LITERATURE IV: SUPERIORITY COMPLEX

Don’t mind these class. I know it’s been a while, but these scars represent something. Most people see a scar as ugly, but a scar tells a story of a struggle. I have come to know what struggle truly means these past couple of months and believe me when I tell you that each one of these scars was earned in blood, sweat and tears. But while the scars will fade in time, the story behind them and the struggles I overcame will never leave me, and they will drive me on, for the right reasons.

There are people in this world who have everything handed to them on a platter, ungrateful for what they have been born into. These people aren’t driven for the right reasons, but only by selfishness. Some of them can show empathy to those less fortunate than themselves, but there is a dangerous sub-breed of them who either can’t or don’t want to find it within themselves to feel something other than disgust for somebody who is different to them.

These people have never struggled like us, because we live in the real world, with real problems. I was thinking about how we could talk about this and it reminded me of a poem I once read when I was younger. I couldn’t comprehend it at first but as I grew so did my understanding. It’s called ‘Evasions’ by Bernard Spencer.

How many times have you smiled a reckoning smile
Either when there was some question of money
Or to humour one of the dead who live around?
– Oh, but that’s been going on since the world began

Class, isn’t it obvious what this verse is asking? The antagonist smiles whenever money is brought up in conversation, a knowledgeable smirk tainted with delusions of grandeur and betraying his lack of compassion for other human beings. And then, to humour the dead who live around, well that can only relate to one thing – Happy.

You see, it is Edgar Nevermore who mirrors our antagonist here, a rich man who uses his money as a distancing mechanism, and plays with the lives of others, such as poor Happy. Happy, who, whilst under the spell of this wealthy warden, is no longer living, but dead to the real world – completely unaware of his predicament.

And later, Spencer asks:

How many times smelling the smell of poverty
Have you tried and turned for good to your cornfield and garden
(And cornfield and garden grew foul pods and rotted)?
– Oh but that’s been going on since the world began.

Nevermore has tried to live honestly, when sensing he may join us lowly peasants earning a modest living. But his honest living – his cornfield and garden – grew rotten, and he was unable to stick at it. So he fell back into his dirty tricks, and brainwashed Happy. You see class, men like Nevermore don’t embrace change. And that is why I have a lesson to teach him. I’ll make him write his lines, clear as day: “I AM NO BETTER THAN ANY OTHER MAN”.