Various Faces of Vigilantism

by Scott Chastain

                Vigilante justice is a common theme in American literature.  We shall explore three short stories that utilize this theme; Dubus’ “Killings,” Faulkner’s “Barn Burning,” and Boyle’s “Carnal Knowledge.”  More specifically we will analyze the characters’ psychology leading up to their actions, how they feel when they commit their crimes, how the aftermath of their actions affects them, and how each of these character’s states contrast and compare with one another.

                The first of the three short stories we will explore is Andre Dubus’ “Killings.”  This story is most of what you would expect from the vigilante theme, and is the clearest example of an “eye for an eye” amongst our selections.  Our protagonist, “Matt Fowler” has just buried his murdered son, Frank.  Fowler is motivated by three sources: peer-pressure, duty to family, and his own pain.

                Willis Trottier, a close friend of Fowler, provides updates on the actions of Strout (the object of revenge).  He also provides encouragement for the dire action Fowler will eventually take.  “I hate him, Fowler.  My boys went to school with him.  He was the same then.  Know what he’ll do?  Five at the most” (Dubus 85).  Trottier thus uses peer-pressure to help congeal Fowler’s decision to carry out the plan.

                Fowler’s wife, Ruth, is also a compelling factor.  While it isn’t anything Ruth is doing actively, like Trottier, to egg Fowler on, it is more Fowler’s perception of his wife’s feelings.  “I don’t see him.  I’m at the store all the time.  Ruth sees him.  She sees him too much.  She was at Sunnyhurst today getting cigarettes and aspirin, and there he was.  She can’t even go out for cigarettes and aspirin.  It’s killing her” (84).  This clearly shows that Fowler feels Ruth is deeply distressed by running into Strout, but also subtly implies Ruth’s actual state.  Cigarettes and aspirin, the items Ruth was purchasing, are associated with relief from pain and stress.

                These motivational factors encourage Fowler to carry out the act.  The act itself is a masterpiece of deception, for both Strout and the reader.  Dubus excellently creates such tension for the reader that as you read along and hear Fowler comfort Strout, assuring him that he isn’t going to be killed, you feel relieved.  You want to believe Fowler as much as Strout does!

                Fowler, upon carrying out his plan, is seriously conflicted.  Repeatedly we notice that he avoids the “humanity” of Strout.  “When Strout looked over his shoulder to back the car, Matt aimed at his temple and did not look at his eyes” (89).   When he enters Strout’s apartment it is clear he does not find what he expects, but rather a neatly kept human home.  “He did not want to look at any more…” (92).  Matt also feels guilt about  Ruth, and her knowledge of his deadly plot.  He reassures himself repeatedly that this is for her. “…thinking of him walking the streets… would be enough to slowly rot the rest of his days.  And Ruth’s.  Again he is certain that she knew, and she was waiting for him” (93).  We also catch a glimpse of Frank’s personal anguish with the use of the word “rot.”

                It seems rather intuitive you would feel satisfaction in ridding the world of your child’s killer, yet it seems to be more of a feeling of estrangement, isolation, for Fowler.  “The gun kicked in Matt’s hand, and the explosion of the shot surrounded him, isolated him in a nimbus of sound that cut him off from all his time, all his history, isolated him standing absolutely still on the dirt road…” (94).  This alienation of Fowler from his life, through his wife, thickens.  “She was holding him, wanting him, and he wished he could make love with her, but he could not. … his cheek touching her breast, he shuddered with a sob that he kept silent in his heart” (96).

                William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning,” is more atypical of what we might come to expect from a vigilante story.  Abner Scopes, however, is very much that.  Scopes, the father of the protagonist, doesn’t seek his revenge in blood, but in fire.  The question really is in his motive.  How is Scopes so wronged that justifies the burning of another man’s barn?

                As the story opens we discover that Scopes had let his pig run loose into his neighbor’s corn.  His neighbor had provided him with materials for a fence, which never got built.  The neighbor held the pig hostage for a dollar.  It seems a bit excessive to vandalize an entire barn for the cost of a dollar, especially when that could have been avoided altogether by building a fence.

                The second act (which we never discover the success or failure of) was prompted by the price of a rug.  Scopes had smeared, rather deliberately, horse manure onto an expensive rug belonging to his wealthy employer, Major de Spain.  “Then with the same deliberation he turned; the boy watched him pivot on the good leg and saw the stiff foot drag round the arc of the turning, leaving a final long and fading smear” (Faulkner 378).  When the major demands that Scopes clean the soiled carpet, Scopes utterly destroys the rug by cleaning it with a lye and sharp “fragment of field stone.”  These leaves the import looking as if it had been run over by a “Lilliputian mowing machine” (379).  It isn’t long before Scopes loses again in court, and is forced to pay the amount of ten bushels of corn for the damages. 

                It seems that Scopes has begged the punishments he receives, so that he might justify burning the property of his wealthy neighbor and employer.  He could have prevented the pig ransom and certainly did not have to smear the rug or destroy it while cleaning it.  These acts are deliberate, or at least seem to be.   This indicates another possible reason for Scopes to seek his vengeance.   It seems Scopes is reacting to a grave imbalance in American society between the wealthy and the lower class.  The browbeating he takes in court further emphasizes this.  Justice is frequently bought, and in that society, rebellions are bound to exist.  Scopes may just as well be a reaction as an instigator.

                In any event, the results of his acts are not without their share of negative reactions.  His family fears him, they do not love him.  He is very clearly an unhappy man entirely, and never once in the story does he offer us any warmth or example of his love.  Faulkner describes him likened to a corpse suffering rigor mortis.  “His father turned, and he followed the stiff black coat, the wiry figure walking a little stiffly from where a Confederate provost’s man’s musket ball had taken him in the heel on a stolen horse thirty years ago… He just stood stiff in the center of the rug, in his hat, the shaggy iron-gray brows twitching slightly above the pebble-colored eyes as he appeared…” (374-378.  Italics mine).  This detachment grows through the youngest son, Sarty, who is our actual protagonist.  Sarty objects to his father’s vigilante nature to the point that the second barn burning is foiled by his report to the major.  Scopes and his eldest son are shot at in the attempt, and while we never discover the outcome of those shots, we can assume that they are fatal.  In either case, this alienation between Scopes and Sarty grows throughout the story, and after the second attempt at barn burning, Sarty flees and strikes off on his own.  If Scopes survives the shooting, he will never see Sarty again!  “He went on down the hill, toward the dark woods within which the liquid silver voices of the birds called unceasing - the rapid and urgent beating of the urgent and quiring heart of the late spring night.  He did not look back” (385).

                The final short story in our triad is T. Coraghessan Boyle’s “Carnal Knowledge.”  Upon once reading, the vigilante aspect may not be as easy to spot due to the unconventional motive and execution.  Jim has just turned thirty, and is quite lonely.  As he himself notes he has taken the day off to “feel sorry” for himself (Boyle 252).  Alena Jorgensen takes him utterly by surprise.

                Alena does not like meat.  In fact she detests it, and any other animal related products.  We are guided through a series of smaller vandalistic examples of animal rights vigilantism which she encourages Jim to participate in.  Jim does.  He cancels his known life and becomes a crusader  to save the animals.  It is more likely he is motivated by sex, “She…sent up a tremor I could feel all the way down in the deepest nodes of my reproductive tract” (256).  However he manages to rationalize himself to mirror her zeal and feel guilt when he craves meat (258).  He is now an animal-rights activist. This desire for Alena and the guilt she instills within him will act as motivation for his vigilante crime.

                The turkey liberation introduces a courtship competitor, Rolfe, who is a friend of Alena’s.  Rolfe gives Jim a new motivation to act in saving the poor Thanksgiving Toms.  Up to this point, we have the guilt factor  that “brought a lump” to his throat (260), and his lust for Alena.  “I thought about meat and jail and the heroic proportions to which I was about to swell in Alena’s eyes and what I intended to do to her when we finally got to bed” (260).  His jealousy of Rolfe fixes the deal though, “She was gazing on Rolfe as if he’d just dropped down from heaven.  I felt something heavy in my stomach” (260).

                The liberation goes horribly.  The turkeys are not thankful for their liberation as it takes some yelling from Jim (mostly the only one working and taking the lumps, as in the lesser acts of vandalism and verbal assaults).  He is knocked about and trampled in the release.  I do consider this a vigilante act because it is an attempt to bring “justice” to the turkeys outside of the justice system.

                When they do manage to regroup, Alena announces to Jim that she and Rolfe are going to Yellowstone Park to save a doomed grizzly bear (264).  Jim finds himself on the outside, estranged, after all he has done.  Of course she asks if he will assist her further by watering her houseplants, but Jim feels “hollow inside” (264).  He feels very guilty for his crime.  When he sees police lights up ahead he thinks he is caught, “I was on the very edge of panicking…” (264).  This terrible feeling is augmented by the ironic destruction of his liberated turkeys on the highway.  He realizes how foolish his vigilantism has been, “I thought of Alena and felt sick” (265).  He finally resigns himself to finding a restaurant to eat some meat.

                We have shown three very distinct motives in our characters.  The need for revenge in Matt Fowler, the need for equality in Abner Scopes, and the need for sex in Jim.  These three different motivations lead us down very different paths of action.  The killing of Strout, the burning of barns, and the liberation of turkeys: murder, vandalism, and sabotage. 

                We  have also seen a sharp contrast in their moods.  In Fowler, we find a very matter-of-fact description of the killing.  “The second shot and the burial seemed to be  happening to someone else, someone he was watching” (Dubus 94).  In Scopes we don’t have a clear picture of his mood at either burning.  Just before he leaves to burn De Spain’s barn, however, we find a dark, cold Scopes.  The way he methodically controls Sarty during the boy’s protest demonstrates this.  He never gets violently angry, even when contemplating the need to tie up his youngest son, showing him to be sinister (Faulkner 383).  Jim’s mood is a bit different.  The description of his yelling, bravely, to get the turkeys running, his ordeal in the turkey droppings as they use him for a “turkey expressway” (Boyle 262) is quite comical, and Jim‘s mood goes from unsure, to courageous, and finally to a panicky run.

                There are many similarities however.  In “Killings” and “Carnal Knowledge” we find both peer pressure and duty.  Fowler feels a duty to his wife and family, and pressure from Trottier.  Jim feels both peer pressure from Alena and Rolfe, and a duty to follow through for Alena.  In all three stories we discover that during the actual acts we have trickery devices being employed.  Fowler deceives Strout by convincing him that he is being sent away, and won’t be harmed.  Scopes uses a passive deception in not penning the pig and smearing the rug.  Jim is both a victim of Alena’s trickery, and a participant in the distraction of an explosion to get the birds free (261-262).

                In all three stories the outcome is always negative.  Empty or hollow feelings arise in “Killings” and “Carnal Knowledge,” and of course the probable death of  Scopes and his eldest son in “Barn Burning.”  All three acts are violent, as we have shown.  The most important similarity, and perhaps the moral lesson each writer was hinting at, is the estrangement.  Fowler is estranged from his wife after killing Strout.  Scopes is estranged from his youngest son, Sarty, as a result of his attacks.  Jim is estranged from Alena at the conclusion of his story.  “Seeking your own brand of justice is therefore lonely business,” would be the apparent point being crafted.

                All three stories present us with different forms of vigilantism, and different motives for carrying out those acts.  All three stories present us with a similar outcome, estrangement and isolation.  We are left certainly not admiring any of these characters, even if we may sympathize with one or more of them.  If these stories are a true meter of reality, the only way to get “even” is to lower yourself to the level of the object of your intentions.  If you seek your own justice you must become what you despise in isolation!