Word: martyrizing
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...many American radicals, white and black alike, the truth about what happened at San Quentin does not matter; they are convinced beyond doubt that George Jackson was a political martyr. It is sad that many of those who mourn Jackson are oblivious to the fact that three guards and two other convicts died with him. It is equally disturbing that Angela Davis' defenders forget that, whatever her innocence or guilt in the episode, four people, including a judge, Jonathan Jackson and two convicts, died in the Marin County Courthouse gun battle. Surely white racists suspected of purchasing guns...
Some of the fascination for Jesus among the young may simply be belated hero worship of a fellow rebel, the first great martyr to the cause of peace and brotherhood. Not so, however, for the vast majority in the Jesus movement. If any one mark clearly identifies them it is their total belief in an awesome, supernatural Jesus Christ, not just a marvelous man who lived 2,000 years ago but a living God who is both Saviour and Judge, the ruler of their destinies. Their lives revolve around the necessity for an intense personal relationship with that Jesus...
...antidotes to despair. "How you cope is the important thing, not the events themselves," she says. Splendor aplenty had always accompanied her father's dockside determination, and Rose's fondness for French couture, parties and travel is also important: she sees herself as a Christian, not a martyr...
Beside this terrible banality, Keneally's suggestion that family is another name for incest seems positively matter-of-fact. Further Keneally theories: an exceptional child is doomed to play Joan of Arc-martyr-to parents, who compulsively burn as witch that truthful spirit in the child that sees the beast in its elders and, worse, announces it. "Parents, for all their preaching and threats, turn out to be the children," the remarkable Barbara observes. This freedom to speculate, Keneally may be saying, is the only freedom...
...does a martyr escape from family, from original sin, even from Australia? Like Joyce & Co., Keneally is better at seeing the trap than seeing a way out. "We're cemented, you, me, them," Barbara cries. In the end, Keneally looses a Jehovah-like flood on the outback and the Glovers, washing himself clean of his creation. But in the meantime, writing like an angel, he has forcefully raised an ancient question: What is the demon in man that so often makes him a monster to those condemned to love him-including himself...