Evil Exam Additional Ideas

Although I hit most of my points in my essay, I read back over my outline and quotes and found that these ideas I either did not mention or did not get to elaborate on enough.

-Evil's prescence in Kurtz is mirrored by God and his followers. Too often we hear of Christians killing for God in the Crusades, Klu Klux Klan, even our quest in Vietnam and Salem witch trials. So Kurtz murdering those spies in his camp was not very unsound when you compare it to other christian activities. In Vietnam we were fighting to prove that God and Capitalism was the way.

- Evil's prescence in the Godfather: Don Vito and Michael have an omniscient characteristic to them. They just know what is happening around in the world. God has that same characteristic according to Christianity. Maybe there is a reason why he is called the Godfather. Somebody else must have seen this same correlation. Don Vito is also respected, worshiped, and potentially vengeful. He just wants his followers to be loyal to him as he fights the evils. God is like Don Vito in his destruction of Sodom and Gamora when he destroyes the city for their bad ways that did not include worshipping him. Don Vito has this same action toward Charlie Fontain's Director. Killing his horse is like destroying his life. Plus God and the Godfather allow evil in the world to exist. Both allow killing, gambling, and prostitution. If either one really cared, could they complete erradicate these evils from the world? I don't think they want to because it would destroy their need. It is in their self interest to keep these evils in the world so people come to them for protection.

- Evil's Strategy: Iago tempts Othello just as Lord Henry tempts Dorian Gray. Lord Henry gives Dorian the ideas and from there Dorian like Othelllo just paints his own gruesome picture of sins. God does the same thing. He gives us this book of truths, the Bible, and leaves us to fend against evil ourselves. Adam and Eve are told that evil has entered into the garden but God leaves them to fight it themselves. Once they eat the fruit which god put there in the first place, they did all the work to destroy themselves. Satan just had to give Eve the idea to eat the fruit. We live in a world of choices and rarely are we forced to do anything. We normally choose in one way or another. God works in another way too. God gives us the ideas of good so we strive to put up this great image of goodness, yet we still contain evil. So many times the peers forget that everyone is evil inside. There are just different amounts of good and evil. In this way, Basil is God and Lord Henry is Satan. God paints the picture of goodness: our potential goodness that we can have. Then Satan comes in and gives us the ideas to start destroying this image. We slowly make our picture uglier and uglier. As Bradley says ," Iago is not simply a man of action; he is an artist..." (93). Iago, Lord Henry, and Satan are their own artists just like Basil. They just use dark colors. Artists help us make an image of ourselves. They put the image into our thoughts. Basil tries to put an image of beauty and virginity into his picture of Dorian but Lord Henry paints dorian a different picture of a gruesome sinner. God paints a picture of us as angels in heaven but Satan makes a portrait of us as sinners in hell. Iago was a brilliant artist who creates an image completely new. No one would think of Othello as a murder and jealous man, but Iago sees the painting in his head. Then he just uses his power over Othello to paint the image and set it into Othello's mind. With these two images in our head, we make the choice of which image we are going to portray in life. The artists just give us the idea.

- Evil's stratgey: God sends Gabriel to tempt Adam and Eve to loyalty just as Satan works to gain Adam and Eve's loyalty to evil. The Cold War is a perfect comparison to this situation in the Garden of Eden. Capitalism and Communism fight for the loyalty of Africans, Vietnamese, and Koreans. Natives just have to pick the lesser of two evils.

-Conclusion: History proves the difference between Good and evil because the victor writes history. Capitalism is better because Communism didnt survive. So since I was created in god's image and since we are capable of evil(morrow 216), I am evil. The image I see in the mirror is a paiting of reality: the combination of my two paintings of good and evil Nathan. People are not good unless there are other evil people around. If everyone was good like Martin Luther King Jr., then he would not be remembered. With this in mind, the evil of the world helps define time( Morrow). We would not remember history unless there were great events of Good vs. Evil. no one cares about Eve's gardening. they care about her fall to evil's ideas.

I finally got the ideas I had wanted, and I just started writing. The grammar is probably pretty rough.