The conflict between Adam and Reiner is a fight over the kind of world they will live in. “Will it be a world ruled by freedom or one ruled security?”
If Adam is to have a better life at the end, he has to reject the world of security demanded by Reiner, and make a positive choice for freedom.
The seed of this decision is sowed in the stories inciting event.
Adam has to do something that, to quote John Truby, “causes the hero to come up with a goal and take action”. The difficulty I have is that Adam and Reiner are part of the same tribe, they’re policemen in a totalitarian state that has built its identity on attacking drug users. Adam at some level shares this totalitarians mindset, he couldn’t be a policeman if he didn’t.
So what would make him question the orthodoxy?
If part of the totalitarian mindset, that Adam is part of, is the authoritarian personality exemplified by Reiner, an individual willing to belittle himself so he can, as part of something greater, become great himself, what startles Adam out of that delusion? My gut tells me the only thing powerful enough to force that kind of revelation in Adam, is a direct attack on Christine.
Whatever self-righteous stance he might take against her drug use, she’s still his sister, the only remaining member of his family. Whatever he believes at the beginning of the story, when she is attacked, he’s compelled to save her.
At present the inciting event happens as Reiner attacks a surrogate for Christine. Adam gets a call from her as Reiner beats the surrogate to a pulp. Reiner’s actions, and Christine’s plea for help, prompt Adam to abandon his post and go to help her.
The attack on Adam would need to be more sustained before he finally reject Reiner. Perhaps it’s in the symbiotic tendency of the authoritarian personality, seen in the tyrannical father who torments his wife but is subservient to his superiors. Perhaps Reiner uses Christine against Adam, he’s forced to choose.
Instinct tells me that’s actually the choice Adam has to make in the final battle, the last stepping stone that gets him to the freedom side of the river. What I’m looking for, is the first stepping stone on that journey.
I’m sure it has to be a direct attack on Christine. Reiner makes a move against Christine, which forces Adam to step in. His instinctive response puts him in direct conflict with Reiner.
With this choice made I now have to go back and restructure the first thirty five minutes of the plot.
While skipping through Anatomy of Story by John Truby, I landed on a section called The Iceberg Opponent.
Truby argues, to make your antagonist as dangerous as possible, you should create a hierarchy of opponents, and “hide the hierarchy from the hero and the audience”.
This worries me slightly because Adam’s opponents aren’t really hidden from him. The only element really hidden from him is the true nature of prohibition, and I’m not sure if that’s enough?
Adam’s main opponent is Reiner, he wants to stop Adam achieving his desire, saving Christine. As the plot develops, Adam encounters ever more hostile forces, police, military, insects. These are less hidden opponents, and more a hierarchy of force.
Why would they hide?
As I’ve noted in an earlier post “prohibitionist’s aren’t shy about telling us they think users should be killed”. Truby urges you to “always look for the deepest conflict that your hero and opponent are fighting over”.
In “The antagonist’s antagonist” I note Adam and Reiner are actually fighting over the kind of society they live in. Which version will prosper? “Will it be a society of freedom ultimately chosen by Adam or will it be a society of security demanded by Reiner?”
So this is a fight for freedom or security.
If you dig even deeper security is actually an analogue of power. I often quip prohibition isn’t about public health, it’s about public control. It’s a aphoristic way of saying prohibition is a mechanism used to control the population.
Adam’s real opponent, the opponent hidden at the deepest part of the iceberg, is actually power. Not just any power, the power to destroy an entire class of people, because they don’t fit their view of how you should live in the world.
The strategy increases the depth of a story, by increasing the number of opponents the protagonist has to deal with. It makes all the characters more rounded, because he’s forced to deal with the central problem of the story, from at least three other points of view.
For Carrion I’ve designed a four cornered opposition which places Adam in conflict with Reiner. They’re the mirror of each other, similar in many ways, but because Adam decides to save Christine they become mortal enemies.
Reiner is the prototypical prohibitionist fighting with Adam over the kind of society they live in, which version of society will prosper? Will it be a society of freedom ultimately chosen by Adam, or a society of security demanded by Reiner?
Adam’s second opponent is Christine. Although she’s his sister and it’s his attempts to save her that put him conflict with Reiner, they’re still in conflict with each other. While she articulates the point of view of the drug user in the story, deep down their opposition is about how he treats his younger sibling. Is he able to respect her point of view, treat her as an equal, behave more compassionately, less patriarchally towards her?
The final character in this four cornered opposition is Sexton. He’s not only in opposition with Adam and Christine but also Reiner. He is the binary opposite to Reiner, the antagonist’s antagonist, articulating the dealer’s point of view in the story, I think? When I fist envisioned Sexton he was the stereotypical drug dealer. I had in my head the many incarnation of drug dealers in cinema, the hapless career criminal of Henry Hill in Goodfellas. He get’s high on his own supply, and drops himself straight into witness protection. I thought of the accent wielding, coke snorting, gun touting nihilist Tony Montana in Scarface. Before considering the calculating, ruthless, out for profit businesspersons of Carlos and Helena Ayala portrayed in Traffic.
The thing is, none of these interpretation of a drug dealers represent my understanding of who Sexton is in Carrion. It wasn’t until I realised Sexton has to be more optimistic that I started to get a handle on who he really is. A large part of that realisation came while reading Jack London’s “The Iron Heel”. A dystopian fiction about the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. Completed in 1908 London’s novel is based on the fictional “Everhard Manuscript” written by Avis Everhard, hidden and subsequently found centuries later. Added to this manuscript are a series of footnotes written by fictional scholar Anthony Meredith around 2600 AD. It’s a Marxist interpretation of capital told as a love story between Avis and Ernest Everhard. Avis is the middle class daughter of an academic whose eyes are opened to the plight of the proletariat at the hands of the plutocracy. Ernest Everhard is a hero of the working man who is martyred by the oligarchy as he attempts to progress the revolution and progress society to a socialist future. He’s a smart character with a clear view of the world and what he is fighting for.
Reading The Iron Heel made me realise that Sexton needs to have something of the Ernest Everhard’s about him. Adam’s not going to respond to the hapless actions of a character like Henry Hill. He’s not going to listen to the nihilistic rants of a Tony Montana. The ruthless logic of a businessman like Carlos Ayala won’t persuade him to see the world differently. Adam’s only going to respond to someone who is able to see what’s happening and articulate enough to communicate it. He has to be intelligent, articulate, and willing to take direct action.
I’m a little worried that he might come across as unbelievable, somewhat fanciful, an idealist. I know it’s a risk, but take solace in having encountered one or two character who are evangelical about drugs, who take pride in proselytising the grace offered by psychotropic substances.
Carrion needs Sexton, it needs him to show Adam how to live in the world.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about character change. Specifically Adam’s range of change. I wonder if there is enough room for Adam to move from one moral perspective to another without there being, dread of dreads, a kind of light bulb moment at the end. His actions at the end of the story must be the inevitable consequence of trials he has endured. But if John Truby is right and “true character change involves a challenging and changing of basic beliefs, leading to new moral action by the hero” I’m aware that I’ve plotted a story that demands a complete reversal of moral perspective in less that two days. Obviously this has the potential to be an implausible transformation. There is a pro-log that sets up Adam’s relationship with Christine. It happens six months before the major events of the story. My hope is that there is enough distance between the action of the pro-log and his action at the end to make Adam’s transformation plausible. Adam begins the story as a self-righteous prohibitionist. That’s the point at which I start him. Primarily because it’s the polar opposite of his moral perspective at the end. Adam’s self-righteousness drives him to arrest Christine and John. He takes a specific moral action based on his belief as a prohibitionist. His tough-love stance is born from a belief that he knows what is best for Christine. Chronologically this gives Adam six months to contemplate the consequence of his actions before the events of Carrion really get under way. My hope is that it introduces enough time for a level of self-doubt to creep into Adam’s character. He needs time to really feel the increasing threat of prohibition. So that when Reiner attacks the junkie at the end of act one the action he takes to save Christine don’t seem like too much of a leap. Hopefully the time between the pro-log and the inciting event is enough to make Adam’s arc believable. Ultimately Adam’s need to save Christine must fell not like the first step in his resistance of prohibition but something farther along the line. Something that is more like the forth or fifth step in a ten step journey. Starting this way will make the end point of Adam’s transformation that much closer. So that when he pick up a gun and attacks the forces of prohibition in the closing minutes of the story it doesn’t feel forced. It feels like the inevitable consequence of trials he has endured.
Recently I plotted Carrion using a variation of “The Board” described by Blake Snyder in his book Save the Cat.
Working the board has thrown up several issues relating to Adam’s opponents. One of the key problems I realise needs pinning down is Adam’s conflict with prohibition, how does a prohibitionist find himself on the wrong side of prohibition?
To understand this more fully I find myself going back to reaffirm what I think Carrion is about. I take the view, expressed by John Truby in his book Anatomy of Story, that a story is a moral argument. “Whenever you present a character using means to reach an end, you are presenting a moral predicament, exploring the question of right action, and making a moral argument about how best to live.” To make this argument the hero needs a collection of opponents (and allies) who force him to deal with the central moral problem.
To find the best opponents for Adam I first need to recognise the question at the heart of Carrion, why are drugs prohibited? The usual reason given for drug prohibition is public health. Drugs are dangerous, they cause harm, so should be banned. For me this throws up at least one glaring hypocrisy, why aren’t drugs like cigarettes and alcohol subject to the same prohibitions as MDMA? Both cigarettes and alcohol have significant health risks associated with their use, yet they are both freely available.
For me the distinction between drugs that are banned and those that are not is arbitrary, and because it arbitrary, it’s inevitably motivated by something else, something entirely political. Prohibition isn’t about public health, it’s about public control. Boiled down to its essence, prohibition is a form of oppression. An oppression that is inherently cruel, and demands the destruction of anyone who opposes it.
Faced with this insight it seems to me Adam’s only moral action in the story is to resist prohibition. This leads him to become an insurgent in ensuing civil war. For his arc to be fulfilled his opponents need to articulate the conflicting points of view present in the war on drugs.
Adam’s opponent is prohibition, but prohibition is too nebulous a concept on its own. We need to see it as something concrete, both as an institution and as a character. Actually it needs to be seen through a number of characters on all sides of the issue.
Prohibition organises society against those who take drugs. It’s the laws prohibiting use. The “Code 10” laws that stop convicted users from getting the medical attention. Sanctions imposed on those who help users. Social pressure best described by the maxim, if you’re not with us you’re against us.
The institution of prohibition are only the backdrop to Carrion, what Truby describes as the story world. Its unrelenting cruelty is personified by the drug eating insects that attack users. They are the ever-present sanction prohibition imposes on the citizenry, they can’t be argued with, articulating prohibitions intransigence, you take drugs you die.
As an opponent, the insects attack Adam indirectly through Christine. While they force him to take specific actions that contributes to the moral argument of Carrion, Adam’s real opponent, the opponent who challenges him directly, is Reiner. He’s the “character who wants to keep the hero from achieving his desire”. He’s the one who tries to stop Adam saving Christine. As Truby points out “a true opponent not only wants to prevent the hero from achieving his desire but is competing with the hero for the same goal”.
This point throws up a question, what are Adam and Reiner really competing over? Adam’s desire is to save Christine, Reiner wants to see Christine dead, but he knows the insects will do that for him, he could just wait, let them do their job.
If Adam and Reiner aren’t competing for Christine’s life, what are they fighting over? Adam’s desire represents a threat to Reiner, it confirms his fear, there’s someone out there willing to challenge prohibition. At the core of the conflict is a fight over the the kind of world they live in. They’re fighting to have either a free society or a secure society.
One of the primary arguments for prohibition is that drugs represent a threat, not just to public health but to our security. Users are dangerous, dealers are criminals, drugs tear at the very fabric of society, and prohibition is the tool that keeps us safe.
The irony is, prohibition is more of a threat to our public safety than drug use.
What if prohibition doesn’t protect public health, what if it’s a form of oppression? The choice to take drugs amounts to demand for freedom over security. Deep down they’re fighting for a world of freedom or oppression.
Another of Adam’s opponents is his sister Christine. If Reiner articulates the voice of prohibition Christine gives us the users point of view. Her strength in the story is her ability to attack Adam’s prejudices. Without her Adam would not begin to see the dangers of prohibition, he would not see the oppression. His desire to save his sister is his call to arms. Whatever he may think of drugs and those who take them, Christine makes him see prohibition as something that need to be challenged.
The final opponent to challenge Adam is Sexton, prohibition as seen by the dealer. In an earlier post “Adam’s immoral action” I contemplated another of Truby’s tenants. “In the early part of the story the hero is losing to the opponent. He becomes desperate. As a result he starts taking immoral actions to win.”
In trying to answer this problem I asked myself the question, what kind of immoral actions does Adam take? The answer can best be summed up as “not fighting back”. Only through his conflicts with Sexton does Adam start to behave in a moral way. Structurally Sexton enters the story half way through. Adam has gone as far as he can with his initial course of action, and has failed to save Christine. Then he meets Sexton, an unrepentant drug dealer who is willing to challenge prohibition by taking the fight to them. Sexton’s actions challenge Adam’s immoral action, forces him to realise the only moral action to take against prohibition is to fight it.
Structurally this collection of characters is what Truby calls a four cornered opposition. The system not only allows the moral argument to be fully explored, each character articulating a different set of values, attacking Adam’s great weakness in a different way. By pushing each of their values to the extremities of the four cornered opposition they all become as different as possible from the others.
According to Robert McKee “the inciting incident radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist’s life”. Brian McDonald in “Invisible Ink” describes the inciting incident as a curtain moment, a theatrical term denoting the point at which the curtain is dropped between acts. In theatre you have to get the audience back after the intermission “so acts end on the highest point, when the stakes are at their most desperate”.
While both descriptions tell us that something needs to happen at this point, neither give you any real insight into what needs to happen.
Personally I lean towards John Truby’s interpretation. He calls it the inciting event and describes it as a small step that “connects need and desire”. At the beginning of the story “when weakness and need are being established, the hero is paralysed in some way. You need some kind of event to jump-start the hero out of his paralysis and force him to act”.Â
Since starting the redraft of Carrion I’ve struggled to pin down the event that metaphorically takes Adam out of the frying pan and drops him in the fire. I had a whole slew of things going on in the fifteen minutes that lead up to this event.
Adam discovers Reiner murdered his daughter, prompting him to take action. Reiner making a direct attack on Christine, forcing Adam to step in to protect her. I’ve explored an infinite number of permutations based on this scenario ending with Christine attacked, forcing Adam to step in and save her.
In the end it all seemed too complicated, demanding of too much exposition. It wasn’t until I started to think about this section, and where it fits into the story, that I started to get a handle on what the inciting event should be.
Adam needs to see the kind of attack society is making on drug users, see what’s going to happen to Christine if he does nothing. Once I’d realised this, things started to fall into place. Adam and Reiner are part of the squad that is tasked with picking up drug users. When Reiner is particularly vicious in his treatment, Adam gets his first glimpse of the coming storm.
The actual event alluded me until the phrase “Adam has to choose Christine” came to me. The more I thought about it, the more I realise it’s the thing that connects Adam’s need and desire, the thing that takes him out of the frying pan and into the fire.
He’s given a choice, prohibition or Christine.
If he chooses prohibition he’s allowing her to die. From that point, Adam’s desire to save Christine kicks in, and the story is under way.
I have a problem, I’ve started to get this nagging doubt that Adam’s actions aren’t going to work, they’re not proactive enough. The moral vision for the end of Carrion has Adam taking action against prohibition. He starts the screenplay a self-righteous policeman and ends a humbled rebel.
For this transformation to work, Adam can’t just take up arms against prohibition, he has to go through a series of actions that teach him the right way to act in the world. He has to take actions that teach him not only to resist prohibition but to fight it.
Structurally the problem can best be explained by paraphrasing John Truby. “In the early part of the story the hero is losing to the opponent. He becomes desperate. As a result he starts taking immoral actions to win. Other characters criticize the hero for the means he is taking. The hero defends his actions.”
I think what Truby means is only by taking immoral actions that fail can the hero learn the moral way to act. In trying to answer this problem I asked myself, what kind of immoral actions does Adam take? The answer can best be summed up as “not fighting back”. The actions he takes are immoral because it appeases prohibition.
Does the make Adam seem passive? What I’m struggling to reconcile is who Adam is at the beginning of the screenplay, and who he is at the end. The key seems to lay in his conflict with Reiner, a rampant prohibitionist who has killed his drug using daughter.
How does Adam deal with that moral dilemma?
He believes in the law so should arrest Reiner, but with the rabid hatred of drug users we’d be at the end of the screenplay before he’d begun. Alternatively the answer might lay in Adam’s desire to save Christine. Why does he want to save Christine? He wants to save her because she is his sister. Initially he thinks he’s saving her from herself, that’s why he arrests her, then from prohibition.
Alternatively a direct threat on Christine, by Reiner, would push Adam to take action, despite his overwhelming hostility to drug users. That way he’s not passive, appeasing prohibition, but taking positive action to save Christine.
The immoral action in the story world is his attempts to save a drug user.
I have been struggling with what Adam wants in the story, his specific desire. As David Mamet might say, what does he want?
The working hypothesis has been, Adam wants to save his sister. This raises the question, how do we know when he has saved her, does he get a prize? “Save” isn’t concrete enough to carry the audience through the various twists and turns of the story to the end.
I have thought of linking it to a location. If he gets her to a specific location has he saved her, perhaps, but it still seems a little nebulous.
His desire simply isn’t primal enough, it’s not a matter of life and death.
What is he saving her from, prohibition? He’s actually saving her from the physical manifestation of prohibition, drug eating insects.
We’ll know Adam has saved Christine if she is alive or dead at the end of the story.
Adam’s desire is to save Christine from becoming carrion.
What follows is the most recent stage in a page-one redraft of Carrion. Yesterday I submitted this treatment to the Euroscript Screen Story Competition 2012 primarily because it gave me a deadline. I like deadlines, they focus the mind, give me reason to make a decision, and stop exploring the myriad of options available when developing a character and their story. When my partner read it, she thought “it’s very pro-drugs”. I don’t disagree, but I think it’s less pro-drug, and more anti-prohibition.
Carrion is a science fiction thriller about the cruelty of prohibition.
The last few years have been tough on ADAM LEIGH. First his marriage disintegrates. Torn apart by the rigours of army life. Then his parents die in a car crash. Leaving him sole guardian of a teenage sister he hardly knows. He tries to take care of CHRISTINE. Buys himself out of the army. Moves back into the family home. Takes a job with the police. But when growing pains amplify Christine’s grief into rebellion. He struggles to cope.
Outraged by her drug use. He becomes increasingly self-righteous. Until she escapes his tyranny. Finds solace with boyfriend JOHN QUAYS. Things between Adam and Christine come to a head when Adam has to sell the family home. Christine is furious. They fight. Adam snaps. Arrests Christine and John for possession.
Six months later. The war on drugs escalates. Swarms of drug eating insects are released by the government.
Seemingly unconcerned Christine and John still visit their dealer. Stock-up for the weekend’s party. They’re planning a two-fingered salute to new “Code 10” laws that will bar drug-user access to healthcare.
Meanwhile Adam arrives at the house of policeman ANTHONY REINER. His daughter is dead. Needle junked in her vein. It looks like an overdose. But when Adam finds evidence of a struggle. Suspects foul play. He does his job. And arrests Reiner.
That night. While Christine and John deal to their friends. Enjoy a hedonistic mix of music and recreational drugs. Adam questions Reiner.
By morning. An unrepentant Reiner admits he killed his daughter. Expresses an evangelical wish to see all junkies’ dead. A wish that might come true. Because when Christine and John arrive home. Rack out a two line nightcap. A swarm of insects attack them.
As the swarm rips through the city. Christine and John drag each other to the local hospital. Only to be turned away. “Code 10” laws prohibit their treatment. Threaten their arrest.
Out of options the pair hole up. Self-medicate on what’s left of their stash. But when John starts to spit blood. A desperate Christine goes to Adam for help.
Still trying to maintain the status quo. Adam puts the law first. And cruelly turns her away. But his loyalty is not reciprocated. Because later that day. The CPS judge there is “no case to answer”. And discharge Reiner. The murderer’s release leaves Adam feeling betrayed. Gives him a galvanising glimpse of the hostilities to come.
So when John delivers news of Christine’s arrest. Guilt drives him to the station where she is being held. Fighting through the riotous crowd of users. He argues with belligerent colleagues. Until they take him to see Christine. Horrified by the abuse she has suffered. He orders a doctor. But his pleas are met with threats of arrest. So when the rioters storm the station. Adam takes his chance. And helps Christine escape.
Desperately in need of pain relief. Christine persuades Adam to drive them north to their supplier. But all they find when they get there is a dead dealer. An eaten stash. And a gang of vigilantes who what to kill them.
They barely escape with their lives. Only to have John succumb to his insect infestation. When the swarm explodes from his corpse. Adam struggle to save Christine. Drags her free. Manages to contain the swarm in the car.
Devastated by John’s death. Confronted by her fate. She is inconsolable. Adam is forced to dig deep. Marshal every bit of empathy he has. And probably for the first time ever. Connects with Christine.
Determined to keep her safe. Intent on escaping the embattled city. Adam steals a car. But when they run into a police checkpoint. He defies the law. Behaves like a criminal. And flees the scene.
Pursued by the police. Hemmed in. They abandon the vehicle. Escape on foot. Find refuge at the home of Christine’s friend. But when her friends turn on Adam. Blame him for their troubles. He confounds their expectations by volunteering to go for help.
Chasing rumours there is a territory controlled by dealers. Adam leaves Christine with her friends. And heads south. Moving fast. He dodges the police. Evades vigilantes. Hides from an army patrol. Only to be captured by a gang of insurgents.
Desperate to get Christine the help she needs. He supplicates himself. Asks a junkie for help. SEXTON takes pity. Follows Adam back to the house. But as his gang triage the household. Administer doses of smack to those who need it. A police snatch squad rolls up.
The fire-fight that follows threatens to kill them all. But when Adam sacrifices himself for Christine. Runs interference with Sexton. Christine and the others escape.
When the police finally raid the house. Reiner is first to breach the barricade. First to discover their escape. First to give chase. But when Adam takes a stand. And fights Reiner. Fights prohibition. He wins a minor victory. And takes Reiner hostage.
With Reiner in tow. Adam and Sexton rendezvous with the others. Head south. Find they’re cut off by military lines. And have to take refuge in the Leigh family home.
As they plan their route through. Christine’s condition worsens. The insects inside her start to gnaw their way out. Adam watches in horror as she vomits blood. He does his best to comfort her. But he’s helpless. All he can do is cradle her in his arms. And watch her die.
Broken hearted. He reacts violently when Reiner mocks her death. Grabs a syringe of smack from Sexton. And sends Reiner to hell. Stabs him with the shot. Leaves him for the swarm of insects that explode from her corpse.
Overwhelmed by grief. Adam refuses to move. Until screams draw him outside. A woman pleads for her life as soldiers tie a noose round her neck. Loop it over a lamp-post. Yank her into the air. Adam snaps. Picks up a gun. And attacks the soldiers. When the shooting’s over. The soldiers are dead. The woman is saved. And Adam is an insurgent.
Humbled by her gratitude. Accepting solace from a junkie. He follows Sexton south. Past a defiant slogan daubed on the wall. “THEY DON’T WANT US. THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL US. WE’RE FIGHTING BACK.”
I’ve been reading William Indick’s Psychology for Screenwriters. It offers an insight into the way psychology can be used to build the conflict within a screenplay.
Early in the book is a chapter about developmental psychologist Erik Erikson. Erikson was a neo-Freudian, best know for his theory on psychosocial development across the entire lifespan. Anyway, when thinking about a character’s identity crisis, Indick urges writers to “keep in mind the element of “moratorium”; the stage of actively searching that precedes identity achievement”.
The thing that interested me most about this notion, especially in relation to Carrion, is the element of “foreclosure” in Erikson’s model. Foreclosure is “the danger of ending the search too early and settling on an identity supplied by others rather than a personally meaningful identity achieved through self-discovery”.
I think Adam has a foreclosed identity.
Until his sister Christine was born in his late teens he was an only child. This meant he was the sole beneficiary of his parents emotional, physical, and financials resources. The affiliation he felt for his parents meant that he ended his search for identity too early, accepts their authority, and foreclosed on their’s. So when he joins the army a couple of years after Christine’s arrival, he was swapping one family dynamic for another.
Indick sights Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” as an example of a story specifically about moratorium. Malcolm X is a story about one man’s “life-long search for a meaningful sense of personal identity”. Just as Adam submits himself to a career of service, first to the military, then to the police, “Malcolm submits himself completely to the Nation of Islam”.
Both men accept a foreclosed identity, identities “originating from without rather than from within”. It is only when Malcolm comes into conflict with the Nation of Islam, and Adam comes into conflict with the insects, prohibition, and the government, do they have to look into themselves to find an identity personal to them.
In the same way as Malcolm “must dig within his own soul and find a religion and philosophy that is personal to him as an individual”, Adam is forced to look within himself to find an identity that is less intolerant, allows for personal freedom, and accepts his sister.
To expand the idea a little, I also think if “society” were a personality, society might have accepted a foreclosed identity when it comes to drug use. The war on drugs is an identity supplied from without, rather than from within. Official institutions routinely repeat the mantra “drugs are dangerous” without considering they are no more or less dangerous than sanctioned drugs like alcohol.
Does this mean society has settled on a foreclosed identity? I don’t know, it certainly seems that way.
You must be logged in to post a comment.