Conformed to the Corrupt: Essay on The Poisonwood Bible, The Matamorphosis, Othello, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

A man slaving for his indebted family awakes one day transformed to a giant arthropod and his new body leads to his death. A zealot leads his family into the depths of darkest Africa and changes their lives forever by exposing them to truth. A young boy rebels against his environment. A man is accused of witchcraft for marrying a white woman. How are these stories connected? They all contain a seldom addressed aspect of life; we are all conformed, and conformed to whatever corrupt environment we bask in. Gregor Samsa is forced to pay for the sins and debts of his parents. Nathan Price only sees his truth and Africa only sees its truth. Huckleberry Finn believes that he is committing a wrong and may go to Hell for aiding a runaway slave from his worst fears. Othello is accused of having to use some evil witch magic in order for the fair white skinned Desdemona to fall in love with the dark Othello. All of the societies displayed contain deep corruption and the members of the society conform to this corruption, while the few that rebel are disgraced, killed, or punished. Yet it seems that nobody sees that they are rebelling against the corrupt and that they are simply conforming to their own corruption.

            In the course of history, it most often is the case that the sins of the parents are paid for by the children. Many times the actions taken in a lifetime do not directly affect the actor’s life, but the lives of their descendants. Gregor Samsa’s parents are indebted to a business owner, the head of a traveling sales business. Gregor must compensate for this debt, because it is now his debt also, and the debt of his beloved sister Grete. Gregor wants only what is best for his parents and Grete, when he suddenly creates a vacuum of what once was Gregor Samsa. Only when catastrophe struck did the parents take up action to pay off their own debts with their own work and give their daughter the chance to success, the chance that never came for Gregor, who had to work off the debts of his parents. Gregor and his family are conformed to the idea that the children are indebted heavily to their parents, and so the debt of the parents is effortlessly dropped upon the children, for it is only the settling of the score. This corrupt idea has infiltrated out society today and is an agent in tearing it apart. “The decisions of my life will not affect me”, one may say, “so I do not care. They may only begin to affect my children and grandchildren.” but what of their children and grandchildren? And if all the descendants continue the corrupt trend then the debt eventually piles up so high that it consumes everything. This is found in our economic decisions, environmental decisions, political decisions, moral decisions, legal decisions, and it appears that there is no end to the debts collected in all fields. Perhaps the world needs purged and consumed before it can heal. Perhaps sixteen trillion dollars can consume the world.

            Nathan Price; call him a zealot, call him a misguided sheep, call him whatever comes to mind, he is merely a pawn of a greater plan to ruin the world; like all humans. Nathan drags his family into the Congo, the center for oppression, despair, corruption and evil in the world, and over what? For Nathan, it is for the child-like idiocy ridden hope that he can convert the minds, no souls, of Africa to believe in his Messiah, and through what means? Church every Sunday filled with empty verses and sermons given to a crowd with no intentions of firmly placing faith in anything but survival. And truly, who can blame them? Who in their right mind, if anyone on Earth can be said to have a right mind, would abandon their beliefs for what some man who comes with the oppressor says? Would anyone in America believe the religious converters of the Muslim Brotherhood if the organization was to occupy the nation?  The answer is a blunt no, and America is in no condition like the Congo is in. What has made the Congo so insufferable? The cursed ground it is on. The diamonds so desperately desired by the world. So the Belgians move in, enslave the population, take all the money it can before the revolution, then high-tail it out of the Congo before the inevitable evil occurs; the corrupt powers of the world want the easy diamonds back. And so what happens? All order is abolished and replaced by the order of evil corruption. Race becomes definition. Slaughterings and imprisonments by the masses become the Congo, and all the while the world sits back, shakes their heads and says “Tsk tsk! What a shame!” Nathan only sees that his God and God blessed country are incorruptible, and will succeed in transforming the dark outreaches. Africa only sees that survival is the key to this life, while they allow the power hungry to feed on their lives. Nathan, like his country, fails to recognize that they are the cause for the chaos in Africa. Their interference has ruined the area, placing Nathan a pawn and America as a Bishop in the inanimate yet obviously existent devolution of humanity into an end of entropy.

            For America, it took over two hundred years to treat racially different people equally. For Huckleberry Finn, it took a childhood. But this does not mean that Huck is uncorrupt and not conformed. Huckleberry Finn believes that for aiding a runaway slave, he is stealing property and could very well go to Hell. Huckleberry believes that he is committing evil and defying his world. He has the latter correct. He defied his environment; all that he was taught and believed in. Yet he was not committing evil. In fact, he was working for liberty. The conditions of Huck and Jim are very similar. Both are in a sense owned by another. Both are forced against their will. Both are endangered every day of their lives. Both have one straw that breaks their backs and makes them run from their prisons. For Huck it was his father nearly killing him. For Jim it was being sold to New Orleans. At the time the novel was written, the reader would sympathize with Huck and his situation while perhaps scolding him for aiding a runaway slave. All the while, they would never realize the extreme oxymoron they have been placed in. What entitles Huck above Jim? His skin color? His deoxyribonucleic acids? The novel clearly challenges the unreasonable bias of the age, and it challenges all ages beyond. This novel challenges what we believe in; it challenges our systems, our morals. The novel shows that people believe whatever they grow up to conform to, or whatever they have rebelled to believe in. All of these beliefs are corrupt, thus all humans are conformed to their corruption. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a powerful novel with an essential message for the human race; in a world where the most advanced race turns on itself for reasons as juvenile as heritage, race, and beliefs, how can this race be expected to exist for much longer? And more importantly, should it be allowed to?

            Magic! Witchcraft! Evil enchanting! The only reasonable way for a beautiful white woman to love and desire a dark Moor, is it not? Why is it that humans always turn to the most ridiculous accusations in matters such as those portrayed in Othello? Because of desperation and a corrupt mindset. How can a man claim something as ridiculous as witchcraft against a famous protector of the State over an “offense” with a daughter the man didn’t care enough about to not realize that she had been living married for days, if not weeks, away from her home? Because the man has been conformed to corruptly think he has power over this woman, and the darker skinned man, because he is a father, older, and white. Right, because that makes so much sense. Brabantio can make children, congratulations Brabantio, you have functioning reproductive organs. Brabantio was born before Othello, congratulations Brabantio, you have lived longer. Brabantio is white, congratulations Brabantio, you had the luck of being born white and powerful, instead of black and powerless. He is corruptly conformed to believe he is above his daughter and her lover, and this is what has allowed his mind to claim witchcraft against Othello. This is the same with all people. Our conformity deeply affects our minds and can alter our rationality and decision making to extreme ends. Because of this, we are a dangerous race of corrupt and conforming irrational morons, blindly stumbling into situations that we exploit to our benefit, or to the benefit of whatever false ideology we have conformed to believe, to the point that we are destroying our world, our lives, and our chances to truly understand.

            What is the message here? What is being said? The point of this essay is to challenge the readers to rethink everything. Rethink your morals, rethink your beliefs, your systems, your reasoning, your rationalities. Analyze everything you believe in, and question its existence. On what grounds are you standing, and how have you reached those grounds? How much of what you believe has been fed to you as rhetoric by a higher power? Open your eyes and see that you are a pawn to the bishops, rooks, and knights who work for the king and queen of a cause that is neither black nor white, but grey, fighting against other grey warriors for a fate that plays both sides, aiming for the sole purpose of the ruining of the warriors. So let the scales fall from your eyes! Awaken and see that you are being played like the rest of the pawns! End this twisted game and defy the cruel fate that has you bound so. If humanity cannot awaken, then it will plunge into eternal darkness, and the only solution shall be a Carthaginian Solution.