Post 24: Playing the Devil's Advocate, "The Revelations"

Student elections were today. Well, the preliminaries at least. Although I didn't have to run, two good friends of mine "lost". It made me remember what they had to go through, and it made it so that all of that trouble they went through didn't matter at all. I'd have to say that the most daunting thing to do is to get up in front of that podium, in front of 450 or so people. I just realized today that no matter what you say up there: whether you say you think you're the best choice, or whether you say you want to represent the class, it could all come off as arrogant. If you say why you're the best choice, it's obvious why it might seem arrogant, and if you say you want to represent the class, it could make it seem like you think you have good judgment: good enough to govern and represent what 420 students want. This concept got me to thinking about Nathan: Personally, I think Nathan is a bit arrogant; he thinks that he can "save" these "savage" people, even to the extent of thinking it is his obligation to help the "less fortunate". All of this seems very condescending to me. However, I'm going to try play the devil's advocate in this post.

We never hear Nathan's voice in the book. This obviously skews our image of him in a negative way. I think that Nathan is arrogant, and I'm pretty sure the rest of his family does as well. However, similar to my theory about campaign speeches, who is really being arrogant here? When we, the readers, and the rest of his family judge Nathan, isn't this saying that we think we do not do these things (after all, we ARE critiquing them). I'm sure that I have made some of the mistakes which Nathan has, and it's easy to criticize others, and if anyone criticized me of being arrogant (which as I stated above, I'm kind of acting that way anyway), I would just agree what they said without truly taking it into account, and without trying to improve my behavior. Although I try my best not to be, I'm sure lots of people think I'm very arrogant.

I guess what I've learned from this post is that it's always easier to critique others, where we ourselves often make the same mistakes. We should always keep that in mind before talking negatively about other's actions, and I'll try to keep it in mind while reading "The Poisonwood Bible".