Good and Evil in Pat Barker's "Border Crossing"
...l, he goes to Tom for counselling, to fully understand what happened 13 years ago. One might see this as Evil seeking redemption, but in this case, the rabbit hole goes far deeper than it seems and there is more to Danny than meets the eye. Let us consider Tom’s visit to Long Garth, where Danny had studied years ago, in chapter 13. After discussing Danny’s experience at the facility with Mr Greene, the Headmaster, Tom proceeds to talk with his wife. Mrs Greene is probably the character who better understood Danny, since to her he appeared to be a “bottomless pit”, filled by those who tried to help him. She also describes Danny’s “unique” character and his “gift” of manipulating people. You see, every single person that got involved with Danny, would usually get over-involved, because he would confide in them, tell them things he told no one else, giving them the sense of having “broken through”, the satisfaction of truly having helped someone. But this was but a drop in a well. Before going further on, I believe it would be advisable to define Good and Evil. Good is normally defined by actions performed selflessly, to promote the moral values upheld by society. Evil, on the other hand is shown as everything that brakes free from these shackles, going against all moral standards. Personally, I consider Evil to be a much more subtle concept than the latter. To me, an Evil person is someone who makes a normal person do his or her evil acts for him/him, or someone who can grant your deepest desire at the cost of your soul. When dealing with this topic, one must always mention the tale of Faust, a man who makes a deal with the Devil which will grant him his every wish, at the “mere” cost of his soul. There is an obvious similarity between this tale and Danny’s relationship with those around him: by giving these people the sense of having “made progress” with him, Danny was able to go around the rules, to slightly bend them to his benefit. But here is where we see the interesting thing about Danny, as Mrs Greene describes to Tom: “And you see the really devilish thing? Danny wasn’t breaking the rules. They were.” This is one of the borders that are crossed many times in the book. By granting these people their greatest desire, that of helping a person in need, Danny would take something from them as well, a piece of their soul as it were. This sort of action is described as “devilish” and, consequently, evil. But, as I wrote before, both Good and Evil are based on a society’s moral and ethical standards and, therefore, quite relative. In chapter 20, Danny asks Tom if he believes in Evil, to which Tom replies: “(...)as a word to describe certain types of behaviour, I’ve no problems with it. It’s just the word we’ve agreed to use to describe certain types of action.” The “we” Tom refers to is society. It is society that deems what is “good” and what is “evil”. As such, as Tom refers, killing Lizzie was an evil thing to do, which doesn’t necessarily mean that Danny IS or WAS evil. In my honest opinion I agree with Tom becaus...