Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Virtue and Vice: Cut form the Same Cloth?

As we near the end of our Psychomachia readings, I am finding it interesting that perhaps the image I now have of "Virtue" is not the image I previously had.  As someone who has never read the Bible and really only has minor experience with the more famous Biblical stories, to my mind "Virtue" was a concept of goodness and for some reason even peacefulness (I am not sure why I associate that with it, it actually may have something to do, embarassingly enough, with a character from a show i used to watch growing up, Charmed.  It was about "good" witches but there was "Whitelighter" character who by nature was a pacifist and for some reason when I think of "Virtue" that is the image that comes to mind).  Perhaps this is why I was a little surprised when I reached roughly lines 670-725 and found the Virtues to be vindictive and vengeful.  Naturally the entire poem is about the war between Virtue and Vice so it has been grisly and gruesome.  I found it interesting however, that when Discord enters into the ranks of the Virtues and attempts murder, Faith and the other Virtues essentially beat Discord down and "being unable to bear Discord's monsterous blasphemy, Faith 'shoves a javelin down Discord's throat.'"  The entire poem has been grizzly but this stood out to me as an almost "(eye roll) just shut up already, you are ruining our party and you tried to stab me so now I am angry, grrrr!" scene.  I suppose I just except Virtue, from the image I previously had, to be a little more excepting than that.  OK obviously Discord had to die because she tried to kill a Virtue but they literally rip her apart!  I guess this goes to show that everyone has a dark side, mwahahaha! (Just in time for Halloween)

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