Men of violence or grace?
When does self-sacrifice cross into the hinterlands of self-sabotage?
Self-sacrifice:
NOUN:
The giving up of one's own interests or wishes in order to help others or advance a cause.
Self-sabotage:
NOUN:
The sabotaging, whether consciously or subconsciously, of oneself, one's own interests, plans etc.
VERB:
(transitive) To sabotage oneself or one's own plans.
Playwright August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Fences, centers on Troy Maxon, a complex man with a complicated past, including a prison sentence, witnessing his father rape a young girl, and a successful but stifled (racial segregation of the Majors) baseball career. When the play begins, he is a married sanitation worker living with his teenage son in the Hill District of Pittsburg in the late 1950s, trying to do the right thing day-in-and-day-out.
Though flawed in many ways (we all are), Troy, for the most part, is a good man and father, but at times, he’s exceptionally cruel and cold to his two sons, Lyons (a struggling musician in his 30s and from a past relationship) and his teenage boy, Cory, a star football player.
Because of his troubled past and pathological relationship with his father, Troy believes the "devil" is inside him, and he does not want to pass the beast on to his sons. He knows no other way to achieve this except by destruction and gradually drives a brutal wedge between himself and his boys. As the play progresses, he does all he can to kill his relationship with his sons, so they reject him and save themselves. Wilson's work is subtly heartbreaking and heroic and puts Troy in an early grave.
The end is ambiguous: Lyons ends up in jail, and Cory joins the USMC and might be off to Vietnam.
On June 11, 1963, a sixty-six-year-old Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire on the streets of Saigon. Malcolm Browne, an AP photographer, captured the self-immolation on film. His photograph won the award for World Press Photo of the Year. The image is among the most iconic of the Vietnam War.
To understand Quang Duc’s story, it is vital to know the story of the U.S.-backed government in South Vietnam, which suppressed opposition to its leaders and favored insiders, which alienated many citizens. By May of 1963, residents of Hue, the imperial capital of old Vietnam, organized a rally to protest a ban on flying the Buddhist flag. Police fired on the crowd, killing nine and wounding fourteen.
Hunger strikes and more protests followed. Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation was one such protest.
JFK said of Browne’s photo, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.”
The backlash of the "Buddhist Crisis" twisted Kennedy's view of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem's policies, so much so that he looked away as a cadre of generals overthrew his government and executed Diem.
Three weeks later, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Approximately 1.4 million civilian casualties (1962-1975) in South Vietnam were attributed directly to the war, including 415,000 deaths.
A subdued, uninterrupted 17-minute shot of two actors sharing a cigarette and going deep into the self-sabotage/self-destruction dilemma is the centerpiece of English director Steve McQueen's bleak masterpiece, Hunger (2008).
The film observes Bobby Sands (Micheal Fassbender), an IRA Volunteer and a key figure in the fight against the British presence in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and early 1980s. Sand's interlocutor is a moderate Belfast priest, Father Dom Moran (Liam Cunningham). The men prattle on with some small talk, then get down to the business at hand: Is it right for Sands and nine prisoners to starve themselves to death in order to protest the British government's oppressive policies and, ultimately, fight for a united Ireland?
Are their actions a sin if the ultimate outcome is death?
Father Moran contends that Sands isn't protesting; he's engaging in suicide.
DOM: Well, if not just for the suicide, then [God] would have to punish you for the stupidity.
BOBBY: Ay, and you for your arrogance. Cos’ my life is a real life, not some theological exercise, some religious trip that’s got fuck all to do with living. Jesus Christ had a backbone. The same as disciples, every disciple since. You’re just jumping in and out of the rhetoric, and deadend semantics. You need the revolutionary, you need the cultural political soldiers to give life a pulse, to give life a direction
Sands and nine others (Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patsy O'Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee, and Michael Devine) accomplished what they set out to do; die for Ireland.
Ireland remains divided.
Barricades surrounded these men and stymied their existence and experiences. In order to not be prisoners and to free those around them, they resorted to particular forms of violence. But was anything really accomplished?
I admire and relate to the three men. What they did seems right. But were these acts self-sabotage or self-sacrifice? Only themselves and God will ever know because grace is rare, lonely, personal, and impossible to document.
Violence or grace? They had balls.