From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [332]
“Yeah,” Prew said. “But I cant see what the hell made him do it.”
That was when the last man, the big man with the odd dreaming eyes, came over and sat down on the bunk with them. Without seeming to try to, he drew to himself all the available attention and interest in the same way a magnet collects iron filings, and for this they both looked up at him gratefully.
“Every man has the right to kill himself,” the big man said gently, appropriating the subject as if there was no question to his right to it. “Its the only absolute inviolable right a man does have, the only act he can commit which nobody else has a sayso in, the one irrevocable deed he can execute without outside influence. The old Anglo-Saxon term of ‘freedom’ came from that: ‘free’ and ‘doom,’ with the idea that every man always had that last final resort that nobody could take away from him, if he wanted to avail himself of it.
“But like everything else,” the big man said gently, “it has its price, too: its price is its own absoluteness and irrevocableness and inviolableness. ‘Doom’ is the only thing thats ever ‘free,’ citizens,” the big man said, as if speaking out of some very sure personal source not open to them.
“I’d hate to believe that,” Prew said distastefully.
“I dont see why,” the big man said tranquilly. “If its the truth. And anyway, maybe you’re right: Maybe even that isnt free.”
“I didnt mean that,” Prew said.
“I know what you meant,” the big man said. He stopped and smiled at them. The subject he had appropriated seemed to have been pretty well covered.
“Except for one thing,” Angelo said worriedly. “Even for us guys, here, dont you think its wrong?”
“You’re a Catholic,” the big man grinned gently.
“Not a good one.”
“But still a Catholic.”
“Okay, so I’m a Catholic,” Angelo said belligerently. “Somebody else is a Methodist. So what does that prove?”
“Nothing. But I wasnt talking about the moral right. I was talking about the physical right, the fact, the opportunity. No laws or preachments or physical restraints can take away the concrete physical right, if a man wants to do it. But you, being a Catholic, or a follower of any other religion, immediately transposed the physical right into a moral right.”
“But is it right?” Angelo insisted. “Or is it wrong?”
“Its all how you look at it. Would you say the early Christian martyrs committed suicide?”
“No.”
“Of course not. You’re a Catholic. But they didnt have to go into the arena, did they?”
Angelo frowned. “No, they didnt have to. But they did have to. Besides, somebody else killed them.”
“But they knew what they were getting into. They were accepting death of their own free will, werent they?”
“Yes, but—”
“Isnt that suicide?”
“Well, in a way, yes,” Angelo frowned. “But they had a reason.”
“Sure. They had a reason. Either they were too proud to back down; or else they figured they’d get a free ticket to Heaven. Do you think Bloom shot himself just to see how it’d feel? And what difference does it make who pulled the trigger?”
Angelo frowned again. “None, I guess. When you put it that way.”
“Well, would you say the Christian martyrs were wrong?”
“Of course not.”
“Then it must all depend on the circumstances, whether suicide’s right or wrong.”
“But the Christian martyrs were different than Bloom. Or me.”
“Only in the fact that they did it in mass formation for an impersonal ideal, whereas Bloom did it for a purely personal reason that nobody will ever know. And you cant say it was wrong until you know that personal reason.
“Now what you should of asked,” the big man grinned gently, “was is it immoral?”
“Yeah, thats it,” Angelo said, “thats what I meant. Well, is it?”
“Of course,” the big man grinned. “Everybody knows its immoral. To the Romans it was very immoral, what the Christian martyrs did, it was cowardly, and a running away, and immoral. Theres no doubt that suicide, especially mass suicide, is immoral. Because every human society teaches that its immoral. Even in Japan and Russia suicide is only moral when you’re in disgrace with the government; but any other brand is just as immoral as here. How long would a society’s framework hold up if every time there was a Depression all the ones without jobs marched on