During a regular story-reading session with my friends, I came across a particularly interesting story - The Enemy of All the World by Jack London. So long, I knew of Jack London as the author who had written The Call of the Wild, a story about a dog who is uprooted from his comfy home to be left in the Alaskan wild. I had read a bit of this book back in the fifth grade as part of the school curriculum. I also knew Jack London as one of the authors who had inspired Christopher McCandless.
From these two instances, I thought of the author to be an anarchist or a renunciant. In The Enemy of All the World, the author deals with law and justice and morality, and poses multiple questions to our civility. He isn't an anarchist. He shows a mirror to the society. His characters probably seek solace in the hills and their wilderness because of the distance from the civilized society. He must have been fed up with the pomp and artificiality, and the false sense of pride that the wise human race holds for some reason.
The case of Emil Gluck
In The Enemy of All the World, the author introduces us to a certain Emil Gluck who, in response to his treacherous and lonely childhood, repeated betrayals and wrong personal portrayal by the media, turns into a criminal. He is orphaned at a young age and sent to a certain aunt who makes sure that he knows that he doesn't belong in her home and should be grateful for every bit that she spends on him. In a particular episode, on seeing Emil to have broken his leg accidently, this aunt refuses to grant him entry into her house, lest provide him medical care.
Eventually, when fate gets him into a university, he turns out to be an industrious student but here too, he loses his teacher who had so long been his only friend there.
He secures a job for himself at different places, including a university where he writes an article that comes to be portrayed wrongly by the media on account of the usage of the term "revolution". He becomes notorious as a communist anarchist.
Later, he has an unsuccessful love affair, which again gains nationwide fame when the lady is murdered mysteriously. The police frame Gluck for the murder. He is sentenced to jail for a long period. Eventually, another person admits to having committed the murder but Gluck is not released and passes another eight months (as far as I remember) in the prison due to bureaucratic red-taping. This is the inflection point in his story, where he becomes hopeless and sees the entire world, and particularly the media and the police force, as his criminal.
Set in the backdrop of the years leading to the Second World War, in the story, Emil Gluck invents a technique to cause remote ignition of gunpowder and employs it to take his revenge. The author fantastically moulds historical facts to fit into his story. So, it is Emil Gluck who had started the American-German war by setting German warships docked on American coasts on fire. He is also shown to have killed the King and Queen of Portugal in a memorable ceremony where the guns of all the soldiers started firing spontaneously.
Emil Gluck is eventually captured and sent to the electric chair.
Who is a criminal?
There is no doubt that our society has often valorised criminals. There are many who will readily say "Joker" if you ask them who their favourite movie character is. Similarly, there is the portrayal of anti-heroes as agreeable characters, wronged by the judicial system and the society, enroute to take on their enemies personally to exact their revenge. Additionally, one society's criminal may be another's hero. Subhash Chandra Bose is seen as a national hero in India but a criminal for the United Kingdom. This brings us to a question - is there a good criminal and a bad criminal?
Let us try to answer this at our own petty level, for we are no experts. Emil Gluck must have killed thousands, if not millions, in the story and hence, is branded The Enemy of All the World. What did the author want us to feel for the character? He begins with a brief (seven-lined) portrayal of why Emil Gluck gained worldwide notoriety and was executed, and then moves to a sort-of defence of his character. The eighth line of the story declares what the author wants the readers to feel for the character:
"While the deeds of Emil Gluck were all that was abominable, we cannot but feel, to a certain extent, pity for the unfortunate, malformed, and maltreated genius."
When we think of Emil Gluck and the Joker, we probably apply the case to ourselves. "What would have I done?" we ask ourselves. The crime now appears, at least to some degree, less heinous.
However, if laws have a certain intrinsic value, they must be one and same for all. If a law has been violated, there must be consequences, irrespective of a person's background and past. One can also say that the law is emotionless and doesn't feel any pity. Whatever pity and emotion there is, has already been utilized in codifying the law.
Then there is the perception of the crime. We consider a few crimes to be no crimes at all, or lesser crimes. It is often said that a lie uttered for someone's good is no lie. The fact remains that it is a lie anyway. People might discard this statement to be too idealistic and impractical. However, if we apply this principle of a "subjective lie", and hence, a "subjective crime" to our judicial system. Where will we then be? What sort of justice do we want?
The idea of justice
I have had lately an interest in law and justice. I even planned to study for getting into one of the National Law Schools. However, when I discovered the fees they charge, I was reminded of my means and gave up the idea immediately. That is a different matter. What concerns us here is a fundamental question of law - what should justice be based on?
What should be the aim of justice? There are a few lines of thought:
Justice is retribution. The victim has been wronged and deserves revenge. Thus, an aim of justice is to get the victim her/his revenge in the strictest of the terms. In such a case, there appears to be a question of proportionality that reminds us of the code of Hammurabi.
Justice is reformative. The guiding principle here is that one should hate the crime and not the criminal. One is reminded that a criminal is a product of the society s/he has been interacting with. Thus, justice aims at reforming the individual so that the crime itself is erased.
Justice is also aimed at discouraging crime. The fundamental here is that no person is a criminal at heart and by virtue of birth. Conditions turn a person into a criminal. However, desperate conditions do not warrant a person to indulge in crimes. Thus, crimes also need to be discouraged. By punishing the criminals, justice also disincentivizes crimes by creating a fear of law in the minds of those who may commit a crime in the future.
In dealing with crime and criminals, one cannot ignore any of the above. The first one is significant for the victim, the second one for the criminal while the third one is the very essence of the system of justice for the society. I have tried to raise this topic at multiple fora of discussion but couldn't arrive at a unified theory. Maybe there can't be one. Maybe there are already many and I am only ignorant of their existence.
What is then to be done with the likes of Emil Gluck? Is it enough to feel repelled by what he did to countless others and still have a sense of pity for him? Is it even rational to feel this pity? Maybe his punishment should have been divided amongst everyone who had a hand in producing a criminal. This doesn't fit into any of the three aims of justice that we read up above. One is so overwhelmed by anger at him. One doesn't think that such a person can be reformed. The third concern is way too small in the face of the others.
The silent sinners
Agatha Christie in her book And Then There Were None introduces us to a certain character who takes on himself to kill a group of ten persons who had knowingly committed crimes which couldn't technically be brought to justice. For example, a certain religious character ousts a young girl from her care home for indulging in illicit sexual intercourse. The girl ultimately commits suicide. Who is then to be blamed?
Can the girl be delivered justice? In Jack London's story, Emil Gluck is executed for his wrongs. Doesn't Emil Gluck himself deserve justice for what the society had done to him?
These are probably not questions of law because they deal with morals, rather than the objective situations that law deals with. On the other hand, our moral laws deal with sex and sexuality and their aim is never justice, but mostly the continued existence of a paternalistic society. Then maybe Jack London was right to say what he said. These sad victims who are turned into criminals by the machinations of the society deserve only our pity. Writers must be the judges in their cases.
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