IBIS wrote:
Many posts pointed out that Cain wanted to “save” others, so he could, in turn, “save” himself. But one thing that no one’s mentioned is that Cain is a character who becomes, as the novel progresses, very disillusioned... by his own actions, by the Southern culture and civilation that he loves, and by the “honor”code about slavery that he was taught from birth.
As a boy, Cain read tales of medieval knights, Nelson at Trafalgar, the bravery of Crockett and Bowie at the Alamo. (p.72) “….his imagined life would be filled with gallant and noble deeds and that it would not follow the dull routine of a farmer.”
His father raises him and his brother in the grand tradition of Roman civilization. (p.70) “His father had named his three boys after emperors, as if tempting the hand of fate toward greatness but perhaps merely bestowing on them greater prospects for failure.”
The first nail in his coffin is his mother's early death. His mother symbolized to him all the beauty and honor of genteel Southern women. But he can't save her, despite all his young boy efforts to comfort her.
He wants to save Eileen McDuffy in the same romantic vein as a Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad. Unfortunately, other customers throw him out of the brothel on his ears. And he becomes a figure of ridicule.
He joins the Mexican war, like a modern-day Achilles, off to win fame and glory. Bravery in battle would rescue him, temporarily, at least, from a mundane life.
However, in the Buena Vista’s battle scenes, the harsh reality of war sets in. Fighting is not the dashing, heroic business that his youthful reading led him to believe. He is dangerously wounded, and is rescued by a young girl and an elderly woman.
By rescuing Cain, the girl and her grandmother are in mortal danger. To “save” her, he is reduced to a cold-blooded, vigilante murder of the Mexican priest, who is, unfortunately, defenselessly praying inside the church. The vengeance killing is neither glorious, nor heroic.
At the very end of the novel, in the cabin, even though Cain had the good intention to let Rosetta go free, and fought hard to save her; in the end, it was she, herself, who finally killed Eberly. With Eberly no longer a threat, Rosetta was free to go, and no longer needed to look over her shoulder.
In the epilogue, we see him join the Confederate army in what he himself sees as a doomed war effort. Throughout the novel, I saw what started out as an idealistic romantic young Southern boy slowly become disillusioned... how can he avoid seeing that his society is on the brink of its own destruction?
He half-admits that the grand tradition of the ante-bellum Southern culture he was born into was a fantasy after all.
He certainly was a southerner tipping at windmills at times, but as for returning to what was destined to fail, the South in the war that is, don't you feel a lot of southern boys and men did that? It was their identity and they were going to go down with the ship if it was going to happen. I think if the U.S. was in a war on our own soil with a power that was going to beat us down, most American's would do the same thing, even if we knew we were going to lose, and possible die.
So much of what you point out is true. Good points. One thing I was thinking tho, I don't think Cain was trying to save others to save himself, not consciously anyway, but I think he had a need to save, to make up for those he couldn't like his mother. I think that he is driven by that need which is a subconscious need to save oneself. The funny thing is, and this goes to show how people can vary in what they feel about what they read, I did not see Cain in the beginning as a idealistic romantic young man who slowly becomes disillusioned. I saw him as already disillusioned by something (didnt know enough of his life at first) that had him leading a hard life cause he didn't see much else for him to do. He may have had dreams but thats all they were. Thats how I saw him from the first of the book, a disillusioned beat up young man who slowly finds more to life than what he thought. Kind of the reverse huh?
To me its the idealistic romantic young boy in him that would take him back to the Confederate Army and the South when he knew it was doomed.
IBIS wrote:
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear but to "save" can be interpreted in several ways. For example, to save Eileen, I meant in the "chivalrous" way of the medieval knights, to rescue her from the life in the brothel.
To save himself, I meant that Cain hoped to find redemption... in order to save his soul. By choosing the moral choice of letting Rosetta go free, he hoped to find redemption from the immorality of catching slaves in his previous life.
My biggest disappointment in the novel is the epilogue when Cain returns to fight for the South, even though he despised slavery and all it stood for. By choosing to fight on the side of slavery, which he spent the entire novel learning was immoral, it's as if he learned nothing at all. It's as if all that he and Rosetta went through taught him nothing.
He had the choice of taking the moral stance and helping in a non-violent way, like perhaps joining some abolitionist effort. Or, staying out of it altogether and living in the territories that weren't part of the Union yet. Conscientious objection is not an anachronism. Many young men, along with runaway slaves, fled to Canada.
It's not the heroic way, I know, but at least his conscience would be clear.
A similar historical situation would be for young German boy before WWII to form a deep emotional bond with a Jewish girl. He finds out that the Nazis are destroying the moral core of his country by decimating Jews; despite all that, he still decides to go and fight for Hitler because he was born a German, and hadsroots in German soil. It's as if he learned nothing at all.
Cain's choices were open to him. That's what free will is, as he learned from PARADISE LOST. If he didn't want to fight opposite his brother and father, who most assuredly WOULD fight for the South, Cain could have stayed in the territories, and not fought at all. It's not as if he was compelled by law to fight in a war that he knew was doomed.
He had many choices open to him. He was free and white. Yet he chose one that denied all the moral lessons that being with Rosetta taught him.
I gotcha on the "save" part, I knew thats what you meant, I just thought when I read that, that someone might have thought I earlier meant he knew thats what he was doing, so wanted to clear that up
. As for returning. Hey, a lot of German's had jewish friends, neighbors and wives or husbands! But the draw of the promises, the idea of the "Motherland", still had them joining up. I don't equate German soldiers with Hitler or Nazi's, some didnt even want to join the party. I just see them as soldiers, some good some bad, some serving while trying to follow their moral convictions as best they could, some taking advantage of the situation to do evil. I see the Confederate soldiers the same way, thats where the romantic idealism comes in, not before. This is "THE South", this is home,this is a fight for their way of life. Cain may have come away with new ideas but that doesnt mean he suddenly hated the South. Seeing Rosetta as someone who should be free, may not even change his views that slavery "in general" was not a bad thing.What I see, at the end, is a man, who has lived a hard life all his life, lost a lot, and found something along the way too. He found love, he found out people are people and some are bad and some are good, regardless of their color. But he also bumped into reality, and since we are talking about how the book ended here now, so SPOILER folks if you havent figure it out all ready lol, he was realistic enough to know that they could never really make it together anywhere. Rosetta was free too and as much as she loved Cain, she found something important to her that could be real. Cain, having again lost something, goes back to what he knows, home. Its not that he didnt learn anything or learned something and then was immoral again about it. Its not that black and white. And given that he knew the south would lose, as many did, they fought on their side for the honor of the south, but then joined the Union and did other things after the war. This one guy I am transcribing letters about did just that very thing, he fought as a confederate, for home and honor during the war and after it was over, petitioned the war dept for a place in the Union Navy. If he knew things were coming to an end, he knew slavery was too, well lets say as an "institution" was too and he knew he would have to take another step from there too. Many people support their government, right or wrong, and for the South, this was their government, not DC. How many times are we hearing today, "I support our soldiers but not the war". How do you separate the two? And if you can, then you can for Cain too. I think Cain learned a lot and I think had he not gone back, in some ways, he would still be running all his life. Hey, even Rosetta didn't hate him for fighting for the Confederacy tho she certainly hated slavery. She was writing him, she still cared for him. I think she understood. Rosetta, lets face it, was one smart cookie anyway
