1
Clear cloud, far sky. noon.
In the Three Rivers Library in Connecticut, teachers, students and staff were all immersed in a harmonious atmosphere, but a series of mantra-like whispers gradually sounded.
A man, in his thirties and forties, named Thomas Birds, no one could stop him from chanting devoutly.
"Forgive our sins!"
"Save us from sin!"
"If your right eye stumbles you, gouge it out!"
"If your right hand stumbles you, cut it off!"
A sharp dagger suddenly rose from his left hand, and his eyes were already aimed at his right hand.
"I'd rather lose one of my bodies than teach my whole body to fall into hell!"
The curved-blade dagger swung down, making a sound of cutting flesh to the bone.
He is performing a sacrifice.
why?
The man who cut off his right hand, Thomas, is just a mental patient on the surface. He has a brother named Dominic. The whole drama revolves around the brothers' experiences from childhood to adulthood, but it would be a pity if you think this is just a TV series that exaggerates the brotherhood of suffering.
The personal and family histories of the two brothers reflect the past and present of America.
2
Dominic was called to the hospital to sign to allow the doctor to carry out the surgery. Thomas strongly resisted, firmly claiming that this was a religious act, and that this was a sacrifice ceremony with himself as a sacrifice. Thomas issued a deep criticism of the US government during the Gulf War, and declared that he was atoning for the United States.
Seeing Thomas struggling so stubbornly, Dominic hung on the pen for a long time, but he didn't sign his name after all. What he thought was: for the first time in twenty years, he could be the master for himself.
Born out of luck and miracles, Dominic and Thomas were identical twins who were born on the New Year's Day and made the front page of the local newspaper on the day they were born. Unfortunately, since then, luck and miracles have been completely insulated from them. Their lives gradually and orderly slide into the abyss and become a tragedy.
They landed only six minutes apart, but it was those six minutes that made them both born a year apart. This short six minutes seems to have changed more things, and even led to their completely different lives. Thomas showed intellectual and psychological disabilities from an early age, partly due to the abuse of his stepfather and partly due to the unfortunate seeds of something his mother said to him. In a more mysterious sense, it's more of a curse. In the picture below, we see the stepfather pick up his right hand, which was propped on the table while he was eating, and slam it on the table. This was the hand he later suffered from convulsions, and it was the hand he cut off desperately when he sacrificed.
It wasn't just Thomas who was cursed, but Dominic, and even the entire family. Since childhood, Dominic's greatest wish was to get rid of Thomas. Thomas was like an anchor that kept him sinking, dragging down his life for 33 years. Without Thomas' bond, Dominic would be a great teacher rather than a plasterer. He will also have a happy family without parting ways with his beloved ex-wife Desha.
It seems that Thomas cursed Dominic. Until that day, Thomas opened the thick memoirs left by his grandfather.
3
Dominic shares the same name with his maternal grandfather, who was Italian, and coincidentally also had a brother. My grandfather, an immigrant who set foot on the New World, succeeded in changing his miserable fate, taking root in this continent and becoming a landowner who settled in Three Rivers, Connecticut.
But my grandfather's road to success was dirty and bloody. First, he invaded the territory of the Native Americans and killed all the rabbits on the land (the rabbits symbolized the natives). Then, he accidentally killed his own brother. Then he brings endless nightmares to the two wives he bought with money.
The curse has come. His wife died in childbirth after giving birth to a baby girl. The grandfather's family has since been cut off. When he hugged the baby girl from the pool of blood and walked out of the door in grief, a rabbit emerged from the grass, the rabbit that should have been exterminated by him, like a rabbit like an avenger.
The curse doesn't seem to stop when the grandfather dies. In the same year that my grandfather died, his only daughter conceived and gave birth to identical twins, Thomas and Dominic. The shadow of their grandfather's fate hangs over them. First, Dominic got the same name as his maternal grandfather. Second, like his grandfather, Dominic had a brother who kept dragging him down. Moreover, Dominic had no intention of killing an Indian girl when he was a child. In return, his newborn baby girl died in the cradle.
Dominic seems to be repeating the sinful path of his grandfather, and he can't rely on the curse that the family continues. And Thomas babbled all day long, thinking that everything was an attack on himself by the enemy, and his real identity was St. Peter (one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, who was nailed to the cross and died upside down), following the teachings of Jesus Christ , atonement for America.
4
Looking at it this way, this is a story of strange power and chaos, but its meaning naturally means something else. Contrasting the fates of the two generations, we see another story, one with a more profound meaning. To find out, we contrasted Dominica's family history with that of the United States.
Dominica's maternal grandfather was an Italian immigrant, and the first Western white person to discover the New World was Italian Columbus, another identity of which was the first-generation colonizer of the New World. Like Columbus, my grandfather was not only a brave pioneer, but also an invader who brought disaster to the aborigines and the original ecology. The beginning of American history stems from colonialism, the original sin that cannot be washed away on the Stars and Stripes.
Moreover, sin is not only the beginning of history, sin becomes a tradition and continues. We see in Dominic's experience a certain inheritance of the sinful blood of his grandfather. For the United States, indigenous colonialism has transformed into an expansive new type of colonialism, which we generally call hegemonism. The Gulf War that is constantly mentioned in the play is the embodiment of this nature. We can see that in many TV and radio clips about the Gulf War, Americans are shouting sticks and fists, and only Thomas is firmly opposed to this ideology. There is a certain isomorphism between family behavior and state behavior in the play, and the hegemony of the United States in the international community is just like an extension of patriarchy in the family. Whether it is the natives facing the colonizers, or the weak people facing the strong American soldiers, or Thomas facing the coercion of his stepfather, to a certain extent, they are all victims of the same kind of evil . In the analogy between family history and American history, we can smell the fact that evil is perpetuating and pervasive.
Thomas is a psychopath, but in the metaphorical structure he is an atonement, so he cuts off his own hand as a sacrifice. So, when he was locked up at the judicial hospital, he hoped that Dominic would give him some water from the waterfall to wash himself. It was an angry and turbulent waterfall in the town, where the Indian girl framed by Dominica committed suicide. This is a waterfall that has washed away centuries of sin.
Eventually, Thomas himself walked into the waterfall and died in it. Here, the meaning of redemption is very strong.
5
The sin is surging, will it flow endlessly? Facing the tradition and continuation of sin, can we jump out of this fateful cycle? This is a proposition belonging to a family, but also a proposition belonging to a country.
The answer is given in the play, and the answer lies in the secret of the biological father. At the end of the story, Dominic finally learns that his biological father is actually a Native American, Henry Drinkwater. The surname, Drinkin Cowart, means that Dominic and another pair of twins in his childhood class are actually cousins with the same surname. The girl who committed suicide after being framed by Dominic was his cousin or cousin.
The answer has long been written, Dominic's own blood has long been shed by the blood of the Indians, and his life and the prosperity of his family are bestowed by this foreign land.
Broaden your vision to the world and the entire history of mankind, and the answer has already been written. Regardless of race, nationality, region, at a certain moment, your blood is already flowing in my blood, and you and I are already connected by blood.
In the current world, the conflict of civilizations, the discord between systems, the antagonism of races, and the repulsion of religions still cannot see the end of the dissolution, and the globalization momentum of mutual benefit and win-win is entering a period of ebb.
However, the answer is really the big words "a community with a shared future for mankind". These big characters embody a sense of a big community. If the end comes, only the power gathered by the consciousness of the great community can build a new Noah's Ark. This sense of community is the ultimate way to resolve global conflicts and rifts. But this sense of a big community also depends on the co-construction of all mankind.
(Public number: Duan Xuesheng)
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