of 5 stars.

Faith Hope and Love

Faith Hope and Love

An Inspirational Treasury of Quotations

ISBN: 1561383570

I picked up this book a long time ago, and decided to read through it recently. It’s one of those tiny books—the sort that are on plastic display racks at bookstores. It’s only a couple of inches tall and wide, and is a small square. Very pocket-sized. I wondered if I should even bother reviewing but, since I don’t want to go, “Hey, a quote book!” some day in the future and not recognize it, I figured why not. I don’t want to read it again.

Although the sections are supposed to be on faith, hope, and love, respectively, most of the quotes are just about faith. I didn’t enjoy the quotes, either. I think that they’re often hokey, and not in a good way. In order to demonstrate what I mean, below are two examples from each category.

Faith

“God has made many doors opening into truth which he opens to all who knock upon them with hands of faith.” – Kahlil Gibran

“Faith is to believe, on the word of God, what we do not see and enjoy what we believe.” – St. Augustine of Hippo

Hope

“It is one of my favorite thoughts, that God manifests himself to mankind in all wise, good, humble, generous, great and magnanimous men.” – J.K. Lavater

“Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask.” – Billy Graham

Love

“God is a verb, not a noun.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

“When I think of God, my heart is so full of joy that the notes leap and dance as they leave my pen; and since God has given me a cheerful heart, I serve him with a cheerful spirit.” – Franz Joseph Haydn

I’m not sure if the quotes are accurate, because I didn’t bother to check. However, people can be misquoted, quotes can be attributed to different authors, etc., in collections like these. However, I do know that I didn’t like the quotes in this book, and I disliked the fact that it says it has 3 categories. It’s mainly just a collection of religious quotes, and that makes the title misleading. The hope category has 35 quotes, and 22 of them are faith-based. The love category has 27 quotes, and 12 of them are faith-based. So, there are only about 18 quotes in the book that aren’t very religious.

Summary: A book full of uninspiring quotes. Also, despite the title, most of the quotes are religious. The “hope and love” categories contain mostly faith-based quotes, too.

1 out of 5 stars.

Foundation and Empire

Foundation and Empire

The Foundation Novels

by Isaac Asimov

ISBN:  0553293370

When I was around 13 years old, I loved science fiction. It was a phase that had started a few years prior, and I didn’t read much else. Eventually, I got bored with the genre. I could predict how a story would go, and how it would end, early on in a book.  This novel caused me donate many of my science fiction books at the time, because it was the tipping point. I was frustrated with the predictability of sci-fi stories—not just Asimov’s, but science fiction in general. I kept Foundation and Empire because I had realized how part 2 would end very early on, and saw through it easily. I thought it was amusing that I had. After all, it seemed like many people had thought that the ending was surprising, and that the nefarious Mule’s identity was a shock. Many of these people were much older than me, and I thought they were smarter; for a kid that's a nice boost to have.

However, I don’t remember if I liked the book. I remembered the key points, and that I’d been annoyed with the main characters' lack of figuring out who the Mule was, but that was mostly it. So, I figured I ought to read it and see what I think of it now; would it even be worth keeping?

On page 118 out of 282, I got my answer: I became too bored to want to finish it. I then skipped forward to see the Mule’s introduction. I wanted to see if I’d still immediately see through his ‘secret identity,’ because I don’t go through as much sci-fi as I used to. I did see through it. It’s not really a subtle cover.

The first part of the book doesn’t even have to do with the Mule’s storyline, though. Instead, it follows conflict that begins over a hundred years prior. Basically, it’s all about the Empire trying to attack the Foundation, and it’s bland. The characters are only so-so, as is the plot, and it ended on page 99. During those 99 pages, I didn’t come to care for the characters or what was going on, and then it all abruptly ended anyway. So, I basically wasted my time by reading a dull story that wasn’t really important for what came next. In fact, since the next part happens far in the future, the characters in the first part are long-dead.

Part 2 opens up on page 103. Two new main characters, newlyweds, are introduced. Their names are Toran (the husband, a Trader; apparently they're merchants who are part of, but quarrel with and rebel against, the Foundation) and Bayta (the wife, a Foundation citizen). The Foundation’s basically become corrupt in ways that are similar to the old Empire’s, and now the Empire’s pretty much gone—just as a man named Seldon predicted it would be, via using psychohistory—and things need to change.

Psychohistory’s essentially like prophetic sociology, and it’s a science which these people have confidence in.  They think that it predicts the inevitable, and so their Foundation/humanity will be okay in the future. The principles of psychohistory, and Seldon's predictions, were the focus of part 1. Supposedly, it's why the Empire lost against the Foundation. However, Seldon’s psychohistory relies on inevitable crises to drive change forward.

So, Toran and Bayta want to prompt a crisis to get the Foundation to change for the better. They believe that they can help cause one of these crises, because Seldon’s theories help those who help themselves. However, it's not interestingly portrayed. Their conversations, and they themselves, are boring.

It’s not that Asimov writes unbelievable characters, or that his plots are unimaginative. The trouble is the way he executed them in this book. There’s decent dialogue, decent descriptions, and the ideas behind what goes on aren’t bad. However, the dialogue often drags on, it’s not interesting, and there’s a lot of it.  The descriptions aren’t engaging, either. Meanwhile, the characters seem realistic but are also bland. All of these problems together make for a dull story, and they happened in both parts/stories in the book.

Here’s an example of a decent but rambling, dull description:

“The stars were as thick as weeds in an unkempt field, and for the first time, Lathan Devers found the figures to the right of the decimal point of prime importance in calculating the cuts through the hyper-regions. There was a claustrophobic sensation about the necessity for leaps of not more than a light-year. There was a frightening harshness about a sky which glittered unbrokenly in every direction. It was being lost in a sea of radiation.” (p. 85)

When the descriptions aren’t rambling, they’re succinct but surrounded by the dull dialogue. Here’s a typical example of this, and it's how the majority of the book is written:

“She said, "I know what you're trying to estimate, and I'll help you; Age, twenty-four, height, five-four, weight, one-ten, educational specialty, history." She noticed that he always crooked his stand so as to hide the missing arm.

But now Fran leaned close and said, "Since you mention it—weight, one-twenty."

He laughed loudly at her flush. Then he said to the company in general, "You can always tell a woman's weight by her upper arm - with due experience, of course. Do you want a drink, Bay?"

"Among other things," she said, and they left together, while Toran busied himself at the book shelves to check for new additions.

Fran returned alone and said, "She'll be down later."

He lowered himself heavily into the large comer chair and placed his stiff-jointed left leg on the stool before it. The laughter had left his red face, and Toran turned to face him.

Fran said, "Well, you're home, boy, and I'm glad you are. I like your woman. She's no whining ninny."

"I married her," said Toran simply.

"Well, that's another thing altogether, boy." His eyes darkened. "It's a foolish way to tie up the future. In my longer life, and more experienced, I never did such a thing."

Randu interrupted from the comer where he stood quietly. "Now Franssart, what comparisons are you making? Till your crash landing six years ago you were never in one spot long enough to establish residence requirements for marriage, And since then, who would have you?"

The one-armed man jerked erect in his seat and replied hotly, "Many, you snowy dotard—"

Toran said with hasty tact, "It's largely a legal formality, Dad. The situation has its conveniences."

"Mostly for the woman," grumbled Fran.

"And even if so," agreed Randu, "it's up to the boy to decide. Marriage is an old custom among the Foundationers."

"The Foundationers are not fit models for an honest Trader," smoldered Fran.

Toran broke in again, "My wife is a Foundationer." He looked from one to the other, and then said quietly, "She's coming."

The conversation took a general turn after the evening meal […]” (p. 109)

I think when the writing is consistently like that, not just now-and-then, that’s an issue. Even if these are all horribly dull people, that doesn’t mean that they have to constantly bore the reader by talking like this—in detail and at length. It’s like having to put up with small-talk, and waiting for it to end.

SPOILERS BELOW

THE MULE’S IDENTITY IS REVEALED BELOW.

As for the Mule…

It’s obvious who he is. When he’s introduced, his manner is far too supplicating, Bayta has far too much of an uneasy, emotional reaction to him; and the guard who chases him resembles a cartoon villain.  Since Asimov doesn’t portray these kinds of dramatics elsewhere, these issues really stand out and underline who the Mule is. Bayta’s emotions are unusually peaked, she's uneasy, and her reaction seems too random:

“His large, brown eyes focused upon Bayta.
She found herself disconcerted.” (p. 132)

“All jabbering stopped, and Bayta felt a sudden iciness trickle down into her stomach. The clown only had eyes for her—he still quivered in the guard’s brawny grasp.” (p. 134)

And the Mule’s pursuer is described with a comical, melodramatic flare. For instance:

“It was the beach guard, with a fire-red face, and snarling mouth, that approached at a run. He pointed his low-power stun pistol.” (p. 133)

“His heavy hand fell upon the clown’s thin shoulder, so that a whimper was squeezed out of him.” (p. 134)

The emotional manipulation here is clear. The Mule’s threat is that he possesses such psychic powers, and the main characters don’t know this yet. However, even if the reader weren’t aware of this, the sudden melodrama—and how ridiculous it seems in comparison to the ~130 pages that came before—show that something’s off with these scenes and the clown in them.

SPOILERS ABOVE.

REVIEW RESUMES BELOW.

Not everything in the book is written poorly, though. There are amusing lines too, such as:

“The fourth man blinked his little eyes stealthily. Words crept out from between thin lips. "It is nothing to sleep over in fat triumph, this grasping of little ships. Most likely, it will but anger that young man further."

"You think he needs motives?" questioned Forell, scornfully.

"I do, and this might, or will, save him the vexation of having to manufacture one."” (p. 19)

I think that the dialogue in the excerpt could have been written better, but that it's still decently done. Plus, the man's description is also good and succinct. However, the good parts are few and far between, and monotony reigns supreme. Thus, I don’t want to finish reading this book, and I don’t want to keep it either.

Summary: Although the story is somewhat interesting, the characters are not and the writing’s monotonous. I didn’t bother to finish reading it, because it bored me too much. I’m rating it 2/5 stars because the writing’s not completely awful, and the plot’s somewhat interesting, but I disliked it overall.



2 out of 5 stars.

American Gods

American Gods

By Neil Gaiman

ISBN: 0380973650

I picked up this book, cheaply, at a book sale. How it worked was that you filled up a grocery-store-sized plastic bag, paid $7, and then everything in the bag was yours. Since Neil Gaiman had been highly recommended to me, and I’d read a book he’d co-authored and liked it, I decided that a hardcover copy of American Gods might be worth grabbing up. It wasn’t.

I’m beginning to think that I’m just not a fan of Neil Gaiman. I didn’t like this book, but I didn’t like Neverwhere or Stardust, either. I didn’t consider it a good sign that the cover boasted, “Author of Neverwhere,” but I tried reading American Gods anyway.

I quickly disliked the main character, Shadow. His thoughts seemed rambling, but not in a detailed or interesting way. I also noticed the comma-love I’d seen in Stardust:

“If you didn’t have a death sentence, he decided, then prison was, at best, only a temporary reprieve from life, for two reasons. First, life creeps back into prison. There are always places to go further down. Life goes on. And second, if you just hang in there, someday they’re going to have to let you out.” (p. 4)

I also didn’t like the way Shadow explained his actions. For instance, a character called Iceman complained to Shadow about why he’s in prison, and in response:

“Shadow had said, “You tell ‘em” and left it at that. One thing he had learned early, you do your own time in prison. You don’t do anyone else’s time for them.

Keep your head down. Do your own time.” (p. 5)

The notion of ‘listening and talking = doing time,’ seemed odd to me. It was made odder by the fact that, later on, it’s revealed that Shadow had no problems with indulging another character’s complaints. Plus, when he responded to that character, went from speaking and reasoning like someone of low intelligence, to suddenly sounding like a textbook:

“And the moral of this story, according to Johnnie Larch, was this: don’t piss off people who work in airports.

“Are you sure it’s not something like, ‘The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment’?” said Shadow, when Johnnie Larch told him the story.” (p. 13)

I also didn’t like the way the author described the scenery and other characters, because the descriptions lacked a sense of atmosphere:

“Two pale hands rested on the gray desk like pink animals. He brought his hands close together, made a steeple of his forefingers, and stared at Shadow with watery hazel eyes.” (p. 7)

When I read that, I wondered how the man’s hands resembled animals; the simile seemed flat and pointless.

Occasionally I noticed a decent paragraph which seemed to be believable. For example, here's one:

“When they got married Laura told Shadow that she wanted a puppy, but their landlord had pointed out they weren’t allowed pets under the terms of their lease. “Hey,” Shadow had said, “I’ll be your puppy. What do you want me to do? Chew your slippers? Piss on the kitchen floor? Lick your nose? Sniff your crotch? I bet there’s nothing a puppy can do I can’t do!” And he picked her up as if she weighed nothing at all and began to lick her nose while she giggled and shrieked, and then he carried her to the bed.” (p. 8)

However, the writing was mostly dull. In fact, it only seemed to have one point: to weakly shove the story along. Here’s an example of a typical paragraph:

“Numbly, he packed up his possessions, gave most of them away. He left behind Low Key’s Herodotus and the book of coin tricks, and, with a momentary pang, he abandoned the blank metal disks be had smuggled out of the workshop, which had served him for coins. There would be coins, real coins, on the outside. He shaved. He dressed in civilian clothes. He walked through door after door, knowing that he would never walk back through them again, feeling empty inside.” (p. 11)

If these were the rarer sort of paragraphs, then I wouldn’t mind. Great detail isn’t always necessary. Sometimes, a writer just needs to give a little info, because the story needs to move on. However, writing which is like that constantly is often boring. Here’s another example, because I think this is a hard point to prove with just one:

“It was not a big airport, but the number of people wandering, just wandering, amazed him.  He watched people put down bags casually, observed wallets stuffed into back pockets, saw purses put down, unwatched, under chairs.  That was when he realized he was no longer in prison.” (p. 14)

Shadow’s emotions and thoughts when this happens aren’t given; the excerpt is all the detail the reader gets to have. Why he thought this and how he felt is not described. As I said, I don’t think a detailed description is always needed. This sort of thing happened so much, though, that I think it went too far into bland territory.

Then on page 15, his plane went through awful turbulence, but he casually fell asleep and a woman screamed half-heartedly. This underlined the tedium.

While he's on the plane, a new character is introduced, and he's called Mr. Wednesday. The dialogue goes on and on for a couple of pages, and I didn’t find it interesting or natural. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be, but at this point I was really bored and hoping for better. Also, Wednesday’s possible archetype was alluded to as the slick liar (p. 26), but his descriptions and dialogue didn’t seem slick to me. He seemed more like an uninteresting used-car-salesman with an ego. For instance, one attempt at making him seem slick is when he shows off a coin trick on page 32. When asked how he did it, he said he did it with “panache and style.” However, if he had any then he’d be interesting. He wasn't. Even the trick wasn’t described in a way I found appealing. It sounds like someone reading off a recipe to me:

“He took an empty glass from the table. Then he reached out and took a large coin, golden and shining, from the air. He dropped it into the glass. He took another gold coin from the air and tossed it into the glass, where it clinked against the first. He took a coin from the candle flame of a candle on the wall, another from his beard, a third from Shadow's empty left hand, and dropped them, one by one, into the glass. Then he curled his fingers over the glass, and blew hard, and several more golden coins dropped into the glass from his hand. He tipped the glass of sticky coins into his jacket pocket, and then tapped the pocket to show, unmistakably, that it was empty.” (p. 32)

I didn’t sympathize with Shadow, and the plot didn’t interest me either. It also didn’t help when his name turned out to be Shadow Moon (p. 13), because it seemed hollow—my guess is it’s important for Shadow (ing), but I didn’t care about this either.

Meanwhile, sometimes a sentence’s structure irked me; perhaps it was because I was already in a bad mood, though. After all, certain things can stand out in a book which shouldn’t, if you’re not enjoying it. Then again, maybe I was just tired of all of the commas:

“Then, because people do make mistakes, he’d seen it happen, he called home, and listened to Laura’s voice.” (p. 14)

I was also irritated when the story switched to another character’s perspective. During this intermission-show, a woman eats a man with her vagina (p. 22-25), and it’s surprisingly boring. Perhaps this was because I was already bored, and hoping Shadow’s tale would hurry up and be interesting. The random nether-snack just seemed like a cheap shock-attempt. The whole scene did, really. Basically, the two showed up abruptly, began to have sex, blabbed on about how great it was, one got eaten, and then the story whooshed back to Shadow—as if a cameraman had gotten distracted. Sex sells, but it didn’t help sell Shadow’s boring crap.

Then I got to read more of Shadow’s story. For instance, I got to read metaphors like this:

“The scenario unfolded in Shadow’s mind […] … the car on the side of the road, broken glass glittering like ice and diamonds in the headlights, blood pooling in rubies on the road beside them.” (p. 27-28)

In that excerpt, Shadow’s imagining what his recently-deceased wife’s car crash must have been like. He suddenly sounded like a poetic jeweler to me; it just didn’t seem natural.

Then I noticed that the author seemed to have a thing for animal hands in this story: pale hands rested like animals earlier (p. 7), and now “Wednesday returned to the table, three drinks held easily in his pawlike hands.” (p. 29) How they were pawlike, however, isn’t mentioned—just as the other guys’ hands somehow rested like animals. Were his fingers deformed? Was he especially hairy? The world may never know—unless it wants to read all 461 pages. It might be explained or important, but in context it wasn't.

Shadow teams up with Wednesday on pages 30-31. It seems like a contrived plot point, because he shows little emotion, his choice to work for Wednesday isn’t well explained, his change of heart (he was previously very against the idea) isn’t explained, he doesn’t ask any questions about his new job, and he even says, “I don’t like you […] We are not friends.” (p. 31)

Then I decided to stop reading the book on page 32. On this page, Wednesday does that aforementioned coin trick, but why he’d feel the need to show off to Shadow is unknown. Then it’s mentioned that his teeth are “gappy,” but no more than that vague detail is given. I decided that I was done, because this just showed more of the same problem: a lack of atmosphere. The writing was monotonous, and thus so were the characters and plot. It didn't look like it was going to get any better, either.

Summary: A story with little vibrancy, many unneeded commas, and a plot that seems contrived by page 30. Also, a cheap move at a shock-attempt is made on pages 22-25—involving sex and a monster—but it’s boring too. That’s the best word I can think of to describe the book: boring. The descriptions aren’t vivid and the characters are bland. I stopped after reading only about 7% of it, because I didn’t enjoy it at all.

1 out of 5 stars.

Otherland, Volume III: Mountain of Black Glass

Otherland, Volume Three: Mountain of Black Glass

By Tad Williams

ISBN:  0886778492

Mountain of Black Glass is the third volume in the Otherland series. I already wrote a review of the first book, City of Golden Shadow, and disliked it. However, I decided to give this book a chance anyway. I figured that an author can get better as they write, and so this book might be better. Plus I still owned my copy, and I needed to decide whether or not to keep it.

The volume starts off with recapping the previous 2 volumes in detailed synopses. So, it’s not necessary to read the prequels to understand what’s going on. (p. ix-xxi)

The first part of Mountain of Black Glass is a foreword which follows Paul Jonas; this is how the first book started off as well. He’s one of the main characters, and I found him to be well-written in the first book. However, in this one he wasn’t. The writing was a lot worse: no lines stood out to me as great, it was dull, and sometimes it didn’t even make sense.

Here’s a typical description:

“Helpless tears were on his cheeks now, cool in the evening wind off the ocean, but through his misery he felt a kind of vindication: surely this dream of Gally on the river in the lands of Death must mean he was doing the right thing. Paul sat up, his wits returning with sleep's retreat. The beach was empty but for a few fishermen's boats, their owners long since gone to their evening meals. Sea and sky were quickly becoming a single dark thing, and the fire he had built with so much labor earlier in the afternoon was now guttering. Paul sprang forward and fed it with cypress twigs as he had been told, and then with larger pieces of driftwood until the flames began to mount high again. By the time he had finished, the sun was entirely gone, the stars blazing from a sky undulled by the pervasive ambient light of Paul's own age.” (p. 13-14)

I think that description, as well as the writing in general, is mediocre. The last sentence is especially bad, because it’s trying to set a visual and it’s weakly worded, and ones like it are throughout the writing. Sometimes this leads to confusion:

“He stooped and picked up a flat rock and skimmed it out into the stiff ocean breeze; it splashed long seconds later at the base of the rough cliffs. The wind shifted direction and jostled him a step nearer the precipice, still healthily distant from the edge but enough to make his groin tighten at the thought of the long fall.” (p. 7)

That excerpt makes it sound like he’s getting an erection. Maybe it means something else, but that was my first thought, and a Google search on the phrase only turned up lines that fit the notion. And even if it is technically correct, I still don’t think it does a good job of making the reader feel his fear.

The metaphors were also bad at points, and lacked the certain oomph good ones give:

“A flat area between the hills came into view around the next bend, a great open space with a few buildings on it, but what Paul at first took for another large dwelling, a crude version of the palace upon the hill, turned out to be a compound for animals—specifically swine. A large walled area had been sectioned off into sties, and each open-roofed apartment had a contingent of several dozen pigs. Hundreds more lolled around outside the sties in the wide space between the compound's walls, as indolent as rich tourists on a Third World beach.” (p. 8)

The plot itself wasn’t great, either. For instance, on pages 8-9 some dogs are ready to kill Paul Jonas, but one of their owners—a flute-playing boy who whistles at his dogs to command them—stops them. All that’s said of this is that Paul doesn’t want to offend their owner, so he follows along without complaint, and then the owners are glad he’s alive. One of them says it’s because they “don’t need any more problems around here, and it would have been a shame” (p. 8-9) This doesn’t seem believable to me, even though he is in a kind of Wonderland-like environment.

However, the plot gets even worse after that. Paul winds up making an animal sacrifice to a god on the advice of one of these dog-owners. He doesn’t question the fact that a woman, who resembles a beloved mystery woman he’s continually met, and his loyal servant are freaking out about it. (p.15-17) He keeps saying he wants answers in the chapter, but ignores the servant’s attempts to tell him why what he’s doing is a bad idea:

“The slave woman seemed restless and upset. ‘But such a thing is an offering to. . . .’
‘Sshhhh.’ He slowed his beat upon the ground, and then intoned in rhythm.” (p. 16)

Why he’d listen to a random stranger—who seemed relatively unaffected at the idea of his death—isn’t explained. He also trusts this guy over a servant he doesn’t know but trusts relatively well, and over his beloved mystery woman. He has his own internal dialogue about how he assumes what he’s doing is right, but it didn’t convince me that he’d act in such idiotic ways and ignore these people.

What makes it worse was that he was sent to this ancient-Greece-like area—which is actually a realistic simulation on a computer (he’s basically trapped in a virtual maze, and is looking for a way to escape to reality)—on the advice of the aforementioned, beloved mystery woman. He’s looking for answers here, and believes she is capable of providing them. She said to ask the copy of herself here for more information, which he did. That copy kept telling him to go to Troy. It didn’t seem to make sense in context of the simulation, and thus the advice should have stood out to him as important. Instead of really thinking about this, he acted in the aforementioned ways. It seemed really contrived and done for plot purposes. So, his later revelation doesn’t seem to explain it all away:

“Troy—the only thing she had said that did not speak of the end of the story, the only answer that did not fit with the rest of the simulation. Through the cloud of confusion caused by his presence, Penelope had been telling him what he needed to know all along . . . but he hadn't listened. Instead he had brought her here, the woman he had sought for so long, and then tortured her, after promising the gods he would not harm her. He had called up something none of them dared face, when she had already told him several times what her other self could not.” (p. 18-19)

Even though he quickly acknowledges that this was a dumb way to be, the whole concept felt forced and so did his regret. Yes, he was an idiot, and yes people can be stupid, but when a plot feels contrived and is also poorly written, it’s not entertaining.

Then he goes on to act even dumber, and wanders off to a boat while feeling guilty. He’d already been told that the god of the sea, Poseidon, is after him since he’s Odysseus in the simulation (p. 16). However, after his summoning spell, now something that tracks him via earth is after him. Thus, going to water seems like a good idea, and that’s not my issue. My issue is this: if he felt like a “monster” (p. 19), why would he step over his loyal servant but “did not stop to find out if she was alive or dead,” and then abandon the mystery woman’s copy—a woman who he supposedly felt tied to, wanted to clutch to him (p. 2), and has wanted to save since in the first book? Yet, he ditched her and ran for a boat since he assumed it was safe… It wasn’t really safe, of course, but he thought it was. So some stupidity was explainable, but not all of it was.

His chapter goes from pages 1-20, but it’s technically the foreword. The next part switches to other main characters. The first chapter goes from pages 23-42, but I stopped reading the book after a couple of pages. The very first sentence is a description, and I disliked it and thought it was bad:

“It was only a hand, fingers curled, protruding from the earth like a swollen pink-and-brown flower, but she knew it was her brother's hand.” (p. 23)

And the writing’s quality seems to stay the same:

“He looked at her uncertainly, sensing something in the ragged tone of her voice, but after a moment shrugged a sinuous monkey-shrug and lay down again. Renie took a deep breath, then rose and walked across the hillside to where Martine sat, blind face turned to the skies like a satellite dish.” (p. 24-25)

The excerpt makes more sense than it appears to—the guy who shrugged is in a monkey-form, and Martine is actually blind—but I still didn’t like it.

I decided to stop reading on page 25, because I was bored and not enjoying it. If I hadn’t disliked reading the first book in the series so much, then I probably would’ve given Mountain of Black Glass more of a chance. I figured that I wouldn’t come to like it, either.

Summary: A dull, poorly written story. The plot twists felt contrived even in the foreword. I didn’t find it engaging, and I didn’t enjoy reading it at all. It’s the third volume in a series, but it’s not necessary to read the previous books. There are synopses at the front of the novel which describe them in detail.

1 out of 5 stars.

Otherland, Volume I: City of Golden Shadow

Otherland, Volume I: City of Golden Shadow

by Tad Williams

ISBN: 0886777631

Read and reviewed in December 2011.

I’m dismayed to have to write a negative review of this. When I was a teenager, I loved this series. City of Golden Shadow is part of a teratology and, if I remember correctly, the third and fourth books were not yet written when I got into it. I bought the 3^rd, Mountain of Black Glass, when it was released as a hardcover in 1999. I then eagerly anticipated the last sequel, and it was released as a hardcover in 2001. I read all 922 pages of Sea of Silver Light in one day. I can’t remember if I was pleased with how it ended, or if I liked all of the books, but I had enjoyed it enough to read it all.

I tried to re-read it recently but I didn’t enjoy it. I had been hoping to. I read 114 out of 780 pages—despite my waning interest as I pressed on. I stopped when I caught myself sighing in frustration.

The story opens well, and is exciting and action-packed. One of the main characters, Paul Jonas, is in a trench in WWI. Guns are going off and the battle is raging. He’s a decent character, likeable, his emotions are believable, and his internal dialogue is often amusing. For example, at one point he thinks:

“Of course, an afterlife in which the punishment for a misspent existence was an eternally throbbing headache might make a certain sort of sense. A horrible sort of sense.” (p. 7)

Out-of-context, I don’t think that the scenery descriptions have the same intense effect that they do in the story. However, here’s a brief excerpt to give the reader an idea of how well Tad Williams uses metaphor and simile:

“The entire earth was wet and sticky. The torn earth, the skeletal trees, and Paul himself had all been abundantly splattered by the slow-falling mist that followed hundreds of pounds of red-hot metal exploding in a crowd of human beings.

Red fog, gray earth, sky the color of old bones: Paul Jonas was in hell—but it was a very special hell. Not everyone in it was dead yet.” (p. 1)

The writing’s good right from the get-go. Unfortunately, it doesn’t keep up the quality, and it switches to a less believably-written character. City of Golden Shadow is one of those tales where the perspective constantly switches, chapter-to-chapter, in order to follow different main characters. Paul Jonas’ introduction is the foreword, and it only goes from pages 1-23. After that, the story switches over to the character of Renie Sulaweyo.

On the first unnumbered page of the book, the characters are summarized as if they were characters in a play. Renie’s shortened description is below, because the rest contains plot information:

“Renie Sulaweyo, a teacher and the backbone of her family, proud of her African heritage, has fought all her life simply to get by. She has never wanted to be a hero.” (p. i)

Williams probably had some trouble getting in touch with his feminine side, because there’s a tone of awkwardness that permeates Renie’s chapters. The writing’s constantly stumbling. It’s probably like how Williams would walk if he were wearing high heels.

First, there’s the wooden nature of the dialogue, as evidenced here by a colleague of Renie’s, when she has to evacuate her workplace due to a (seemingly dull and routine) bomb scare:

“He smiled. He had thick glasses but nice teeth. ‘At least we will get some fresh air.’” (p. 24)

The descriptions often follow suit:

“She, too, could feel the lure of freedom, just as she felt the warm African sun on her arms and neck, but she also knew that she was three days behind on term projects; if the bomb scare went on too long, she would miss a tutorial that would have to be rescheduled, eating up more of her rapidly dwindling spare time.” (p. 24)

“She took a cigarette out of her bag and pulled the flame-tab with trembling fingers. They were supposed to be noncarcinogenic, but right at the moment she didn’t care. A piece of paper fluttered down and landed at her feet, blackened along its edges.” (p. 25)

In addition to being awkward, the cigarette excerpt also feels like a PSA: the character’s smoking, but it’s okay because it’s noncarcinogenic, even though she doesn’t care if it is. If she normally would care, it’d make more sense, but that wasn’t shown to be in her.

Awkwardness isn’t the only problem, either. Another issue with the descriptions is that sometimes they’d be nice—if they were there. For instance, on page 26 there are professors and students milling around outside during the (aforementioned) bomb scare on their campus. It’s described as looking like “a combination refugee center and free festival,” but the scene isn’t made vibrant and is left at that. If Renie’s chapters weren’t so stiff and boring, then stuff like this wouldn’t be a problem. However, the vibrancy that was in Jonas’ foreword is gone, and so this description and others left me wanting more.

The writing also contrasts in her chapters. It’s not just when they’re compared to the others. There are some good lines peppered in, but they’re so few-and-far-between that they clash with the rest of the text. The contrast is jarring. One good example is excerpted below. In this instance, Renie is reflecting on her father’s alcoholic behavior:

“There were some people in whom weakness, once it had appeared, grew like a cancer.  Mama’s death in the department store had found and revealed that weakness. Joesph Sulaweyo no longer seemed to have the strength to fight back against life. He was letting it all go, slowly but surely disconnecting from the world, its pains and disappointments.

A man needs his sleep, Renie thought, and for the second time that day, she shuddered.” (p. 27)

That excerpt is far better than the majority of the writing in her chapters. I suggest comparing it to the other excerpts I’ve given. It’s as if the author relaxes, his writing flows better, and it seems less forced. Then he goes right back to wording things poorly, as if he tensed up again.

The characters also contain many contradictions and flaws, and not of the believable variety.

!Xabbu, the down-to-earth, earthy Bushman character, is also a main character who appears in her chapters. His innocence often seems forced, and then leads Renie—the character who’s savvy with technology—to explain things in a way that seems forced in turn. It’s as if it’s Introduction to Otherland 101, instead of natural character interaction, and it’s awkward. !Xabbu on the Net (a 3D, realistic cyber-world; the center of the Otherland series) just isn’t believable, and when he exclaims things like, “‘You say this is not a real place?’” (p. 31) or “'But it is just a tiny space seen from outside! Is this more visual magic?'” (p. 59), it feels like a set-up for the reader.

He’s also supposed to be the mystical, earthy sort, who grew up in a natural environment, and yet twice suggests going for a beer (p. 26, 62). This felt out-of-place too; as if it were a medieval role-playing game and the characters had no idea where to talk but at a stereotypical tavern. Plus, considering Renie’s father’s alcoholism and her distaste for it, it also seems odd that she’d be fine with it each time. The way he suggests it is also awkward:

“‘Perhaps we could go to another place—perhaps somewhere that sells beer, since my throat is dry from smoke—and do our talking there.’” (p. 26)

Another one of the characters, Renie’s little brother Stephen, also has points where he seems off-kilter. He’s eleven years old and lost his mother at a young age, but seems to have a complete disconnect when it comes to understanding the lines between reality and the “Net” (the 3D cyber-land that people use as a part of everyday life.) His disconnect seems as stereotypical as !Xabbu’s random recitals of tribal wisdom (p. 55, 60, etc.) and astonishment with modernism, and it’s portrayed as flatly too.

They also know things they shouldn’t, such as on page 25, when a bomb explodes in an area they can’t see well:

“She shook her head and suppressed a shudder. The sky, stained with drifting ash, had gone twilight-gray. ‘It’s so terrible.’

‘Terrible indeed. But fortunately no one seems badly hurt.’” (p. 25)

There are also loopholes in the plot.

In one case, she has no money for a cab (p. 68), then calls a cab (p. 72), and then calls another cab (p. 74). It’s explained away by saying that her father ruined her credit with one cab company, but she simply used another one that he hadn’t dealt with. However, how did he have access to her money (she’s an adult with a job at a university), and why didn’t she call the other company in the first place?

In another instance, she goes to visit her brother in the hospital when it’s under quarantine. She has to wear a suit with a faceplate, but is allowed to bring in her “Pad” (sounds like an iPad in the text.) Why would she have to suit up to enter the hospital, but be allowed to carry in something outside of her suit, and then be allowed to carry it casually out again? (p. 89) Also, why would her brother be on the fourth floor, but she’d have to pass quarantined victims of an epidemic to visit him? (p. 87) It seems like it would make more sense for the contagious patients be on the upper floors, away from other patients and their visitors, and for her brother be on a lower floor.

She also tells her father that she didn’t buy him wine on page 90, so was she buying it for him all along? Why would she do this? It seems to go against her character of being a strong, independent woman, who says she doesn’t have time to look pretty (p. 26), is basically a mother to her little brother, and who supports her family with her income.

Another big issue with Renie’s chapters are with the nature of Net interaction itself. The author repeatedly mentions that how real the Net feels depends on the quality of equipment which a person uses to access it. I counted how often the pages in Renie’s chapters mention it, and found 7 pages which go on about it first chapter (p. 32, 33, 34, 35, 43, 44, 46). There are only 23 pages in it, so that’s a lot. Further reminders come in her next chapter, chapter 3, and there I counted 3 out of 20 pages going on about it. (p. 60, 61, 62) It’s mentioned again on page 87, too. I got tired of counting at that point.

This dependency on equipment is important to note, because the author constantly contradicts himself. It’s a major point, too, because Otherland is focused on the virtual world of the Net. Yet, when !Xabbu and Renie are using basic grey sims (people appear in 3D, humanoid form on the Net) that cannot eat, drink, or perceive pressure well, !Xabbu comments:

“‘It is hard to remember that I have a real body, and that it is back at the Polytechnic—that I am still in the Polytechnic.’

‘That’s the magic.’ She made her voice smile since she couldn’t do much with her face.” (p. 56)

This kind of disconnect between what’s real and what’s not is constant. But how could these characters feel such a disconnect? They look bland in cyber-space, can’t feel much, can’t taste anything, can’t drink anything, and the Net feels distant and fake. Renie can’t even smile properly.

Their disorientation is taken so far, that Renie even has trouble treating programs (called Puppets) like they aren’t real people at one point. However, she’s also a character who’s been around technology since she was a young teenager, she spends her adult life teaching people about things such as AI, and she’s also not a touchy-feely character. So, her misplaced compassion and sentimentality (p. 61) towards a “Puppet” makes little sense. It makes even less sense considering that she’s wary about the Net being used to manipulate her emotions. She does things like turn off music to block out subliminal ads (p. 59), and wonders if salespeople are tailored to look black for her (p. 61). Thus, it seems really odd that she’d confuse a Puppet for a person.

And so on. I’m sure there are other flaws in the plot, but it’s boring to point them all out and I don’t want to dwell too much.

There are also metaphors which work in her chapters:

“Millions of commercial nodes [3D internet stores] blinked, shimmied, rainbowed, and sang, doing their best to separate customers from credits.” (p. 55)

And ones which don’t and are just plain hokey, like when !Xabbu and Renie first enter the Net’s shopping district:

“They hung side by side, twin stars floating in an empty black sky, two angels gazing down from heaven at the immensity of humankind’s commercial imagination.” (p. 55)

There are other chapters involving other characters, too. There are 4 perspectives. I got to chapter 7 before I got bored/frustrated with the story, and it went: Paul Jonas (foreword), Renie and !Xabbu, Christabel and Mr. Sellars, back to Renie and !Xabbu, Thargor/Orlando, Renie and !Xabbu again, back to Paul Jonas, and then to Renie and !Xabbu yet again. I thought Paul Jonas’ foreword and chapter were written well, but that the rest of what I read was not.

Christabel (chapter 2) is portrayed with exaggerated innocence, and it’s written badly and in a rambling style. She basically skips around a lot and then visits an old man, Mr. Sellars, who she is forbidden to see but feels sorry for. The chapter feels haphazardly written and flat. Here’s an example of her innocent internal dialogue:

“She knew that the Base was different from the kind of towns that people lived in on net shows, or even in other parts of North Carolina, but she didn't know why. It had streets and trees and a park and a school—two schools, really, since there was a school for grown-up army men and army women as well as one for kids like Christabel whose parents lived on the Base. Daddies and mommies went off to work in normal clothes, drove cars, mowed their lawns, had each other over for dinners and parties and barbecues. The Base did have a few things that most towns didn't have—a double row of electric fences all the way around it to keep out the crowdy hammock city beyond the trees, and three different little houses called checkpoints that all the cars coming in had to drive past—but that didn't seem like enough to make it a Base instead of just a normal place to live. The other kids at school had lived on Bases all their lives, just like her, so they didn't get it either.” (p. 48)

If she didn’t understand how it was different, then why go on to list how it looked different to her? That isn't necessary, it's a little contradictory, and it's dull. The same sort of thing happens on page 49, when she understands that some jokes on a show are “kind of naughty, although she didn't know why exactly.” If she didn’t know why, then what prompted her to understand they were naughty? Reasons can be inferred but nothing is explained well, and so it just seems like rambling.

Then Mr. Sellars is introduced, and he’s portrayed in an awkward way.  It seems to be trying to prompt the reader to feel concern for the poor, innocent little child. Basically, the little girl goes to his house when told not to, but she doesn’t know why her parents forbid her. When she goes in to visit the old man, he tells her to change, she removes her clothes, puts her clothes into a plastic bag, puts on a bathrobe, and then he says, “Ah, it’s good to see you” (p. 51) after she comes over to him and sits down nearby. They talk briefly and it turns out that her changing was innocent, and was only done to keep the clothes dry.  Mr. Sellars needs to be in a humid environment.  Her clothes would get damp, and her visit would thus have been obvious, if she didn’t seal them up in a plastic bag during her stay.

Then she runs home because, as a kindergartener, she was able to set her watch for just how long she’d have before her mother called to check up on her whereabouts. How oddly psychic.

Thargor’s chapter isn’t much better. He’s a character in an online roleplaying game, and is played by a 14-year old boy called Orlando. It’s over-dramatic but it’s fitting for the setting and the boy’s age. However, there are still mistakes, such as when the simple inn-keep, with equally simple dialogue, suddenly says he doesn’t know Thargor’s name but he’s “sure it’s a very respectable and euphonious name, sir.” (p. 76) The word “euphonious” seems awfully formal and out-of-place with everything else he says.

When the writing finally gets back to Jonas’ story, 81 pages after the foreword, the writing gets markedly better. It seems as if the author enjoys writing him, and settles into a good flow, but is trying to awkwardly force the plot and characters forward in the other chapters. He also presents neat ideas, such as when Jonas contemplates the state of his soul, in a WWI trench, when worrying about the dampness of his boots causing infection (“trenchfoot”):

“Trenchsoul. When all that makes you a person festers and dies.” (p. 103)

He also does a decent job of portraying Jonas’ state of madness on pages 106-113. However, then he ends the chapter on a very hokey note, and has Jonas over-dramatically leap to safety as monstrous creatures approach him with sinister words. It seems cartoonish compared to the earlier writing. He even jumps “into the light.” (p. 114)

After that the story switched back yet again to Renie, at the hospital with her brother, and I sighed in exasperation and stopped reading. I just didn’t care about the story anymore, because it wasn’t drawing me in. The writing was so awkward that I didn’t get into it, and I didn’t care about the characters. Plus, the author expects the reader to be interested in several characters’ storylines at once. If the writing was good enough to interest me in them, then the shifting would’ve continued to be tolerable. But it wasn’t. At first the perspective shifting around, chapter to chapter, had helped because the jumps alleviated how boring the writing was. However, I needed more than that to keep me going for another 665 pages. (The novel's 780 pages long.) The writing just made the plot too uninvolving and unsatisfying, and the characters all seemed flat and lifeless except for Paul Jonas.

Summary: An unnecessarily long-winded tale. The writing is mostly awkward and dull, and the perspective switches between several characters. I didn’t care about the characters or feel engaged by the plot. At first, the abrupt shifts in perspective—from chapter to chapter—helped. I was bored and so the sudden swing gave the story momentum. However, this boost dwindled in effect as the story continued to drag on. Another issue is that the chapters concerning Paul Jonas were written better than the other chapters were, and so my expectations for the writing would be raised. Then when the author wrote about other characters, the quality of the writing sank, and so I’d be disappointed on top of being bored.

1 out of 5 stars.

Random Note: The series is going to be the setting for a new, free-to-play MMO. http://pc.ign.com/articles/118/1187781p1.html.

Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthypro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthypro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

Second Edition

Translated by G.M.A. Grube

Revised by John M. Cooper

ISBN: 0872206335

This is a small, thin, 154 page book (with an additional 2 pages of suggested reading). It was part of my ‘Introduction to Philosophy’ class in college, but we didn’t have to read it—even though it was listed as mandatory on the syllabus. The course was boring and irritated me, and so I didn’t trust the professor’s definition of quality. My distrust extended to the book, because I didn’t expect the non-mandatory, non-graded reading to be any better than everything else the class offered. So, I put off reading it and then forgot about it.

The course was mind-numbingly mindless. The professor was a self-absorbed guy who had a smug, high voice that was more grating than ingratiating. The only time he stopped talking was when he wanted to smirk at his own genius—a self-satisfied expression that lasted a good 10 seconds or so—and he seemed to get annoyed when no one looked on in admiration or said anything. Meanwhile, the religious students in the class constantly got into boring arguments with him, because they insisted this or that was moral because the Bible said so. That was always their angry point: the Bible said so, it’s true, and why couldn’t he just accept that? He, of course, indulged these arguments. He wasted class time to do it, but he saw these as great opportunities to belittle others and make himself feel big. He didn’t try to reason, he just struck a pose of self-righteousness, and the arguments were always the same. Periodically throughout the semester, he’d complain that we’d fallen behind schedule, and that we were going through the material too slowly. He was befuddled as to why and blamed his students. However, several students weren’t befuddled as to why and he didn’t much appreciate their silent expressions. He appreciated the sighs even less.

Thus, it wasn’t until recently that I read this book. I’d finally gotten over my bias against it. I’d heard great things about Socrates and Plato, and was eager to read the dialogues for myself.

However, I was disappointed by them.

EUTHYPRO is the first dialogue in the book. I was interested in some parts of it, and was amused by Socrates’ snarky attitude. For instance, when Euthypro doesn’t give Socrates the answers he wants, and is instead illogical, Socrates chastises him in a sarcastic but jovial way:

“[…] you agreed that all impious actions are impious and all pious actions pious through one form, or don’t you remember?” (p. 8, line 6e) 

“So you did not answer my question, you surprising man.” (p. 9, line 8b)

“What a thing to do, my friend! By going you have cast me down from a great hope I had, that I would learn from you the nature of the pious and impious […] showing […] that I had acquired wisdom in divine matters from Euthypro, and my ignorance would no longer cause me to be careless and inventive about such things, and I would be better for the rest of my life.” (p. 20, line 16)

In EUTHYPRO, the discussion is between Socrates and Euthypro. They talk about piety and what essentially constitutes right or wrong. The general idea is that piety is a good, ethereal quality that the gods must love, but nothing is pious simply because the gods love it. The dialogue goes from pages 1-20.

APOLOGY is next and it goes from pages 21-44.  It covers Socrates' trial, wherein he’s condemned to death for ‘corrupting the youth.’

It bothered me that the introduction says “the ancients did not expect historical accuracy in the way we do,” but, while this is true, “Some liberties could no doubt be allowed, but the main arguments and the general tone of the defense must surely be faithful to the original.” (p. 21) I find it disturbing that APOLOGY is taken as being “surely” faithful to Socrates’ words, because taking “liberties” and being “faithful” to a work are two different things. (Furthermore, I question Socrates’ existence, because I’ve heard it said that Socrates may not have existed, and that he was simply a literary construct of Plato’s which was used to attack others’ views. I am not sure as to the veracity of this, and it’s another matter anyway, but the book didn’t satiate my curiosity on this point either.)

As for the text itself, I liked parts of APOLOGY. Some lines seem to be wise and apt even today. For instance, Socrates speaks of people thinking they’re wiser than they are, how those with reputations for wisdom can be deficient compared to those who are seen as inferior (p. 26-27, line 22-b), how people can think they’re wise in all respects because they’re good in one subject (p. 27, line 22c-e), and how they react when he exposes them:

“[…] they have been proved to lay claim to knowledge when they know nothing. These people are ambitious, violent, and numerous; they are continually and convincingly talking about me; they have been filling your ears for a long time with vehement slanders against me.” (p. 28, line 23e)

Those types of people still exist today, and thus his commentary and caution still has relevance. Furthermore, Socrates also gives good advice on humility and the nature of wisdom. A good summation of his view is below, when he speaks of being called the wisest man by the Oracle of Delphi:

“What is probable, gentlemen, is that in fact the god is wise and that his oracular response meant that human wisdom is worth little or nothing, and that when he says this man, Socrates, he is using my name as an example, as if he said: ‘This man among you, mortals, is wisest who, like Socrates, understands that his wisdom is worthless.’” (p.27, line 22b)

However, to me, Socrates seems like a man who possessed false humility. Instead of being genuine, it appears to me to be a subtle charade for a man who feels superior; he claims to be humble to get his opponents to let down their guard, and then he rants about his self-importance but says it’s due to divine circumstance—and so he’s not saying he’s valuable, it’s the gods who are! Thus, he elevates himself to the level of a prophet, and acts as if others are dim-witted and in need of his wise illumination. This happens in other dialogues, too, but it’s also apparent in APOLOGY.

For instance, in the excerpt above he degraded his status and what he claimed the Oracle said.  He insisted he wasn’t wise or important, and was just being used as an off-hand example.  Yet, only a few pages later he defines himself as a prophet of divine providence, a gift to mankind, and as someone who is tasked with providing enlightenment. This indicates that he never really saw his wisdom as “worth little or nothing”:

“[…] I am far from making a defense now on my own behalf, as might be thought, but on yours, to prevent you from wrongdoing by mistreating the god’s gift to you by condemning me; for if you kill me you will not easily find another like me. I was attached to this city by the god […] as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. […] Another such man will not easily come to be among you, gentlemen, and if you believe me you will spare me. You might easily be annoyed with me as people are when they are aroused from a doze, and strike out at me […]” (p. 35, lines 30e-31)

In addition to this arrogance, his arguments are also often unconvincing and irrational. On page 30 (lines 25c-26), Socrates argues that wicked people harm others, those harmed become wicked themselves, and then they will in turn harm the person who’s harmed them. Thus, he says, he couldn’t be willingly corrupting the young, because he’s not that ignorant. However, this defense ignores human emotion, masochism, and a slew of other reasons why people will willingly harm others; a person knowing an action is bad doesn’t mean automatic avoidance, because there is a moral component to the choice. Furthermore, he was accused of corrupting young men who functioned in society, and thus motives of political power, sexual desire, and so on, were also possibilities. His argument of innocence is basically, “I wouldn’t hurt people because it’s bad, duh,” and that isn’t an argument that’s reasoned out well.

Then on page 32, he goes from defending himself against vague corruption charges, to addressing the idea that he might be corrupting the young in spiritual matters. How he handles this is by explaining that if you believe in spiritual activities then you must believe in spirits, spirits are “either gods or the children of gods,” and so if you believe in spiritual activities then you must believe in divine things/the gods. However, this argument attributes everything spiritual to the gods, which is an unexamined leap of faith. It was a subversive and known idea at the time that the spiritual need not necessitate from gods, and Socrates was defending himself against being a teacher of such notions, but it’s also odd that he would dismiss them off-handedly in a poorly worded argument. After all, he supposedly was against catering to the majority, didn’t care about saving himself, only cared for trying to examine matters to find truth, and was willing to die for his beliefs/knowledge search. So, I don’t understand why he’d make such a leap of faith and ignore a proposed idea.

Another faulty argument comes about when he insists that he is getting messages from divine beings and can prove it. His proof is that “it does not seem like human nature for me to have neglected all my own affairs and to have tolerated this neglect now for so many years while I was always concerned with you, approaching each one of you like a father or an elder brother to persuade you to care for virtue.”  (p. 35, lines 31b-c) There are so many things wrong with this that I’m going to bullet-point them for easier reading:

• By this logic, any hobo or poor zealot who spends their day talking to others is a divinely inspired sage. 

• He is ignoring the possibility of madness. 

• He is ignoring the possibility of arrogance. Arrogance can lead to a man trying to control others to believe in his own views. People often dedicate time to preach lifestyle choices, beliefs, and philosophies, and some do take it too far. 

• Perceiving yourself as selfless, or even actually being so, does not equate with being a divinely touched prophet. 

• He claims he’s in poverty and doesn’t care for his own needs, but he had 2 young children, 1 adolescent child, and a wife. (p. 38, line 34d) They had to live somewhere, and he had to indulge his sexual desires in order to have had kids, so how poor he was and how much he neglected himself is questionable. This is especially true since, back then, marriage was not about love and a husband was picked by the woman’s father. His wife, Xantippe, was also from a well-to-do family and that would’ve made her desirable as a bride. It’s even more questionable since, in CRITO and PHAEDO, he’s asked about his children and mentions that his friends will care for them when he is gone. This indicates that he was fully capable of caring for them while alive. 

• Demanding respect by assuming an authoritarian position isn’t humble. In Ancient Greece, a father was someone to be obeyed and respected, because the society was highly patriarchal. Loyalty went from the gods, to the city, to the father, and so on. Considering this, my best guess is that an elder brother would also hold a higher status than a younger one. Thus, he is subtly admitting that he wanted to be viewed as an authority figure. This doesn’t help his earlier position of supposedly being a humble man, or of being divinely appointed instead of arrogant.

He also claims that he avoided having a political life since heroes in politics die quickly. He says that a private life allows for a man to survive and fight for justice. (p. 36, lines 31d-e) This is still true in corrupt governments today, and thus it isn’t bad advice. However, Socrates was often commenting on political figures in his dialogues, and influencing young men in influential families via discourse in public places. While this doesn’t make him a politician, it still makes him political in much the way a lobbyist is. So, his claim of wanting to avoid the limelight in order to survive seems strange, because he wasn’t being all that private. However, he says he made this choice due to a voice in his head:

“I have a divine or spiritual sign which Meletus has ridiculed in his deposition. This began when I was a child. It is a voice, and whenever it speaks it turns me away from something I am about to do, but it never encourages me to do anything. This is what prevented me from taking part in public affairs, and I think it was quite right to prevent me.” (p. 36, line 31d)

I think this excerpt could mean one of two things: he was either religious or unstable. You see, back then, people believed that a spirit followed a person from birth, watched over him throughout life, and eventually led him to the underworld once the person died. The idea is similar to the “guardian angel” of modern day Christianity. However, it doesn’t seem common of the period for people to hear and follow their spirit guide since childhood. Thus, I think it could mean something more innocent when he claims he heard “a voice.” It’s possible that he felt it more than heard it, and listened to those feelings—just as many religious people of various faiths do today, even though they word it misleadingly and say a spiritual being “speaks” to them. However, while this religious explanation is possible, I think my second guess is more probable. My second guess is that Socrates was a schizophrenic who heard a voice, had delusions of grandeur, and was arrogant. I lean more toward this idea because what he hears is highly self-aggrandizing, and he sounds arrogant when talking about it.

On page 40, Socrates says, “What do I deserve for being such a man? Some good, men of Athens, if I must truly make an assessment according to my deserts, and something suitable.” (p. 40, line 36d) I’m guessing that “deserts” is a translation error, and the word “desserts” should be there instead, unless it’s an old expression I’m unaware of. Anyway, he makes a funny and apt joke about how his counter-assessment (of what he deserves as punishment) is to be given a lavish banquet suitable for Olympian victors. His reasoning is that he doesn’t think he deserves to be treated badly, because he doesn’t believe he’s done evil, and thus choosing a punishment for himself would be evil since he’d be taking part in punishing an innocent man.

On page 41, the famous line “the unexamined life is not worth living” (line 38) appears.

On page 43, he feels at peace, and thinks the fact that the assembly gave him the death penalty means that, “What has happened to me may well be a good thing, and those of us who believe death to be an evil are certainly mistaken. I have convincing proof of this, for it is impossible that my familiar sign [spiritual guide/voice/guardian angel] did not oppose me if I was not about to do what was right.” (Line 40c)  He says that death is, “[…] one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and a relocating for the soul from here to another place.” (Line 40d.) He figures either option is a good one, but that the latter is better and he hopes for it.

On the last page of APOLOGY, he says, “[…] keep this one truth in mind, that a good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and that his affairs are not neglected by the gods” (p. 44, line 41d). This irritated me because I don’t believe that a good person is naturally impervious to harm, or that a person should have faith that there are gods who will protect them from all harm. After all, everyone hurts now and then—regardless of how good they are, or if there are any gods watching out for them.

Socrates’ last lines in this dialogue sound philosophical:

“Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god.” (p. 44, line 42)

However, that also seems odd to me, considering that Socrates thinks they’re harming themselves by killing him, and that he’s already ranted about how he thinks he’ll go to a good place.

Then there’s the next dialogue, CRITO, on pages 45-57. In this dialogue, Crito tries to convince Socrates to flee into exile. Socrates refuses, says he’s old and doesn’t resent dying, and believes that he has no right to spurn the city’s decision to kill him.

Crito goes on and on about reasonable objections: Socrates has young children, people will think ill of Socrates’ friends for not saving him, the people who sentenced him don’t particularly care if he flees as long as he doesn’t come back, etc. However, Socrates believes that while his sentence is wrong that it’s also wrong to break the law, and one shouldn’t repay a wrong with a wrong. This seems like odd reasoning to me, because I don’t see why he’d be willing to die to uphold an unjust law.

Really, the whole story seems like ancient, Athenian propaganda for the city. He arrogantly assumes the position of law personified and the city personified, and pretends to lecture himself. He says that he’s not on “equal footing” (p. 53, line 50e) with the law, and that he has no right to retaliate against it by saving his life and fleeing. (p. 54-57, lines 51-54d) He says:

“Is your wisdom such as not to realize that your country is to be honored more than your mother, your father, and all your ancestors, that it is more to be revered and sacred, and that it counts for more among the gods and sensible men, that you must worship it, yield to it, and placate its anger more than your father’s? You must either persuade it or obey its orders, and endure in silence whatever it instructs you to endure, whether blows or bonds, and if it leads you into war to be wounded or killed, you must obey. To do so is right, and one must not give way or retreat or leave one’s post, but both in war and in courts and everywhere else, one must obey the commands of one’s city and country, or persuade it as to the nature of justice.” (p. 54, lines 51-51c)

And it’s clear that persuasion isn’t something Socrates holds in high regard, and is more focused on complete obedience. Here are his key points on the issue, excerpted in a row:

“We should not then think so much of what the majority will say about us, but what he will say who understands justice and injustice, the one, that is, and the truth itself. […] we must examine next whether it is just for me to get out of here when the Athenians have not acquitted me. […] Mistreating people is no different from wrongdoing. […] Then I state the next point, or rather I ask you: when one has come to an agreement that is just with someone, should one fulfill it or cheat on it? […] See what follows from this: if we leave here without the city’s permission, are we mistreating people whom we should least mistreat? And are we sticking to a just agreement or not? […] Shall we say in answer, ‘The city wronged me, and its decision was not right.’ Shall we say that, or what? […] Then what if the laws said: ‘Was that agreement between us, Socrates, or was it to respect the judgments that the city came to?’ […] you agreed, not only in words but by your deeds, to live in accordance with us.’” (p. 50-55, excerpted various key points from lines 48-52d)

So basically, Socrates’ argument is that the city/state is sacred, citizens should obey it always, citizens should not leave, and a citizen is not on equal footing and should quietly and passively accept whatever punishment—just or unjust—is doled out by the lawmakers. A citizen should do this because he is essentially the property of his city, and just like a child he can make requests but needs to shut up if his father says no. What gets me the most is the “endure in silence” bit, because it directly instructs people to suffer and stay quiet in a democracy. If this kind of thinking were applied today, good things like appeals courts wouldn’t exist, and laws would rarely if ever be changed. It reminds me of another quote:

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” –Unknown

Anyway though, to sum up CRITO: Socrates tells him he doesn’t want to be rescued, Crito’s left speechless, and Socrates ends the dialogue by saying, “Let it be then, Crito, and let us act in this way, since this is the way the god is leading us.” (p. 57, line 54e)

The dialogue MENO is next, and goes from pages 58-92. In this dialogue, Socrates discusses the nature of virtue with a young man called Meno. They discuss whether or not virtue can be taught, or if it’s inherent knowledge that everyone has and simply needs to recall.

They go back and forth to try and define virtue, and Socrates is often round-a-bout and seems to posture more than pursue knowledge. He also makes certain jumps in logic which aren’t logical. For instance, he says of virtue, “And if there were teachers of it, it could be taught, but if there were not, it was not teachable?” (p. 91, line 98e) Meno agrees with Socrates’ leading-the-witness style of questioning. However, this makes the leap that virtue must be one unfragmented whole, and then it’s seen in the ‘objectifying’ way that the ancient Greeks viewed life: they tended to view concepts as solid objects, and that seems to have led to a lot of black-or-white thinking. Thus, virtue couldn’t be a puzzle made up of many parts, and taught piece-by-piece by many teachers: it had to be one thing, in and of itself, which could be mastered as a whole. I think defining virtue so narrowly is not logical.

Since they defined virtue narrowly, and said a subject must have a teacher to be teachable, the lack of teachers is why Socrates later says “virtue can certainly not be taught” (p. 87, line 94e), and why he seems to agree with Theognis’ view that, “you will never make a bad man good by teaching.” (p. 88, line 96) However, this also seems illogical, because Socrates believed that he could teach people to be virtuous. He believed that a philosopher’s lifestyle was virtuous, and that he could awaken others into living that way by acting like a gadfly to their consciousnesses. Thus, he believed that people were living badly, and he thought he could teach them to be good, and to lead virtuous lives as philosophers. If he didn’t believe that virtue could be taught, and yet becoming wise helped a person to be virtuous, then why would he go around trying to enlighten others?

He then goes on to attribute good opinion, or intuition, to the gods and call it divine inspiration (p. 91-92, lines 99c-99e)

Socrates also seems to reference Plato’s “Theory of Forms” towards the end, because Socrates says a man who could teach virtue would be, “as far as virtue is concerned, here also be the only true reality compared, as it were, with shadows.” (p. 92, line 100e) (The Theory of Forms is the idea that there are forms, or ideas, which are the highest form of reality; everything we perceive with our senses isn’t as real—they’re like shadows on a cave wall, as in the Allegory of the Cave, and only reflect the distorted “true” versions of themselves.)

At the very end, Meno is convinced of Socrates’ viewpoint that virtue is a gift from the gods, but that virtue itself is still unclearly defined, and that it cannot be taught. Socrates tells him to go convince his friend Anytus of what he’s learned, and says that if he succeeds he will “also confer a benefit upon the Athenians.” (p.92, line b)

PHAEDO is the next and last dialogue in the book, and it goes from pages 93-154. The introduction sets the scene and describes what it’s about. It’s about Socrates’ last hours and his death in the jail at Athens, and it’s described by one of his “intimates,” Phaedo, as he reports it all to a group of Pythagoreans. Although it’s written by Plato, Plato was supposedly ill and thus not present for Socrates’ final moments and subsequent death. Also, it says that PHAEDO contains many of Plato’s own views but is also supposedly “a famously moving picture of Socrates’ deep commitment to philosophy and the philosophical life.” (p. 94)

Anyway, the dialogue is rambling and over-dramatic. It’s also occasionally odd, such as when Socrates claims that he wrote poetry because he kept having a dream: “‘Socrates,’ it said, ‘practice and cultivate the arts.’” (p.98, line 61) He says he thought it meant to practice the highest art, philosophy, but that—basically—he was worried and thought he should try his hand at poetry too, just in case.  So he wrote a poem as a tribute to the god whose festival had delayed his execution, and then wrote down some fables he’d remembered since a poet is supposed to “compose fables, not arguments.” (p.98, line 61b) My guess is that he’s trying to imply that philosophy is more beautiful and divine than poetry, because his tribute to the god was an argument, not a poem, and poems are just fables.

Then Socrates goes on about suicide. He says it’s wrong and mentions “the language of the mysteries” as giving a good explanation as to why: 

“[…] we men are in a kind of prison, and that one must not free oneself or run away. […] the gods are our guardians and that men are one of their possessions. […] And would you not be angry if one of your possessions killed itself when you had not given any sign that you wished it to die, and if you had any punishment you could inflict, you would inflict it? […] Perhaps then, put in this way, it is not unreasonable that one should not kill oneself before a god had indicated some necessity to do so, like the necessity now put upon us.” (p. 99, lines 62b-62d)

The rest of the conversation stays on topic about death and where souls go. Socrates says that he hopes to go to good, godly masters (p.100, line 63c). He says that he thinks his rewards will be great, because he lived a life preparing for death. He says that’s what a philosopher’s life is: preparing for how to die. Death is the separation of the soul from the body, as he sees it, and he’s spent his whole life trying to abstain from worldly pleasures. He believes that reason is the soul’s “search for reality” (p. 102, line 65c), and that the senses only serve to deceive a person. He thinks death is what may be “a path to guide us out of our confusion” (p. 103, line 66b), and that he may find happiness and reality in the form of pure knowledge. He says that “either we can never attain [pure] knowledge or we can do so after death.” (p. 104, line 67) He adds that, “it would be ridiculous for a man to train himself in life to live in a state as close to death as possible, and then to resent it when it comes.” (p.104, line 67e.)

However, I’m skeptical of his claim that a philosopher’s life is preparing for death. For one, it seems odd that life would exist just to prepare to die, and that this would be an ultimate and desirable goal. It’s rather morbid, too. It also seems unrealistic to be able to achieve such a separation, because while we can judge with our intellect, our senses convey all of the information for our intellect to consider in the first place.  Really, it seems like a conversation geared towards comforting people about his death, and not a realistic argument about philosophy. After all, he wasn’t really abstaining from fleshy desires by having 3 children, and 1 of them is just a baby when he’s about to die. He also flirts with the young men who adore him, and back then older men often had sexual relationships with young men. In all of these dialogues, the men were young. I’ve heard that Plato believed having sex with boys was grand, but I’ve yet to find clear proof of that either way.

However, 2 scenes in PHAEDO indicate that Socrates’ charge of corruption could easily have been due to his sexual relationships with these young boys. After all, back then, pederasty was common and thus many of these boys, from rich families, likely had powerful and jealous lovers—since they were somewhat equivalent to mistresses. So it wasn’t just that their mentors were jealous of losing their protégés, but it was even more emotional than that, and some were probably just straight-up lovers rather than mentors. A young man could entertain many suitors, after all, and many did. Furthermore, there were sophists teaching at the time and some of them taught in the same manner as Socrates did, and this was common enough that Socrates has often been confused with them. Supposedly the only difference between Socrates and a sophist was that Socrates didn’t charge fees for his guidance/conversation/teaching. I doubt he would have been executed for simply not charging money for his services. Anyway, here are those 2 scenes that show some questionable moments:

“I [Phaedo] happened to be sitting on his right by the couch on a low stool, so that he was sitting well above me. He [Socrates] stroked my head and pressed the hair on the back of my neck, for he was in the habit of playing with my hair at times. ‘Tomorrow, Phaedo,’ he said, ‘you will probably cut this beautiful hair.’” (p. 126-127, lines 89b-c)

“You must be of good cheer, and say you are burying my body, and bury it in any way you like and think most customary. After saying this he got up and went into another room to take his bath, and Crito followed him and he told us to wait” (p. 152, line 116-b)

The part about the hair I find especially telling, since Socrates claimed he cared not for any of his senses—which would include both sight and touch—and didn’t regard a sense perception as beautiful. (p. 138, lines 100d-e) He also flirted with the young men in other dialogues, but usually not so blatantly.

Anyway, he goes on and on about Form (ideas) and tall vs. short, etc., and I found it round-a-bout and unenlightening. I was often annoyed at his seeming ignorance, lack of proper explanation, and at his students’ blind acceptance of his words. For instance, he claims that the soul rules the body despite being influenced by it, and also claims that all souls must be equal. However, he doesn’t give a good argument for why all souls would naturally be equal, or why sometimes the body rules the soul.

I’m not saying souls aren’t equal, or that the soul doesn’t rule the body. What I am saying is that he shouldn’t have taken anything for granted—a philosopher is supposed to use reason, not assumption, and to try to examine all angles of an idea. His argument of soul > body ignores what happens when someone gets mind-altering brain damage or dementia.  A person who has either thing seriously can’t even use the reason Socrates holds dear. Perhaps brain damage wasn’t something the ancient Greeks had a firm knowledge of, but they did at the very least encounter senility and forgetfulness in the old. It’s not unexplainable: Socrates could have said that the soul is becoming less attached to the body, is gone completely, or that the soul is reasoning but forgets its reason before the speech reaches the lips. However, Socrates doesn’t explain these issues at all. Instead, he just says that because human beings can do things like starve themselves, the soul has control. (p. 132-133, lines 94b-e)

In fact, Socrates seems determined to convince the young men that the soul is immortal, and he makes many faulty arguments to do so. For instance, he says that the soul could not admit that which is opposite to it (p. 143, lines 105d-107) and thus it must be deathless and immune to mortality. Yet, this ignores the fact that he also said the body is mortal and yet can taint the soul with its mortal desires. (p. 122, line 83d-e) If the body can taint the soul with its mortality, then Socrates’ position that the soul is immune to mortal issues due to its deathless nature doesn’t fit, because it’s capable of being corrupted with its opposite and is thus not immune after all.

After more discussion of the soul, Socrates goes on to describing the afterlife. He gives a funky description of earth, with the geography involving things like rivers encircling the earth and diving through it, and that’s kind of neat. He also goes on some more about the nature of the soul and how he thinks it will be judged. Then he prepares to die, drinks the hemlock, and then the young men weep as he dies. He chastises them and says it’s the reason he “sent the women away, to avoid such unseemliness, for I am told one should die in good omened silence. So keep quiet and control yourselves.”(p. 153, line 117e) Then he walks around a bit, lays down, and says his last words, “Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius, make this offering to him and do not forget.” (p. 153, line 118) The footnote says this is apparently Socrates alluding to a god who cured illness; he’s claiming that death is a cure for the ills of life, and saying that the god deserves an animal sacrifice for his death.

Summary: Socrates is long-winded, arrogant, probably schizophrenic, was probably sexual with his young male followers, and often contradicts himself in illogical ways. My guess is that the real reason he was executed was probably due to his political and sexual influences on his young male followers, because that would have inspired the kind of jealousy and anger that his enemies wouldn’t want to be specific about in court. The dialogues are a little interesting to read at some points, but are not good overall.

2 out of 5 stars.