May 9, 2013
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Charles Ramsey and Heroes with Evil Pasts
In the fantasy book The Black Cauldron, two young men join Prince Gwydion on various quests involving the Black Cauldron, a tool that can generate deathless soldiers of evil. Taran is the naive, lovable one, while Prince Ellidyr is the arrogant, angry, unlikeable one. At the book's conclusion, it is not Taran who saves the day. Instead, the proud, angry Prince Ellidyr gives his life to stop Morgant from using the Black Cauldron. Why? I remember reading the book and being stunned by the ending. I thought Taran would be the hero! Why Elldyr?
Perhaps Ellidyr, in his evil, saw just how evil Morgant could be if he had incredible power. Armed with this knowledge, he knew death was not too much a sacrifice to stop evil. And so he freely gave his life--a life that had itself been rather wasted by Ellidyr's arrogance and pride.
We want our heroes to be clean and neat. We want them to be Taran; blank slates of innocence that suddenly come together to do great things. But perhaps we don't realize that those who have felt and been evil best recognize its horrors. Charles Ramsey, who rescued those women who were kidnapped, was himself arrested for domestic violence about a decade ago. Charles Ramsey said that when he heard Amanda Berry calling for help, he recognized it was a domestic violence situation. He rushed to the house, kicked in the door, and freed her. Is it possible that he recognized what was happening because he knows what domestic abuse looked like?
Make sure to get what I'm saying here. Charles Ramsey did a terrible thing a decade ago. And I've never been too impressed by the "Only people who did X can ever understand other people who did X." But we would be wise not to quickly discard heroes with dirty hands. That dirt may be what caused them to want to be a hero, to know how vigorously one must fight to stop evil wherever it is found. The post-shaming of heroes ignores the realities of human frailties and triumphs.
Comments (7)
Execellenty put! Interesting take on this, puts a whole new take on making mistakes in the past in order to do better things in the future.
once I eyewitnessed a strange situation and now I am thinking that woman also could of been kidnapped. Everyone in the house was grugged and a woman told me that she lives with this man for over 10 years as a fiance, but she was way over grugged and not ok. I didn't feel like it was my business to call police, so I left as soon as I possibly can. It felt like i am in a frankestein world, so spooky.
Well-written.
Interesting postscript to the three ladies who were kidnapped. Many times the best way to catch a scammer is to be a scammer.
What I have done in my life I am not always proud. I suppose second hand experience is not the best way to learn about evil but sometimes I wonder how good is meditations on everything in life? I suppose reading blogs on xanga could give folks an interesting perspective but I wonder how reactive could a xanga blogger be in real life? I would be shocked if the Castro guy was a blogger on xanga.
Hmm... this is really intriguing... I'm finishing up in a study on the book of Genesis, and we see how after a less-than-brilliant start, by the grace of God, Judah comes through shining brightly -- willing to be surety for Benjamin. I know that I've learned TONS from my own sins and failures. I love the Bible because it's so realistic about human nature: we all WILL sin and we all WILL fail at one point or another -- reminding us of our need for a Jesus Christ to save us from the penalty, the power, and ultimately the presence of sin!
This is an awesome post, because it is so true, both in fiction and in real life.
Great point here:
"But we would be wise not to quickly discard heroes with dirty hands. That dirt may be what caused them to want to be a hero, to know how vigorously one must fight to stop evil wherever it is found."
I've heard some things about Ramsey's past but nonetheless, he is a hero in my eyes for freeing that girl. He could have turned a blind eye (or ear) to her screams for help but instead, he chose to follow his instincts. To me, that is a hero. If he hadn't done what he did, Amanda Berry and those two other girls would still be locked up.
Back to your point, I agree that not having such a great past himself may have helped him sense danger and think it was related to domestic abuse. The dude's still a hero, in my eyes.
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