The Dark Trinity:

Understanding Actions, Motivations and Forces

Behind the Potential of Evil

Kara A. Stambach

Evil in Literature

From Ancient Greece to Gothic Tales

Dr. Norris

5-1-04

Kara A. Stambach

Evil In Literature

Dr. Norris

The Dark Trinity:

Understanding Actions, Motivations and Forces

Behind the Potential of Evil

     Evil is both at once an intrinsically complex concept, and a simplistic, innate principle of the human condition. To understand Evil, it is perhaps best to compartmentalize the various aspects of its nature, and examine them first separately, then finally as a whole.

    This paper will focus on three main subdivisions of Evil: evil actions, evil intentions, and evil forces. Hereafter referred to as the Dark Trinity, this paper will examine the various manifestations of Evil through analysis of character and plot within the literary works studied this semester. It is the goal of this paper to prove that Evil is the conscious will to do harm, which stems from the same Source that produces the conscious will to do good.

Actions: The Apex of Evil

     In the text Ordinary People and Extraordinary Evil, Katz defines the word evil to mean “behavior that deliberately deprives innocent people of their humanity, from small scale assaults on a person’s dignity to outright murder. This is the behavioral definition of evil” (55). The subdivision of Behavioral Evil implies that actions themselves may have not only an unfortunate outcome, but also an outright evil nature. Specifically, violence, dishonesty, and corruption seem to permeate the literary works discussed in class, as the chief methods through which the agents of evil operate.

     In Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigeneia in order to ensure victory in a needless war caused by an ancient feud between the houses of Thyestes and Atreus. This, in turn, spurs his wife Clytaemnestra to murder him. Commanded by Apollo and driven insane by the Furies, their son Orestes then assassinates Clytaemnestra. Throughout the entire series of the Oresteia, the violent action of murder—specifically of kin—is the primary embodiment of Evil. It is important to note that regardless of the circumstances, the act of taking life is considered an evil, and the sin is compounded when the life lost is that of a family member.

     Euripides’ Medea also illustrates evil in the form of kin-killing. Overwrought by passion owing to Aphrodite, Medea betrays her homeland, helps Jason acquire the Golden Fleece, kills her brother and has Pelias killed by his daughters. When Jason takes another, more socially acceptable, wife, and has Medea banished for her outrage, she murders their two sons, as well as the princess and king. The Greeks could not conceive of a greater evil than infanticide, and Jason says as much to Medea in the closing act of the play. Medea lies, plots, manipulates and antagonizes her way through the tale, but when all her extreme behaviors and words prove impotent, she resorts to revenge through the final act—murder.

     Medea is a moon-cast shadow to Iago, in Shakespeare’s Othello, who lies, manipulates and antagonizes in order to achieve the very specific aim of murder. Iago wounds Casio, and kills his own wife, and while he does not outright murder the object of his intense hatred—the Moor, Othello—he does plot, deceive and shepherd Othello to his own self-destruction and to the extinguishing of innocent Desdemona. Iago’s evil act is to play the Devil’s advocate—to stir up the possessive, violent, prideful poison in others, as, “when devils will their blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows as I do now… I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear… so will I turn her virtue to pitch” (Shakespeare, 1128).  Othello, mad with passion and jealousy, gives in to the impulse to commit murder. He is a man who “loved perhaps not wisely, but too well”  (Shakespeare, Othello, 1150 ). But Iago’s crimes are far worse, for he dons the façade of innocence and all the while harbors no love for anything, save his own revenge.

          The same holds true for Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost. While the story itself depicts the events of Genesis and the sins of early mankind as written in the Old Testament, the chief operator of Evil—Satan—assumes an air of innocence in order to bring about his victims’ self-destruction. The crimes portrayed in the work include Satan’s plot against God and banishment, Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve, and the consequences of their disobedience and banishment. Adam and Eve’s action of partaking of the fruit of knowledge in and of itself was not harmful—but it was an evil act, because it was in direct disobedience to God’s commandment. Satan, wishing Adam and Eve to fall from grace, as he did, commits the most terrible crime—that of plotting to overcome God’s natural order and bring about another’s harm. Following Katz’s definition of Behavioral Evil strictly, however, Satan does not “deliberately deprive an innocent person of their humanity,” but rather plays into the intrinsically human aspects of pride, vanity and curiosity in order to undermine the impulses of Good. Adam and Eve experimented in acting out their own autonomy—in resisting the rules and choosing to do the forbidden—and in doing so, they and their descendents committed acts of evil.

     Similarly, in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov tests his autonomy by experimenting in killing the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanova, and consequently ends up also killing her sister, Lizaveta. His reasoning is two-fold; first, to rid the world of the kind of people he considers to be subhuman, or lice, and secondly, to test his own power and become something of a superhuman. His power is in direct measure to the amount of destruction he can get away with—not in the amount of good he can do for others. His evil act is to assert his domination over someone weaker than himself, (echoed later in the text by Svidrigalov’s attempted rape of Dunya) and this assertion comes in the form of murder—in the irreversible action of depriving someone of their very existence.

     Not every evil act of domination is so extreme. In Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is treated as a second-class citizen all his life—deliberately deprived of his humanity—and as a result, when he is grown, he uses his wealth, intelligence and station to manipulate everyone weaker than himself into subservience, in order to compensate. It begins with encasing young chicks in wire mesh so that their mother cannot nourish them, follows through to the abuse of his wife and child, and ultimately results in the death of Catherine and the misery of Cathy, Linton and Hareton. While Heathcliff does not commit outright murder, his actions, his inner strife, his will to dominate and destroy, prevail upon all those around him.

     This is in stark contrast to the evil act in Melville’s Billy Budd. Billy himself was described as “little more than a sort of upright barbarian, much such perhaps as Adam presumably might have been ere the urbane Serpent wriggled himself into his company” (14). Claggart accuses Billy of being a ringleader of a mutinous plot and Billy immediately stabs him in the heart, words having failed him as a means of self-defense or retaliation. The act of murder—of taking sacred life—is understood to be evil and is punished by execution after a trial. But as Billy “had none of that intuitive knowledge of bad,” Billy’s very execution is also an act of evil, allowed by Captain Vere, who knows Billy’s innocent nature, but undermines his own moral compass by upholding the codes of conduct upon which the Navy insisted. Lara states in Rethinking Evil, that the “propensity to evil… is an act, in the sense that it is the exercise of freedom… adopted by will, and can always be resisted” (84).  Billy, while innocent in motive, merely acted on impulse—a desire to defend himself, not to fatally wound, but to retaliate, to repost, against Claggart’s lie. It can then be argued that Evil operates through an action, prompted by an impulse, which is capable of being resisted, but is instead indulged.

     Poe states as much in The Imp of the Perverse, claming that:

the innate and primitive principle of human action… which we may call perverseness… is an impulse that increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing… is indulged (281-282). 

In this case, Poe’s protagonist poisons another man with a candle so as to inherit all his wealth. Seized by what the protagonist conceives as a perverse impulse, he confesses his crime and is consigned to hang. The astute reader can deduce that in this tale, Poe demonstrates that both the act to commit evil by murder, and the act to do good by confession, are impulses. Choice is very much present, but the propensity, the almost automatic compunction, to commit a perverse act, is described as primitive and innate.

     In contrast, Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter depicts a man that manipulates science and reason to ultimately poison his own daughter and the protagonist Giovanni—not out of impulse, but of calculated, deliberate design.   Dr. Rappaccini is a brilliant, celebrated physician, but an emotionally deficient human being. He is a “victim of man’s ingenuity and of thwarted nature… all such efforts of perverted wisdom,” in that, in exchange for empathy, compassion and morality, Dr. Rappaccini endlessly seeks dangerous knowledge and god-like power (Hawthorn, 1065). Dr. Rappaccini ignores the good aspects of medicine and nature, and instead creates an artificial Garden of Eden, in which all life is twisted, poisoned, beautiful but deadly, rendered useless, isolated and perverse. He makes manifest that which is festering inside him. The world in which he operates is concrete, self-sustaining and extremely rational—a playground in which his evil genius can contrive to dominate and manipulate others.

     On the other end of the spectrum lies the world of the governess in James’ The Turn of the Screw. The Narcissistic, mentally-ill protagonist, experiencing radical emotional highs and lows and suffering schizophrenic visions of ghosts and delusions of grandeur, ends up smothering her charge, Miles, in an attempt to save him from what she believes to be evil spirits. The protagonist’s world is not one of reason or calculation, nor is it one of impulse or intense, vengeful passion. Rather, she seems to be stranded in the obscure recesses of her imagination, spurred with the desire to do good and win the approval of her object of affection (Miles’ uncle) but all the while unaware of her capability to cause great harm (the distressing, victimization, and eventual suffocation of a helpless child.) The protagonist suffers from acute loneliness, slight pedophilia and a series of paranoid delusions, such that she cannot even conceive of the evil act of murder for which she is responsible. This begs the question then, that if actions can be evil, to what degree are they evil, if not coupled with dire motivations? What role does motivation play in judging an action evil?

Motivations: Body of the Pyramid

     Once again relying on Katz’s definition of evil as “behavior that deliberately deprives innocent people of their humanity,” but shifting emphasis away from ‘behavior’ and focusing instead on the word ‘deliberate’—we now come to the subject of action coupled with intention.

     Many events and occurrences can easily be labeled evil (murder, rape, lying, natural disasters, mental illness, disease epidemics, war) but that is perhaps too easy a description. All instances of suffering, accidental or impulsive, are unfortunate, yes; tragic, definitely; avoidable, most often. But when those instances are deliberately, willfully, and maliciously contrived, then they truly fit into the body of the Dark Trinity.

     In the Oresteia, Agamemnon’s murder of his daughter is a calculated act designed to ensure his own personal success. Clytaemnestra accuses him of being “mad with ambition, shrilling pride!” (163). It is pride that causes Agamemnon to go to war and to return to desecrate the dark red tapestries by treading upon them. This pride results in Clytaemnestra’s desire for maternal revenge of Iphigeneia, and so she couples with her husband’s mortal enemy and then murders her husband—in the bath, where he is most vulnerable. Her act is passionate, but also premeditated, and the result of malicious intent—her motivation being vengeance. She subsequently pays the price—death at the hands of her son—who neither contrives nor ultimately desires her death, but was ordered to act by the God, Apollo. Later, a trial between the Olympians and Furies (mediated by Athena, Goddess of rational thought and wisdom) acquits him of matricide, on the grounds that he took no sadistic joy in actually having to go through with her murder, and suffered tremendous remorse as a result. In all three cases, the action of murder was considered evil by varying degrees, depending upon intention and admission of guilt.

     In opposition to Orestes, Medea suffers no almost guilt for her actions. First she is driven mad with love by the goddess Aphrodite, claming, “oh what an evil power love has in people’s lives!” then she is spurred to rail and deceive out of revenge, and finally to commit the unpardonable sin upon innocents, out of pride and the vicious desire to wound Jason (Euripides, 27). She kills her own defenseless children, stating she “can endure guilt, however horrible. The laughter of my enemies [she] will not endure” (41). Her hubris seems to be absolved, exonerated, even, as the ancient Sun God appears in his chariot to whisk Medea away before she can be punished for her actions.

     In contrast, Othello suffers so much guilt for his crimes against Desdemona that he takes his own life. Recognizing his rash, violent personality had been given reign by the provocation of his male pride—his fear and anger at the possibility of being made cuckold—Othello takes responsibility for his evil actions and deprives himself of life and humanity. Iago’s motivations are more complex. Shakespeare states that Iago hates the Moor because it is suspected that the Moor made him cuckold, but also, it is in Iago’s very ambitious, spiteful nature to become the catalyst for destruction of all those around him—Casio, Roderigo, Othello, and his own wife Emelia. Like Macbeth and his wife, Iago is motivated by greed, a lust for power, ambition and impatience, as much as he is motivated by pride. His intentions are always to cause harm, and he is indeed guilty of evil and a difficult character with which to sympathize.

     Milton’s Satan, however, is much easier with which to identify for modern audiences. Satan opposes his Creator out of pride, to be sure, but his temptation of Adam and Eve stems from jealousy, and loneliness—from being cast out and the impending isolation that results in the desire to mar just as he had been marred—that makes his evil somehow more human, and less a force of nature than the dark passion that Iago embodied. Iago is tainted through and through, poisoned, sick; but Satan, Adam and Eve are all capable of both good and evil, of “possessing a paradise within… happier far” (Milton, 575). They simply choose to commit acts of evil—Adam and Eve motivated by curiosity and impulse, Satan motivated by jealousy and pride.

     Pride and a lust for power again rear their ugly heads in Crime and Punishment, as Raskolnikov desires to lift himself above the common man and refuses to admit his wrong up until the epilogue of the story. Raskolnikov states that “the fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence. I’ve never, never recognized this more clearly than now, and I am further than ever from seeing that what I did was a crime” (Dostoyevsky, 470). Raskolnikov is isolated, deprived and depraved, but capable of compassion (as seen with Sonya and Marmeladov) however, his vain desire to transcend the laws of morality—his adoption of Nihilism—his denial of the soul’s worth, ultimately make him an agent of evil. Sonya may have chosen to become a whore, which is an evil act, but her motivation, to aid in her family’s survival, was pure, and she is therefore considered an angel of good, not evil. Raskolnikov chooses the dark path not out of preservation, revenge or a lack of understanding, but simply as a social experiment and a reinforcement of his personal power.

     Along those same lines, Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights goes to great lengths to enforce his personal power, but derives sadistic joy in twisting, corrupting, bullying and annihilating the finer emotions of all those around him. Heathcliff is motivated by the internalized pain he suffers from Catherine’s rejection, from being made to feel low by his adopted family, and from the trappings of his rigid society upon his intelligence and emotional development. Like Raskolnikov, Heathcliff’s redeeming quality is the love of a good woman—Sonya and Catherine—and this illustrates the protagonist’s character is not solidly black and malicious, but, in Heathcliff’s case, driven to black and malicious intentions because of a lack of love.

     Conversely, Billy Budd’s character is much beloved by all; he is exonerated as his ships’ good-luck charm, and “Claggart could even have loved Billy, but for fate and ban” (48). Billy enjoys a simplistic view of life and desires only to work hard and serve Captain Vere faithfully. When falsely accused of a crime, it is the unfortunate accident of his speech impediment that prompts him to commit murder—not the malicious intent to cause suffering. Therefore, while what Billy Budd did was evil, Billy Budd, himself, was not. If evil must rest upon anyone’s shoulders, Claggart must bear it, motivated to lie out of jealousy and the intent to destroy that which he could not be—good.

     In Hawthorn’s Rappaccini’s Daughter, Dr. Rappaccini poisons the world around him, not out of a desire to destroy what he cannot be, but out of the desire to reach the full potential of what he actually is—a naked, unstoppable, deadly entity. Dr. Baglioni ascribes Dr. Rappaccini as an evil genius, who “would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge” (1048). Dr. Rappaccini’s motivation then, is one of hubris—of the acquisition of knowledge and power at any cost and in direct violation of the natural order of things—and therefore his intentions to cause harm, in the name of science, brand him as an agent of evil.

     It is not so easily a cut and dry case in James’ The Turn of the Screw, however. First and foremost, it’s almost impossible to discern if James’ protagonist truly is the victim in a literal ghost story—in which two demonic forces of evil in fact have sway over her wards—or if she is, in fact, driven insane by loneliness and family troubles and in her deluded and paranoid state, commits murder. If she is not cast into the realm of fantastic, paranormal Evil, but exists in fact in reality, she is then accountable for Miles’ death and all her actions leading up to it, as she herself debates: “the instant was confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent, what then on earth was I?” (James, 84). As the governess is an unreliable narrator, ascertaining her true motivations is very difficult. She professes the desire to protect the children from wickedness, but the text illustrates time and again that she is infatuated with Miles’ uncle and Miles himself, given to seeing things that no one else experiences, and prone to violent, emotional outbursts that result in Miles’ physical pain. How then, to judge her actions? Is she evil, or insane? When madmen commit crimes, are they accountable, or is the illness? Can an illness, which is inanimate and devoid of consciousness or morality, be categorized as evil, or merely unfortunate?

     Compare these questions with those raised in Poe’s The Imp of the Perverse, which is a curious departure from evil intention altogether. Rather, the protagonist commits murder due to an impulse (much like Billy Budd) but one without reason, “a mobile without motive,” an evil act simply for the sake of evil. (281). The protagonist’s confession is also an impulse without motivation—for neither is the murderer wracked with guilt nor fear of discovery; he simply confesses because of a perverse desire to harm—in this case, himself. If evil can be committed without any true motive or intention, it must therefore be concluded that Evil—defined as the desire for suffering and the destruction of humanity—must stem from a universal Source and exist as a force of its own.

Forces: The Foundations of the Dark Trinity

     Now we dip into the realm of the philosophical—seeking the answer to the question—from where do evil actions and intentions come? What is the Source of Evil?

     Lara asserts in Rethinking Evil, that evils “can exist by virtue of a breach occurring in the ‘bond of forces,’ which maintain not only unity of human beings and nature, but of the whole cosmos.” This breach in a common bond results when one person’s private will to destroy dominates over the universal will to exist. Evil can be considered a force when an individual’s will is given over to a darker, more powerful will, and that person merely becomes an instrument of Evil.

     For example, the characters Jason, Medea, Agamemnon, Clytaemnestra and Orestes all operate within the construct of Greek tragedy. Any playgoer of the time would automatically realize that these characters were acting and emoting under the thumb of Fate. While each character had the freedom of choice, ultimately their choices were limited in such a way, that evil events unfolded the only way they could, and the overall experience resulted in a catharsis, a purging of emotion and cleansing of thought—for the audience. The Gods interfered in man’s wars, hearts, heads and lives; driving them to make enemies, hold grudges, fall in love with unsuitable partners, go insane, and even commit murder. As the Gods were in no way morally superior to mortals, their powers usually ran amuck in the lives of the protagonists of any tragic work. This was how the ancient Greeks understood evil—as an unavoidable and intrinsic quality swaddled in humanity’s most vulnerable Achilles’ heel: hubris.

     For Shakespeare and Milton, the forces of Evil held a much more corporal form and avoidable sway—existing as a conscious Dark Nature. Lady Macbeth invites evil to possess her, saying, “come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top full of direct cruelty. Stop up the access and passage to remorse that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose…” (1049) and this illustrated the belief that there is Evil existing outside of normal bounds—human or earthly—that has the power to overcome the human emotions of remorse and guilt. It is an interesting paradox—for was it Lady Macbeth’s hand that killed Duncan? Or Evil that steadied Lady Macbeth’s hand?

     Would Adam and Eve have ever considered disobeying God and stealing forbidden knowledge, if Evil hadn’t come to them in the form of a harmless snake and whispered temptation into their ears? In Paradise Lost, Satan is a character (a protagonist, even) but he also embodies the Dark God, the force of Evil, of pride and jealousy and all that exists beyond God’s (or Good’s) presence.

     In Crime and Punishment, there is no otherworldly power that forces Raskolnikov to act, and yet, he is starving, fevered, filled with Nihilistic doctrine and daily confronted with the desperate poverty of a tumultuous Russia and man’s inhumanity to man. A force of Insanity, a sickness takes hold in him, coupled with ennui, a lackluster boredom with every day life, which over time, like sand in an oyster, forms the pearl of Evil. Raskolnikov’s evil stems from an idle stream, a lazy, subtle force that whispers the suggestion that to truly feel alive, one must kill.

     In A Good Look at Evil, Rosenthal likens committing evil acts to that of succumbing to an addiction. The person in withdraw, the evil-doer, justifies and rationalizes evil actions and intentions for just one more hit—one more chance at power, at an ego boost, a personal gain, at the rush of revenge. Evil is not simply a choice, but a compulsion. Even Billy Budd, the ultimate Christ figure, possessed the compulsion to strike out at his attacker, and take back his personal power—his good name.

     This suggestion, this reasoning, is further explored in The Imp of the Perverse, in which Poe dissects the paradoxical nature of Evil. Evil must exert itself to prove its existence, but in exerting itself, it negates existence. Evil thrives upon destruction— even it’s own. As with the fatal, wicked forces of Science in Dr. Rappaccini’s garden, evil can be beautiful, tempting, alluring, but ultimately fatal as the instrument of devastation.  There is no cure, no antidote, because Evil as a force is eternal.

     In The Turn of the Screw, depending upon your interpretation, Evil can either be the outside demonic force of the human spirit at unrest, or the internal, psychological force of the human mind at unrest, but either spiritually or mentally, evil is a force embedded in mankind, working towards destruction, devouring itself, wrenching the screw further and further inwards until nothing but the absence of good remains. Evil is the force in diametric opposition to the force of Good.

Conclusion:

     It can be debated, then, that Good cannot push without the pull of Evil, and that the Dark Trinity ultimately operates in service of the Light. In the text The Problem of Evil, Peterson argues that, “evil necessary for a greater good would provide an omniscient and omnipotent natural order to things,” but ultimately, the reasoning is faulty because, “God is not omnipotent if good cannot exist without evil” (162). There are those that would emphatically disagree. Peterson is assuming that the Source of all things desires good to exist without evil, and if it cannot, then the Source is not all-powerful. But what if everything is patterned and designed exactly as the Source wishes? What if the Source desires both Good and Evil, and that is the reason that one cannot exist without the other?

     As Lara states, if you accept that “Evil is a natural force, and humans can choose to isolate that force from other [benevolent or benign] forces,” then we as a race can impose our intentions and actions on others by choosing to isolate the forces. We can control whether those actions and intentions are good or evil. But just as we can choose to do and intend evil or good, we cannot destroy the forces of Evil or Good. Those forces come from the same Source, and are eternal. To try and bring either Good or Evil into the fore, is to upset the balance, to try and dominate a private will over the universal will. That is an example of hubris, and as the literary texts in this course illuminate, hubris is always the impetus towards Evil.

     The Buddhist saying, ‘once you know the candle is fire, the meal was cooked long ago,’ serves to illustrate the ultimate goal. Once you recognize something’s potential, the potential has already manifested itself (even if only in thought, it exists). As with Good and Evil, man has only to conceive of it, and it is already actualized.  Man has only to conceive of himself, good or evil, and his potential is realized.

     For Evil is the conscious act, stemming from the Source, to do harm. Evil can be revealed, analyzed, suppressed, punished or embraced, but never destroyed. Nor should it be attempted. For if we try to harm Evil, and Evil is the agent of harm, then in the act of destroying Evil, so we also destroy a part of ourselves. Better to realize Evil’s potential, and the potential to contain it, before it manifests its destructive force. The only way to win the war is to deny the Dark Trinity battle.

A PYRAMID OF EVIL:

The Dark Trinity

     Evil is a Dark Trinity—actions, intentions and forces combining in the conscious will to do harm. Evil can be revealed, analyzed, suppressed, punished or embraced, but the foundational forces can never been destroyed—only contained by recognizing their potential. The only way to win the war is to deny the Dark Trinity battle.

APEX

Actions:

Lies -  Corruption -  Violence

BODY

Motivations & Intentions:

Revenge    - Jealousy  -  Power-lust   -  Pride

FOUNDATION

Forces of the Source:

Fate -    Gods   -  Nature    -    Science  -     Insanity

Evil in Literature:

The Pyramid Effect

--Claggart implicates Billy Budd out of jealousy b/c of Fate and his Nature.

--Macbeth kills Duncan and Banquo out of power-lust b/c of Fate.

--Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter out of power-lust at the prompting of the Gods.

--Clytaemnestra commits murder and adultery out of revenge b/c she is the embodiment of the Furies’ (Gods’) anger.

--Orestes kills Clytaemnestra out of revenge by order of the God Apollo.

--Satan wars with God, corrupts Adam and Eve out of pride and jealousy, b/c he is the embodiment of the Dark God.

--Adam & Eve disobey God out of power-lust b/c it is their human Nature.

--Iago implicates Desdemona and Casio and commits violence out of jealousy & pride, b/c it is his Nature.

--Othello commits murder out of jealousy & pride b/c it is his Nature.

--Medea commits multiple murders out of revenge because it was in her Nature.

--Poe’s protagonist poisons his benefactor out of power-lust b/c of his impulsive Nature.

--Lady Macbeth kills Duncan out of power-lust b/c of her Nature.

--Heathcliff emotionally batters everyone out of revenge b/c of Insanity and his Nature.

--Raskolnikov kills and lies out of power-lust b/c of Insanity.

--Dr. Rappaccini poisons his daughter out of pride as an experiment in Science.

--The Governess smothers Miles with the intention to save him b/c of Insanity—she is not Evil.

--Billy Budd kills Claggart without intention and as a vehicle of Fate—he is not Evil.

Works Consulted:

Aeschylus. The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides. Penguin Books. New York, New York. 1977.

Baudrillard, Jean. The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena. Verso. London, England. 2002.

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Fine Editions Press. Cleveland, Ohio. 1947.

Dostoyevsky, Fydor. Crime and Punishment. Fine Editions Press. Cleveland, Ohio. 1947.

Euripides. Medea, Hecabe, Electra, Heracles. Penguin Books. New York, New York. 1963.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Complete Novels and Selected Tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Modern Library. New York, New York. 1937.

James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw: Norton Critical Edition. WW Norton and Company. New York, New York. 1999.

Katz, Fred E. Ordinary People and Extraordinary Evil: A Report of the Beguilings of Evil. State University of New York Press. New York, New York. 1993.

Lara, Maira Pia (ed). Rethinking Evil: Contemporary Perspectives. University of California Press. Los Angeles, California. 2001.

Melville, Herman. Billy Budd and Other Tales. Penguin Books. New York, New York. 1998.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Penguin Books. New York, New York. 1997.

Peterson, Michael L. (ed.) The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings. University of Notre Dame Press. Notre Dame, Indiana. 1992.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Tales and Poems: William Wilson, The Imp of the Perverse, Tell-Tale Heart. Vintage Books: Random House. New York, New York. 1975.

Rosenthal, Abigail L. A Good Look at Evil. Temple University Press. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1987.

Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Macbeth, Othello.  State Street Press. Ann Arbor, Michigan. 2001.