The Journals of Ayn Rand (10 page)

[It can be seen in] his strange letters, which are a little theatrically melodramatic, but so boastful and self-confident, e.g.: “If you want help against me, ask God, not men,” signed “The Fox.” [It can be seen in] his utter remorselessness; his pride in his criminal career and in things that are considered a “disgrace”; his boasting of more and more crimes and his open joy at shocking people, instead of trying to implore their sympathy; his utter lack of anything that is considered a “virtue”; his strength, as shown in his unprecedented conduct during his trial and sentencing; his calm, superior, indifferent, disdainful countenance, which is like an open challenge to society—shouting to it that it cannot break him; his immense, explicit egoism—a thing the mob never forgives; and his
cleverness,
which makes the mob feel that a superior mind can exist entirely outside of its established morals.

No: [the reaction to] this case is not moral indignation at a terrible crime. It is the mob’s murderous desire to revenge its hurt vanity against a man who dared to be alone. It is a case of “we” against “him.”

And when we look at the other side of it—there is a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy turned into a purposeless monster. By whom? By what? Is it not by that very society that is now yelling so virtuously in its role of innocent victim? He had a brilliant mind, a romantic, adventurous, impatient soul and a straight, uncompromising, proud character. What had society to offer him? A wretched, insane family as the ideal home, a Y.M.C.A. club as social honor, and a bank-page job as ambition and career. And it is not the petty financial misery of these that I have in mind. They are representative of all that society has to offer: a high social standing and a million-dollar business position is essentially the same Y.M.C.A. club and bank-page job, merely more of the same.

If he had any desires and ambitions—what was the way before him? A long, slow, soul-eating, heart-wrecking toil and struggle; a degrading, ignoble road of silent pain and loud compromises. Succeed? How could he succeed? How do men succeed? By begging successfully for the good graces of the society they must serve. And if he could not serve? If he didn’t know how to beg? It’s a long and tortuous road that an exceptional man must travel in this society. It requires a steel-strength that can overcome disgust, which is a worse enemy than fear, and also a steel-hypocrisy, the patient art of hiding oneself when it is wise not to be seen.

A strong man can eventually trample society under his feet. That boy was not strong enough. But is that his crime? Is it his crime that he was too impatient, fiery and proud to go that slow way? That he was not able to serve, when he felt worthy to rule; to obey, when he wanted to command? That boy could not get along with the men that society forgives and tolerates. He could not get along with the majority. He could not lick boots—and one can’t succeed without licking boots. He was superior and he wanted to live as such—and this is the one thing society does not permit.

He was given [nothing with which] to fill his life. What was he offered to fill his soul? The petty, narrow, inconsistent, hypocritical ideology of present-day humanity. All the criminal, ludicrous, tragic nonsense of Christianity and its morals, virtues, and consequences. Is it any wonder that he didn’t accept it? That it left his soul emptier than it had been before? That boy does not believe in anything. But, oh! men,
have
you anything to believe in? Can you offer anything to be believed? He is a monster in his cruelty and disrespect of all things. But is there anything to be respected? He does not know what love means. But what is it that is worthy of being loved?

Yes, he is a monster—now. But the worse he is, the worst must be the cause that drove him to this. Isn’t it significant that society was not able to fill the life of an exceptional, intelligent boy, to give him anything to out-balance crime in his eyes? If society is horrified at his crime, it should be horrified at the crime’s ultimate cause: itself. The worse the crime—the greater its guilt. What could society answer, if that boy were to say: “Yes, I’m a monstrous criminal, but what are you?”

This is what I think of the case. I am afraid that I idealize Hickman and that he might not be this at all. In fact, he probably isn’t. But it does not make any difference. If he isn‘t, he
could
be, and that’s enough. The reaction of society would be the same, if not worse, toward the Hickman I have in mind. This case showed me how society can wreck an exceptional being, and then murder him for being the wreck that it itself has created. This will be the story of the boy in my book.

The insistent efforts of the newspapers to represent Hickman as a coward, to break down the impression of his strength and daring. Immediately after his arrest the papers were full of articles about his being “yellow,” his “breaking down,” his “hysterical fear,” his “white face,” his appearance of being “a rat instead of a Fox,” and so on, all insisting that even if he seems calm, he really isn‘t, he must be in a deadly terror. This might or might not have been true. Probably not, judging from his later behavior. Perhaps he was pretending to be insane. But the insistent way in which the papers shouted about his being “yellow” seemed to be a mad, furious attempt to degrade him, to take away any heroic appearance he might have had, to make the public think that they had succeeded in breaking him, while they really had not. It was as though it infuriated them to see strength, pride, and courage in this criminal and to see that they could not break him; it seemed to be the mob’s subconscious fury at the sight of such virtues in its enemy. To humiliate, to throw down—that is the mob’s greatest delight. (It’s going to be so in the story, after the boy’s arrest.)

 

The jury.
Average, everyday, rather stupid looking citizens. Shabbily dressed, dried, worn looking little men. Fat, overdressed, very average, “dignified” housewives. How can they decide the fate of that boy? Or anyone’s fate? If a man has to be judged, why can’t he be judged by his superiors, who alone would have a right to do it? Why does he have to be judged by “equals” (and what “equals”!)? (In the story, I must select my jurors very carefully. One or two will have to be prominent characters whom the readers know very well, including all sides of their natures and their own unpunished crimes against society. Several will have to be incidental “background” characters—with enough of them shown to see what “good citizens” they are. The rest will be described by their looks—which is plenty. The whole must make a nice picture of society’s representatives, who sit in judgment over the boy even though they are not worthy to lace his shoes.)

 

Asa Keyes, the prosecutor.
His [lack of] honesty and conviction was clearly demonstrated in the shady, disgraceful case of Amy MacPherson. Shameful charges were directed at him immediately before the Hickman case. A fat, overindulgent-looking man, with an owl-like nose, narrow little eyes, a big, heavy face and double-chin, a grayish-yellow complexion, a balding head with greasy hair, and the booming voice of a bully, giving an impression of a fat seal or a bull-dog. He made an unintelligent speech, full of common platitudes, showing a complete lack of any imagination or originality.
He
had the nerve to speak in defense of the people, the country, the world and so on! And
he
had the right to yell about Hickman: “He is rotten, rotten!”

 

All of this is a good example of my “little street” idea. I kept the clipping of his speech, as a wonderful example of how the little street talks, almost exaggeratedly good, couldn’t be better if I had written it for him.

(In the story, the prosecutor will have to be a rather prominent character, with a shady case on his hands, right before the boy’s case, with all the characteristics of this one—and more!)

 

The public who attended the trial. Average
citizenry in all its full bloom. Women and girls—silly, homely, uninteresting and insignificant, over-rouged, just utterly blank in every way. Old-fashioned little women—shabbily dressed, wrinkled and shriveled. God knows from where and why here. “Fellows” with “their girls.” Men of all ages and of every profession, high and low, mostly low. Newspaper women with the conceited vanity and superior dignity of mediocrity feeling its importance, of workers smaller than their jobs. The common woman with ugly clothes, a fat, soft white face, and religious pins, a “kitchen-sink” type, who looked on everyday and declared that she had been to all the murder trials. The barefooted, robed “hermit” with a white beard, “Prophet Jonas” written in white oil-paint on a band around his head, and a red banner of prayers in his hand, who claimed that he was a messenger from Jesus Christ, sent to attend the trial. The fat, tall woman in brown with a mustache and a suspiciously kind voice and manner. The young man with the horse’s teeth, who was “just curious.” And so on. These are the ones I saw. The list can be prolonged indefinitely. The circus show that the mob enjoys when it has a plaything that is going to be murdered.

Harry Carr and his superb indignation at Hickman. (More about him later. I must have a journalist like that in the story, a composite of Harry Carr, Arthur Brisbane, Adela Rogers St.-Johns and several others with newspaper columns.)

Harry Carr’s friend, the perfect gentleman who suggested that the proper punishment for Hickman is that he be cut to pieces.

Patsy Ruth Miller, the “big star” who “openly expressed her disapproval of the effort to save Hickman,” and who has such a right to express it!

Charlie Chaplin, who came to the door and went away claiming that “one look was enough” and “he didn’t want to be seen here.” Such a clean, decent, virtuous man! [
The sarcasm here was in part provoked by Chaplin’s support of communisn.
]

The prince of Sweden, the “royal presence,” a chap with protruding jaws and the blank expression of a half-wit.

Richard Barthelmess who sat for hours in a place where he “could watch every expression on Hickman’s face.”

Adela Rogers St.-Johns cleverly noted that Hickman is an extremist, a type that can either be very good or very bad. This is true and the idea of the “extremist” is splendid. We should have more extremists—then life wouldn’t be what it is. But she says that “an extremist is always dangerous” and we all should be just in between, the “golden mean,” the balanced average. This is a wonderful expression of the view exactly opposite from mine. What I want to show in my book is just the horror of that middle: the illogical, inconsistent, weak, tolerant, mediocre, loathsome middle. For if men were extremists they would follow each idea and feeling to its end, they would be faithful to their purposes and to themselves, they would be clear, straight, and absolute in everything. And they wouldn’t tolerate a lot of what is tolerated now. This is just what we need.

She says that Hickman could be either a very great man or a very great criminal. Well, it only shows that he is always great and the one thing impossible to him is pettiness. and mediocrity. For this reason I admire Hickman and every extremist. [Later, AR identifies “
extremism
”
as an “anti-concept”; see “Extremism, or the Art of Smearing” in
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.]

She says that Hickman was always conscious of himself, always thinking of the effect he produces, always centered on himself. This is one of those things that isn’t worth arguing about; the opinion on egoism is organic in every person and can’t be changed or argued.

So she is afraid of men being too good or too bad? I think of the man who said: “Oh, that their best is so very small! Oh, that their worst is so very small! And oh, how horrid it is to be small!” [
This is an approximate quote from
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
by Friedrich Nietzsche.
This is what my book is going to say. Extremist beyond all extreme is what we need!

Agnes Christine Johnston said that Hickman is “surprisingly uncivilized.” I congratulate her, although not quite in the way she would expect. Her idea is that civilization is
sympathy,
i.e., a great sympathetic understanding and co-feeling with others. She is perfectly right; that is just what civilization is. But is that
progress,
which is the meaning usually associated with the word “civilization”? Isn’t just that “sympathy” in civilization the greatest regress, the greatest danger, downfall and degeneracy of mankind? I know what Nietzsche and I think on this subject.

Johnston says that Hickman has “an ugly soul,” that his mind is developed, but his soul is neglected. Well, “ugly” is a relative expression. She concludes with the responsibility of parents to develop their children’s souls and mentions her “own three little ones.”

(Incidentally, this same Agnes Christine Johnston is the author of a silly play about office-girls’ love, about a homely working girl who becomes beautiful, and so on. The play has the deep, significant title of “Funny Little Thing.” I mention this as an example of the ideology of those who speak so loudly about “civilization.”)

V. M. declared, as though she were dictating a paragraph into my story, that Hickman’s greatest crime is the fact that he willingly [detached] himself from “humanity,” from the one and only thing that counts in the world—humanity and its progress. She claims that for this he should be killed and destroyed without pity. (She said this last part about
destroying
quite savagely, in a dark, threatening way that sounded so much like that typical, blind mob cruelty.) She says that the main thing in life is to feel that you are contributing to the progress of humanity, or life, or things in general—to feel yourself a part of some vague immense universal progress. She says that she is perfectly satisfied to feel herself a good average human being, and to believe that the other human beings are just as good—or bad—as she is; that the exceptional beings have to use their talent and intelligence to pull the average ones up, because kindness is the greatest thing, the only thing in life; that you are so closely related to other people that you can’t tell where you end and they begin; that those who dare to stand alone always become insane.