Wednesday, May 12, 2010

rage

A week ago two men were beheaded in the neighboring community of Baltizar. The gruesome murders and the bewildering actions of the man who killed two of his companions has left the parish of St. Andrews and Grenada on a whole shaking our heads in disbelief. I find myself drawn to this terrible story with incessant thoughts of how and why this could happen. I believe the close proximity of the murders ( just around the corner from the village); the accused and two dead men familiar faces in the larger community of Grenville; and knowing the three men’s neighbors, cousins, friends and acquaintances has me turning over the layers of a horrific story that cannot be understood in any logical form.

If I had received this news from another part of the world, or another Caribbean island, or even another part of Grenada I would have shook my head in disbelief and made a quick judgment; the man must be crazy, insane, mad. For a few days my mind believed these judgmental thoughts; how else does one explain the beheading of two companions, putting the heads in a bucket, carrying them to the Grenville police station and dumping the heads onto the counter of the station. Insanity. Crazy. Madness.

After witnessing the chaos in Grenville during the first preliminary hearings; watching the man who beheaded his two companions run up the court house before an angry mob; seeing his lowered face, his neatly pressed white bleached shirt and a face which I recognized immediately from the many familiar faces in Grenville; I no longer held on to the view that this man is mentally deranged. Perhaps for those hours or minutes it took him to do what he did his anger transformed him into a rage of unimaginable consequences which led to psychotic actions. But a history of mental illness, so far, has not been part of this story. This leads to my incessant thoughts of why people do what they do and what causes some to enter unimaginable acts of rage.

Witnessing some of the kids here in the village being raised by a constant diet of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse I can understand a little more clearly why many of the boys here in the village grow up unable to control their anger and lash out with violent words, or sharp edges of broken bottles, or cutlasses that turn from a gardening tool to a deadly weapon. It is common to hear boys and men throw out violent words such as, “I chopping you!” I can’t help wonder how hearing and saying these words over and over may create a worn out groove in the crevices of one’s mind and then maybe one day the cutlass is there and the anger has escalated to a place it has never gone before and suddenly the cutlass is swung, a hand is dangling or a head severed. Of course last week’s case is different as it all seemed so planned and contrived and thus the questions go around and around.

What made this man chop two of his companions heads off after an afternoon of sharing drink and food and helping with the evening garden chores? What made this man move into the evil acts his mind must have been immersed in for awhile? What made him kill and remove the heads of his companions, put them in a bucket, get into the van of the man he just beheaded, travel to the police station with two heads, and eventually dump the two heads onto the counter of the Grenville police station? Was this man haunted by his need to be seen, heard, taken seriously? Was he silently screaming “No more will I be silenced. No more will I be shamed, laughed at, treated like a ‘stupidy’. No more will I be invisible, without a voice, kicked aside!’ And why are many of us able to control such rage and others not? Rumors fly about like evening fruit bats unable to recognize their surroundings until the last light of day is smothered. And even in the smothering of light no rumor seems to answer any of the above questions.

I believe we are all born with basic goodness and what happens after we are born molds us into the beings we evolve into. What is this fine balance between those who find themselves in prison for atrocious acts against humanity and those who find themselves working for the betterment of humanity? Such complicated questions, such hard places to go and reflect on. However, there we must go in order to wake up to what we all have within ourselves, great bounds of kindness but also great bounds of potential violence.

1 comment:

  1. I don't know if we are all born with basic goodness. One or two people I have known that were very disturbed, were so from babyhood onwards. I do believe though that mankind is basically good. Maybe we are all basically capable of any act of evil, which many say is so, but are we know also capable of large acts of courage and selflessness? My the victims' families and the murderer's family seek peace and find forgiveness for this man's terrible act. I don't know what went on in his mind, but maybe it is best not even to try and know.

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