Great IdeasGod and the soul
Wrongdoing and forgiveness
Guilt, mercy and starting again.
The question
What do we do after someone does wrong? Can guilt be healed, and why forgive?
How the books answer
Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.
458 BC (the Oresteia); seven plays survive
Aeschylus, The Eumenides
Orestes is hunted by the Furies, spirits of revenge, for avenging his father. Athena's court acquits him, and she persuades the angry Furies to become kindly guardians of Athens. The trilogy ends not in punishment but in reconciliation.
c. AD 397–400
Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions
Augustine tells the story of his own wrongdoing, starting with stealing pears as a boy just for the thrill of it. In a garden in Milan, weeping, he hears a child's voice say 'take up and read,' opens the Bible and finds peace. The whole book thanks God for forgiving him.
“Take up and read.” Instantly, my countenance altered, I began to think most intently, whether children were wont in any kind of play to sing such words: nor could I remember ever to have heard the like.”
c. 1308–1321
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio
Dante's Purgatory is a mountain where forgiven souls are healed of their faults, one terrace at a time. Here, unlike in Hell, everyone is hopeful. Love, rightly ordered, is what they are learning.
“And of that second region will I sing, In which the human spirit from sinful blot Is purg'd, and for ascent to Heaven prepares.”
c. 1605–1606
William Shakespeare, King Lear
King Lear banished his loyal daughter Cordelia. When they meet again, broken and humbled, he kneels and asks forgiveness. She says she has no cause to blame him, one of the most moving reconciliations in drama.
1608–1611
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, Pericles
Prospero has his old enemies in his power at last. Instead of revenge, he chooses forgiveness, saying that virtue is a rarer action than vengeance. Then he gives up his magic.
“Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury Do I take part: the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,”
1815
Jane Austen, Emma
Emma makes a cruel joke at Miss Bates's expense during a picnic. Mr. Knightley tells her how unkind it was, and she is ashamed. The next morning she visits Miss Bates to make amends, and Austen shows how a real apology begins to mend things.
Part One 1808; Part Two 1832
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Parts One and Two
Faust does great harm in his bargain with the devil. Yet at the end of Part Two, angels carry his soul upward, because he never stopped striving and because of love, including that of Gretchen, whom he wronged. Goethe's ending has been argued over ever since.
“Whoe'er aspires unweariedly Is not beyond redeeming.”
1879–1880
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
The elder Zosima teaches that each person is responsible for all, and that love can forgive anything. He tells how, as a young officer, he struck his servant, then asked his forgiveness. Alyosha carries this teaching into the world.
“Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it.”
For young readers
Everyone makes mistakes. When we hurt someone, we can say sorry and try to make it right. When someone hurts us, we can choose to forgive them.
Forgiving doesn't mean pretending it didn't happen. It means letting go of wanting to get even. In Shakespeare's play The Tempest, Prospero could have taken revenge, but he chose to forgive, and everyone could start again.
Talk about it
- What makes a good apology?
- Is it hard for you to forgive? Why?
- Prospero says forgiveness is rarer than revenge. Why do you think it's rare?
- Emma went to apologize the next morning. Why is it important to make things right, not just say sorry?
- Can you forgive someone who hasn't said sorry?
Where else on the site
Every rung tagged with this idea:
These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.