He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from it.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the disproportion between punishment and crime, suggesting that humanity often deals with more suffering than wrongdoing.
Cormac McCarthy's quote delves into the philosophical contemplation of justice and morality. It suggests that, throughout history, the imbalance between the severity of punishments and the nature of crimes may lead one to consider the idea that there has been an excess of suffering compared to the actual offenses committed. Despite acknowledging this imbalance, the speaker finds little solace in this thought, highlighting a deep sense of existential contemplation regarding human experiences of guilt, suffering, and the nature of justice.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the justice system and its effectiveness.
Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?
Huts they made then, and fire, and skins for clothing, And a woman yielded to one man in wedlock... ... Common, to see the offspring they had made; The human race began to mellow then. Because of fire their shivering forms no longer Could bear the cold beneath the covering sky.
Winds flap the sail, tortoise and snake are silent, a great plan looms. A bridge will fly over this moat dug by heaven and be a road from north to south. We will make a stone wall against the upper river to the west and hold back steamy clouds and rain of Wu peaks. Over tall chasms will be a calm lake, and if the goddess of these mountains is not dead she will marvel at the changed world.
Let man be true and every god a liar.
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.
Reputation is favorable notoriety as distinguished from fame, which is permanent approval of great deeds and noble thoughts by the best intelligence of mankind.
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