An Artist's Journey Through Sin: Learning to Forgive Oneself

Something interesting that I noticed while reading Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was how huge of a role confession played in the book. Stephen must confess his sins to the priest and is given a penance to help redeem himself. Despite this, he constantly struggles with finding it within himself to forgive his own actions. This is an interesting twist on my Big Question. Stephen denies his senses as a means of his own personal penance (Chapter 4), constantly telling himself that he is horrible and always reflecting back to the sermon on hell (Chapter 3). He considers becoming a priest himself, but he cannot imagine having to listen to other people confess their own sins to him.

It isn't until he truly finds himself that he can forgive himself for his actions. Once he realizes how much his experiences shape him and his art, he realizes that what he did may have been wrong, but it was actually the right thing for him to do. He is able to forgive himself for his actions and fully understand how he needs experiences to write, to become a poet. This whole thing contributes to his journey as an artist, and in turn, his heroic journey.

Joyce's novel has added an interesting new facet to my Big Question. I think it is interesting how Stephen does not long for the forgiveness of others, but rather forgiveness from himself. I think forgiving oneself is the hardest because you know every aspect and it is an interal battle that you experience. Stephen becomes a stronger man and artist for enduring it.

Forgiveness During the Holocaust: A Perspective from The Book Thief

In Markus Zusak's novel The Book Thief, Liesel must learn to forgive her own people for following Hitler's ideology and persecuting the Jews. She befriends Max, a young Jewish man who her foster parents are hiding in their basement. The two develop an unlikely friendship, and through his stories about his life and how he feels about being persecuted, Liesel must come to terms with the fact that she is not like the other German people who openly hate and harm the Jews. She also must learn to forgive them for burning what she finds to be the most prized objects--books.

For much of the novel, Liesel feels resentment towards many of the people she encounters--her mother for abandoning her, her neighbor for how she treats her foster family, even her own people. But as she grows up and learns more an more about each person and why they are they way they are, she slowly begins to forgive each one of them. Through an understanding she develops a respect for decisions that she never dreamt of having before. Her interactions with Max teach her that life is far too short and fragile to waste on holding grudges or hating your fellow man.

Max also struggles with forgiveness. He writes stories like "The Standover Man" in an effort to work through his own hatred for Hitler and how people were blindly following him and his word. Liesel helps him in the same way he helps her. After returning from the concentration camp, he knows he cannot hate all Germans, because he knows that they were manipulated and fed propaganda. He had encountered enough Germans who disagreed with Hitler that he knew he could not despise them all. The easiest thing for him to do is to forgive them for what they had unknowingly done.