The Nature of Evil (Inspired by Heathcliff)

Last night I was with a friend on the third floor of Bobet rummaging through books piled outside Dr. Cotton's office, books which he was essentially giving away to the Loyola community. Professor Biguenet passed us by in the hallway and I decided, on a whim, to ask him whether or not he thought Heathcliff a character of pure evil. He said no and launched into a discussion on the nature of evil. This is a huge question for me and one with very real applications to a Romanticism class, especially so far as the Byronic hero is concerned. Is that hero evil? Are Manfred and Heathcliff evil people. Is misanthropy equivalent to evil? Does Frankenstein's desire to transcend humanity through knowledge and creation evil, and does the monster of Victor do more evil?

What is evil exactly? Biguenet told me about an Atlantic Monthly article written a few months after 9/11 where the author debated where or not the attacks were acts of pure evil. The religious fanatics which perpetrated them thought they were doing God's work on earth, which is a dangerous idea, but not a necessarily evil one. But the author focused on a tape which fell into U.S. hands of Osama Bin Ladin laughing at the images of people jumping out of the 1ooth floor of the burning buildings to their deaths. This aesthetic appreciation of murder and suffering is what constitutes evil, the author concluded. All other definitions of evil can simply be explained by people acting of self interest, fixating on their own lives above the good and rights of others.

Bringing this back to Romanticism, Heathcliff certainly relishes in the misery he brings. There is no repentance on his part and, unlike Victor's monster, the sufferings of Hindley, Hareton, Edgar, Isabella and the others are "music to his ears". But does this make him evil. I cannot answer such a question. I can only pose it.