Word: martyrdom
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What perhaps was most pathetic about the Morrison and LaPorte suicides was the futility of such attempts at martyrdom. Where dissent is harshly silenced, spectacular means of protest may be needed; within the ample means and methods of U.S. democracy, a human voice means more than a human torch. "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause," Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel once said, "while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly...
...both as a suicide and as a pacifist protest. Although the Friends profess deep reverence for human life, their doctrine includes no specific condemnation of suicide; most Quakers were content to let God judge Morrison's self-slaughter. And while they could quarrel with his grisly form of martyrdom, there was no disputing that the vast majority of Friends shared Morrison's misgiving about the Viet Nam war, or any other war. Along with the Brethren movement and the Mennonites, the Friends have been the most ardent spokesmen for the pacifist movement within Christianity, calling upon...
With Collins applying public pressure, Mrs. Hicks would become the beleagured, last-ditch defender of the "neighborhood school," hoping to gain control of the city's finances in order to save the little white children of South Boston. Another road to profitable martyrdom would be a losing fight to repeal the Imbalance Bill...
Saxon Rebel. Poets from Tennyson to T. S. Eliot have struggled with the problem of Becket. In Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot maintained that "Christian martyrdom is no accident" but an act prearranged either by God or the doomed man. France's Jean Anouilh built his play Becket more on the love-hate relationship of the king and archbishop, but also claimed that Becket was a Saxon rebel against England's Norman overlords. To Poet Christopher Fry, in Curtmantle, King Henry was the tragic hero and focus of the play; Becket vanishes from sight after his murder...
Intellectuals in the West made wide ly publicized protests, and eight months later Tarsis was released. He proceeded promptly to make the most of his martyrdom by writing a full report on his life in the political loony bin. Published last spring in Britain, Ward 7 was analyzed by the Western press with melancholy fascination as an up-to-date treatise on thought control in the Soviet Union (TIME, May 21). Published this week in the U.S., the book may surprise the reader who expects nothing more than a political document-it is also a work of art. Admittedly...