Dear Head, I am writing this letter to apologize for all the agony I have put you through because of my cravings. Thank you for supplying the long slender objects that have thrust themselves into me from time to time— the fingers, the tongues, the carrots that have made my pleasure spot throb. I know those acts must have embarrassed you, having to expose your breasts and belly and buttocks to get the flesh tools to work. Most of the owners of the flesh tools were gross; I always liked the tongues and fingers better than the pricks, but I understand now where you were coming from, I’m sorry if I had anything to do with making you think I needed all that goo sprayed into me, it was always just the throb I wanted, not the job, especially not the clean up afterward. Again, I apologize, and promise to remain as humbly quiet as I can from now on. (Oh, yeah, FYI—despite male ego and female confusion on the subject, all of us girls are really lesbians.)
Yours in peace, DU
Dear Heart, I am writing this to apologize for all the aching I have caused you. I know you felt left out every time one of those prong-owners went straight for me. I apologize for hiding here under this bush, ambushing the meat, I know I have been a hungry bitch, and I have stolen from you more than I could ever return. You have the last laugh, your blood is still running and mine is dry. I promise I will not prompt you again, I hope you have a serene life,
I am finally learning to live in tranquility. No more vaginitis and no more yeast infections, a disease-free environment encourages peace within and without.
Yours for love, DU
A slightly different version of this original poem appears in my collection titled “Turtle Woman & Other Poems” under the title “Letters from V”
Henry Bennett is a pathetic character, who realizes too late that he has been played for fool by his wife.
Introduction and Text of “Hon. Henry Bennett”
Edgar Lee Masters’ again allows his Spoon River lamenter to fashion his lament in an American-Innovative sonnet. Featuring the traditional fourteen lines, the sonnet remain rimeless and without a definite rhythm patters.
In Edgar Lee Masters’ “Hon. Henry Bennett” from the American classic Spoon River Anthology, the speaker laments his rapacious wife’s treachery: she effectively “loved” him to death, but not out of love. His wife had in mind to inherit Henry’s fortune and then marry the man of her dreams, the one with big muscles and a small brain.
The Honorable Henry Bennett is one of Spoon River’s more pathetic characters. His wife, who was much younger than the judge, literally screwed the man to death. By the time he realized what was happening, he was on his deathbed. The wife’s treachery rendered the poor man a fool.
Hon. Henry Bennett
It never came into my mind Until I was ready to die That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart. For I was seventy, she was thirty-five, And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life. For all my wisdom and grace of mind Gave her no delight at all, in very truth, But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch One time at Georgie Kirby’s. So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard— That mount of brawn! That clownish soul!
Commentary on “Hon. Henry Bennett”
Henry Bennett is a pathetic character, who realizes too late that he has been played for fool by his wife.
First Movement: “Loved” to Death
It never came into my mind Until I was ready to die That Jenny had loved me to death, with malice of heart.
Judge Bennett confesses that it had not occurred to him until he was on his death bed that his young wife, Jenny, had deliberately tried to kill him by engaging him in too much sexual activity.
The young Jenny literally “loved him to death.” Euphemizing lascivious marital relations as “love,” the judge, nevertheless, now realizes that her intention had nothing to do with love and affection but with “with malice of heart.”
Second Movement: Twice Her Age
For I was seventy, she was thirty-five, And I wore myself to a shadow trying to husband Jenny, rosy Jenny full of the ardor of life.
The Honorable Henry Bennett was seventy years old when he married the woman, Jenny, who was half his age. She was “full of the ardor of life”—another veiled reference to her oversexualized comportment.
In the judge’s supposed husbandly duties, the poor Henry “wore [himself] to a shadow” attempting to keep Jenny satisfied. He also describes Jenny as “rosy,” indicating the rush of blood that appears on the skin after a sexual encounter.
Third Movement: No Interest in His Mind
For all my wisdom and grace of mind Gave her no delight at all, in very truth, But ever and anon she spoke of the giant strength Of Willard Shafer, and of his wonderful feat Of lifting a traction engine out of the ditch One time at Georgie Kirby’s.
Jenny demonstrated no interest in the judge’s “wisdom and grace of mind.” We have to take Henry’s word for it that he possessed such praiseworthy qualities, but whatever his redeeming qualities might have been, his wife showed no interest in them.
Instead, the wife admired physical strength. She was always taunting Henry by repeating the story that Willard Shafer had “lift[ed] a traction engine out of the ditch / One time at Geogrie Kirby’s.”
His wife likely used this story repeatedly to entice Henry to service her sexually in order weaken Henry’s health. But of course, as Henry said, he did not realize the nasty game Jenny was playing until it was too late.
Fourth Movement: Rich Enough to Marry Her Stud
So Jenny inherited my fortune and married Willard— That mount of brawn! That clownish soul!
To make a long story short, Henry quickly sums up his lament by reporting that after his death, Jenny married the man of the “giant strength,” Willard Shafer, after inheriting Henry’s fortune. Jenny’s scheme succeeded, and Henry is left to name-call Jenny’s new husband, “That mount of brawn! That clownish soul!”
Lacking the “wisdom and grace of mind” of the Honorable Henry Bennett, the strongman Willard Shafer wins the woman and the judge’s money. And the Hon. Henry Bennett is not at all happy, definitely not resting in peace.
Interviewer: What has become of your face? Mirror: It is like the moon; it has 28 phases.
Interviewer: When did those eyes become blanks? Mirror: Oh, when is not important. The question is, are they blank enough.
Interviewer: Where does that sallow skin come from? Mirror: From deep inside where sallow is mixed with saffron and clumps of leaves are torn from shadow boxes with fennel pollen.
Interviewer: Why fennel pollen? Mirror: Why fennel pollen, indeed! Better than mace and thyme, more elaborate than a whistle, sweet, spice, electric . . .
Interviewer: Why does your mouth obey those loose-hinged jaws? Mirror: It was never one to disobey. In the radical morning, scruffs of necks seek to burn, and limber goths slink back to the swamp.
Interviewer: How will your heart explain to your brain that it has shattered itself again over the sharp rocks of indulgence? Mirror: Now, I am a small pool of crystal water that rushed down from the Himalayas to gather fools who have no right to breathe the temperate air of Maya, yet . . . they travel on.
Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
Emily Dickinson’s “Success is counted sweetest”
Emily Dickinson’s “Success is counted sweetest” reveals the speaker’s conviction that victory is most deeply understood by those who have experienced its absence. The poem turns deprivation into a peculiar form of insight. This poem is one of Dickinson’s most anthologized and studied poems.
Introduction and Text of “Success is counted sweetest”
In Emily Dickinson’s “Success is counted sweetest,” the speaker presents success as something whose value becomes clearest through profound need. The person who possesses victory may enjoy it, but the person who has been denied success may understand its sweetness more intensely.
The speaker creates a little drama involving two contrasting figures: the victorious soldiers who possess the “Flag” and the defeated soldier who lies dying. The contrast allows the speaker to suggest that possession and comprehension are not necessarily the same thing.
On the literal level, the speaker is describing a battlefield in which one group has achieved victory while another has suffered defeat. Yet the language quickly moves beyond the battlefield toward a larger contemplation of desire, deprivation, perception, and the strange ways suffering can deepen understanding.
The image of “nectar” introduces sweetness into an otherwise painful setting. The speaker suggests that something desired becomes especially precious when it has been withheld. The defeated soldier, unable to possess victory, nevertheless receives an agonizingly clear awareness of its meaning.
This paradox gives the poem its particular force. The person who has lost may understand the value of winning more profoundly than the person who has won. The speaker thus transforms defeat into a peculiar kind of knowledge.
Success is counted sweetest
Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host Who took the Flag today Can tell the definition So clear of Victory
As he defeated – dying – On whose forbidden ear The distant strain of triumph Burst agonized and clear!
Commentary on “Success is counted sweetest”
The speaker presents success as a mysterious experience whose meaning becomes clearest when it has been denied. The battlefield supplies the literal drama, but the deeper subject concerns the relationship between desire and understanding.
First Stanza: “Success is counted sweetest”
Success is counted sweetest By those who ne’er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.
The speaker begins with an apparently simple statement: “Success is counted sweetest” by those who never experience it. The claim immediately creates a paradox because ordinary thinking assumes that the person who achieves success should understand its value best.
The speaker reverses that expectation. The successful person possesses the desired object, while the unsuccessful person remains painfully conscious of its absence. That absence produces an intensity of desire that possession may actually diminish.
The word “sweetest” introduces the language of taste. Success becomes something almost edible, something that can be savored like nectar. Yet the speaker does not allow the reader simply to enjoy the sweetness. She connects comprehension with “sorest need.”
The word “nectar” suggests something precious, desirable, and almost divine. To taste such sweetness would ordinarily require possession, but the speaker introduces a startling alternative: the deepest comprehension may arise through hunger rather than satisfaction.
The status “In need” is therefore more than simply lacking something. Need creates attention. The person who desperately wants something studies its value, imagines its qualities, and becomes intensely aware of what its absence means.
Paramahansa Yogananda offers a spiritual parallel when he explains that ordinary desire can produce temporary pleasure, while deeper fulfillment lies beyond the repeated cycle of wanting and satisfying desire.
The speaker’s “sorest need” likewise becomes a doorway to understanding. The unsuccessful person cannot taste the literal nectar of success, but deprivation makes the imagined sweetness extraordinarily vivid.
In my earlier essays on Dickinsonian poems, I have discussed the speaker’s privileging inner evidence over outer awareness. Here that tendency appears in another form: outward possession does not guarantee inward comprehension.
The first stanza therefore establishes the poem’s central paradox. What appears to be deprivation may actually produce a more penetrating awareness. The person without success may understand its value with an intensity unavailable to the person who simply possesses it.
Second Stanza: “Not one of all the purple Host”
Not one of all the purple Host Who took the Flag today Can tell the definition So clear of Victory
The speaker now introduces the victorious soldiers. The “purple Host” suggests a magnificent military company, while the “Flag” functions as the visible emblem of their triumph.
The word “today” makes the victory immediate. These soldiers have just experienced the excitement of conquest. They possess the very thing that the first stanza says the unsuccessful person understands most deeply.
Yet the speaker declares that not one of these victorious soldiers can provide a definition of victory as clear as the defeated soldier can. This claim deepens the paradox established earlier.
The soldiers who have captured the Flag know victory through possession. They have experienced the excitement, satisfaction, and public recognition associated with winning. Their understanding, however, remains limited by the very fact that they have succeeded.
The defeated soldier possesses no Flag and receives no public celebration. Instead, he receives the painful knowledge of what victory means because he is excluded from it.
The speaker’s choice of “definition” is especially interesting. She is not merely saying that the defeated soldier feels victory more intensely; she is suggesting that he can define it more accurately.
A definition ordinarily belongs to the realm of intellectual understanding. Dickinson therefore joins emotion and knowledge. The deepest understanding may not come from detached observation but from experiencing the painful consequences of what one lacks.
The “purple Host” also creates a visually impressive picture of victory. The soldiers appear splendid, powerful, and successful. Yet the speaker quietly strips that outward magnificence of its authority to define the experience.
The victorious soldiers possess the external evidence of success, while the defeated soldier possesses the inward evidence of its meaning. The contrast recalls the speaker’s recurring interest in unseen realities beneath visible circumstances.
Paramahansa Yogananda similarly directs attention toward inner realization rather than merely outward circumstances. He teaches that spiritual progress becomes evident through inner changes such as increasing calmness, joy, understanding, and security.
Thus the speaker’s battlefield becomes something larger than a military scene. The Flag represents outward achievement, while the defeated soldier represents the inward consciousness produced by deprivation.
The stanza ends with the victorious soldiers apparently holding everything that matters. Yet the speaker has already prepared readers to question whether possession itself constitutes the deepest form of understanding.
Third Stanza: “As he defeated – dying”
As he defeated – dying – On whose forbidden ear The distant strain of triumph Burst agonized and clear!
The final stanza brings the reader directly to the defeated soldier. He is not merely unsuccessful; he is “defeated – dying –.” The dashes slow the statement and create a dramatic pause around his terrible condition.
The word “forbidden” is particularly powerful. The soldier’s ear is forbidden to hear victory in the sense that victory does not belong to him. Yet he hears it anyway, and what he hears becomes extraordinarily vivid.
The image “distant strain of triumph” is both musical and military. The victorious soldiers may be celebrating somewhere beyond him, but their sounds reach the dying man. Their triumph becomes audible precisely because he has been excluded from it.
The speaker then introduces the astonishing phrase “agonized and clear.” The sound of victory is beautiful to those who have won, but to the defeated soldier it is agonizing. His suffering makes the meaning of the sound sharper rather than less distinct.
The dying soldier therefore possesses something the victorious soldiers do not: an almost unbearable awareness of what victory means to the person who has been denied it.
The poem ends without offering consolation. The speaker does not pretend that defeat is actually preferable to victory. Instead, she leaves readers contemplating the strange relationship between loss and understanding.
The dying soldier’s position also creates a profound irony. He cannot claim the Flag, participate in the triumph, or survive to enjoy any victory. Nevertheless, he may understand victory more clearly than those who celebrate it.
This final image turns the poem into a riddle about human experience. The reader must consider whether possession, deprivation, suffering, and understanding can ever be separated as neatly as ordinary thinking assumes.
In my earlier essays on Dickinsonian poems, I have discussed the speaker’s tendency to create little dramas that operate as riddles, allowing readers to discover meanings that are not stated directly. That same strategy is evident here.
The battlefield can therefore be read literally while also functioning as a larger representation of human striving. Success may be visible from the outside, while its deepest significance remains hidden within the person who longs for it.
Paramahansa Yogananda explains that true success ultimately involves something deeper than worldly achievement. He describes realization of the divine Self as “the ultimate success,” connecting genuine fulfillment with victory over the limitations of worldly existence.
Dickinson’s speaker does not explicitly make this spiritual assertion, but her drama leaves room for such contemplative musing. The victorious soldiers possess the Flag, while the defeated soldier possesses a painful clarity that outward victory cannot provide.
The poem’s final irony is therefore its most enduring insight: sometimes the person who appears to have lost possesses the clearest understanding of what the winner has gained. Success may belong to one person outwardly while its deepest meaning belongs to another inwardly.
Did you ever notice when you’re out walking In late November how some leaves, Caught by the wind, will kind of skip along beside you, It’s like walking with dogs, they scamper here and there And between your feet,
While most of them don’t budge, They seem to be enjoying a vacation from making green All summer; or maybe after fall has tumbled them From the trees and turned them many shades of brown, They’re just plumb tuckered out.
Driving Southwest in November
Sunday evening we are driving from Muncie to Indianapolis to fetch our granddaughter Samantha back home—after a few miles but even before we get to the Interstate you turn to me and remark about the fantastic colors of the sky: gold-pink-orange-rose-lavender light that
stretches and marbles across the many hued blue. I say it seems that there has to be an ocean over there to make that sky so rowdy with those tones, and then I say there is. You say how paintings like that look fake— but this is a gift.
Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
Emily Dickinson’s “So from the mould”
Emily Dickinson’s “So from the mould” reveals the speaker’s contemplative musing on hidden transformation, suggesting that what appears ordinary or insignificant may suddenly emerge into brilliant and unexpected life.
Introduction and Text of “So from the mould”
In “So from the mould,” the speaker is considering the mysterious transformations that occur beneath ordinary appearances. Bulbs hidden underground eventually rise in “Scarlet and Gold,” while worms emerge from cocoons in unexpected splendor. The speaker then places herself and her reader among those who watch such transformations with wonder.
The images suggest that nature contains powers of transformation that remain concealed until the proper moment. What is hidden from “sagacious eyes” eventually becomes visible, while what appears lowly may become beautiful, elevated, and surprising. The speaker’s playful comparison invites readers to reconsider their assumptions about appearances and potential.
So from the mould
So from the mould Scarlet and Gold Many a Bulb will rise – Hidden away, cunningly, From sagacious eyes.
So from Cocoon Many a Worm Leap so Highland gay, Peasants like me, Peasants like Thee Gaze perplexedly!
Commentary on “So from the mould”
The speaker presents ordinary natural processes as occasions for astonishment. A bulb concealed beneath the earth can suddenly produce brilliant color, while a worm hidden within a cocoon can emerge transformed. The speaker then includes herself and her reader among those who watch such changes without fully understanding their mystery.
First Stanza: “So from the mould”
So from the mould Scarlet and Gold Many a Bulb will rise – Hidden away, cunningly, From sagacious eyes.
The opening phrase, “So from the mould,” immediately directs attention downward, toward the hidden earth from which life emerges. The word “mould” suggests something dark, ordinary, and easily overlooked. Yet from this unimpressive substance, the speaker says, beautiful “Scarlet and Gold” will eventually appear.
The colors “Scarlet and Gold” provide a striking contrast to the darkness associated with mould. Scarlet suggests brilliant red, while gold suggests radiance and preciousness. The speaker therefore transforms an ordinary natural process into something almost royal, as though the earth itself were secretly producing treasures.
The “Bulb” remains concealed while its transformation is taking place. The speaker’s capitalization gives the word an additional prominence, drawing attention to the small object that contains within itself the possibility of remarkable beauty. What cannot yet be seen nevertheless possesses the power to become visible.
The phrase “Hidden away, cunningly” gives the bulb an almost secret intelligence. Nature seems to be concealing its intentions deliberately. The bulb does not announce what it is preparing to become; instead, it remains underground until its transformation can no longer remain concealed.
The expression “sagacious eyes” adds another layer of playful irony. Even wise or perceptive observers cannot necessarily discover what is hidden beneath the surface. Human intelligence has limits, particularly when confronted with processes that unfold silently within nature.
The speaker therefore encourages a humble attitude toward appearances. What seems insignificant may contain something magnificent. The hidden bulb becomes an image of potential that cannot be judged by its present appearance. Its eventual emergence demonstrates that concealed life may be far more remarkable than outward circumstances suggest.
This idea has a spiritual resonance with Paramahansa Yogananda’s teaching that the deepest reality is discovered inwardly. Paramahansa Yogananda explains that meditation awakens “the soul—the immortal, blissful divine consciousness at the innermost core of your being.”
The comparison is especially appropriate because the bulb’s visible flower already exists as an unseen possibility within the hidden bulb. Likewise, the spiritual teaching suggests that divine consciousness exists within the individual before it becomes consciously realized. The visible transformation therefore becomes an image of something inward becoming outwardly perceptible.
In my earlier essays on Dickinsonian poems, I have discussed the speaker’s tendency to discover meanings beyond ordinary appearances. Here, that tendency becomes especially playful because the speaker uses the familiar process of a bulb rising from the earth to suggest the astonishing possibilities concealed beneath the surface.
Second Stanza: “So from Cocoon”
So from Cocoon Many a Worm Leap so Highland gay, Peasants like me, Peasants like Thee Gaze perplexedly!
The second movement shifts from the bulb beneath the earth to the worm within the “Cocoon.” The change continues the poem’s central concern with concealed transformation. Once again, something hidden eventually emerges, but this time the transformation is even more dramatic.
The speaker describes “Many a Worm” that can “Leap so Highland gay.” The phrase creates a humorous picture of unexpected exuberance. The creature that appeared lowly and confined becomes lively and elevated, seeming almost to leap joyfully into a freer existence.
The image “Highland gay” suggests more than physical movement. The phrase gives the emerging creature an atmosphere of freedom, brightness, and exhilaration. The speaker seems delighted by the contrast between the humble creature inside the cocoon and the surprising spectacle produced when its hidden transformation is complete.
The speaker then makes the poem personal by declaring, “Peasants like me.” This expression offers a deliberately humble comparison. She places herself among ordinary people rather than among the “sagacious” observers who might presume to understand everything that nature is doing.
The next line expands the comparison: “Peasants like Thee.” The capitalized “Thee” directly involves the reader. The speaker does not stand apart from the reader as an expert explaining nature. Instead, both speaker and reader are equally limited observers standing before a mystery.
The final word, “perplexedly,” provides the poem with its delightful conclusion. The speaker and reader gaze at the transformation, but neither possesses a complete explanation for its wonder. Their proper response is therefore not intellectual certainty but astonishment.
This perplexity can also be understood spiritually. Paramahansa Yogananda teaches that the deepest truths are not merely matters of outward observation but can be discovered through inward spiritual experience. The great guru describes intuition as “soul knowledge” and says that it provides “clear understanding of truth and duty amidst the confusions of the world.”
The poem does not explicitly identify its natural images with spiritual transformation, yet its language permits such contemplative musing. The hidden bulb and enclosed worm both possess possibilities that ordinary observation cannot immediately recognize. Their emergence reminds the reader that visible circumstances do not necessarily reveal the whole reality of a thing.
The speaker’s use of “Peasants” also prevents the poem from becoming solemn or preachy. She includes herself in the joke. She is not claiming superior wisdom; she is admitting that she, too, can only gaze “perplexedly.” Her humility makes the poem more engaging because wonder becomes a shared human experience.
The speaker finally leaves readers with a charming paradox: those who believe themselves wise may actually be “perplexedly” watching a world whose transformations exceed their understanding. The bulb and the worm therefore become small teachers. Both demonstrate that hidden possibilities can produce visible wonders that surprise everyone who takes the time to look.
The Dangers of Medicalizing Evil: When Does an Explanation Become an Excuse?
When a mother kills her own children, society naturally searches for an explanation. Was she mentally ill? Did postpartum psychosis cause her to lose touch with reality? Did medication contribute to her actions? Did doctors fail to recognize the seriousness of her condition?
These initial inquiries are legitimate and must be investigated carefully. However, there is a growing danger in allowing a medical explanation to become a substitute for personal responsibility, moral judgment, and justice.
Explanation, Not Automatic Excuse
Mental illness exists as part of the human condition, and some forms of mental illness can profoundly affect a person’s ability to understand reality, make decisions, and/or control behavior. Postpartum psychosis is becoming recognized as one such serious psychiatric condition [1], and women who experience it need immediate and appropriate medical attention.
Doctors and other medical professionals have an obligation to recognize dangerous psychiatric conditions and provide competent treatment. When they fail to meet that obligation, their actions should be examined and, when appropriate, held accountable.
However, acknowledging the existence of mental illness does not require society to conclude that every terrible act committed by a mentally ill person was caused by the illness or that the person therefore bears no responsibility for the consequences.
The case of Lindsay Clancy illustrates the difficulty of drawing that line. Clancy, a Massachusetts mother, is accused of killing her three young children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan, in January 2023. Her defense has argued that she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and therefore should not be held criminally responsible for their deaths.
The prosecution has challenged that explanation and presented evidence concerning her mental state, her actions, and her understanding of what she was doing. Her case raises an important question that extends far beyond one courtroom: At what point does explaining a person’s conduct become an excuse for that conduct?
That question does not require us to deny mental illness, minimize postpartum psychosis, or ignore possible failures within the medical profession. Nor does it require us to assume that every person who commits a horrific act while suffering from a psychiatric disorder is simply evil and therefore undeserving of compassion.
The issue is more fundamental: specialists in medicine can help explain what may have happened inside a person’s mind, but they cannot alone determine the moral value of an action or automatically remove personal responsibility for that action.
Those questions belong not only to medicine, but also to the law, to morality, and to society. The distinction is especially important when the victims are children. When a mother kills her own children, public attention can quickly become centered on her diagnosis, her medications, her doctors, and her psychiatric history. Those subjects may be important, but the children must not disappear from the discussion.
Cora was five years old, Dawson was three, and Callan was eight months old when they were murdered. Their deaths were not merely symptoms of a psychiatric disorder or consequences of a medical treatment controversy. They were the deaths of three innocent children, and their lives and deaths must remain at the center of any honest examination of what happened.
The danger of medicalizing evil is therefore not the recognition of mental illness. The danger is allowing a medical diagnosis to become the final explanation for conduct that also demands moral and legal examination. A person may be mentally ill and still understand the difference between right and wrong. A person may receive psychiatric treatment and still make deliberate decisions.
A doctor may make a serious mistake without becoming responsible for every subsequent action of a patient. Conversely, a person may suffer such a profound psychiatric break with reality that the law determines she cannot be held criminally responsible. The challenge is not to choose between compassion and accountability, but to determine honestly when each applies.
The cases of Lindsay Clancy and Andrea Yates demonstrate why this distinction matters. Both cases involve mothers who killed their children and whose mental health became central to the legal proceedings. Both cases raise legitimate questions about postpartum psychiatric illness and medical treatment. Yet neither case can be understood simply by attaching a diagnosis to the defendant.
The facts, the medical evidence, the testimony of experts, the defendant’s actions, and the applicable law must all be considered. Otherwise, society risks replacing one kind of injustice with another: excusing conduct that should be examined carefully while, at the same time, reinforcing the false notion that mentally ill people are inherently dangerous.
The purpose of examining the medicalization of evil is not to condemn those who suffer from mental illness; it is to insist that explanations be supported by evidence and that compassion not become moral confusion. Mental illness deserves understanding and treatment.
Medical professionals deserve fair examination when their decisions are questioned. Defendants deserve due process. But innocent victims deserve justice as well. Understanding why something happened is important; determining who is responsible for what happened is equally important. One should never automatically replace the other.
Lindsay Clancy and the Search for Someone Else to Blame
On January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy killed her three children in the family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Cora was five years old, Dawson was three, and Callan was eight months old. After killing the children, Clancy attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window and suffering severe injuries that left her paralyzed.
The basic fact that the children died at their mother’s hands was never disputed at trial. What was disputed was whether Clancy was criminally responsible for those deaths or whether severe postpartum psychosis had rendered her legally incapable of understanding or controlling what she was doing.
Clancy’s legal defense argued that she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and therefore was not criminally responsible for the killings. Prosecutors presented a very different interpretation. They argued that Clancy understood what she was doing and that the killings were deliberate.
Thus the central question was not simply whether Clancy had a mental illness. The question was whether that illness had reached the level required by Massachusetts law to relieve her of criminal responsibility for the deaths of her children. That distinction is enormous.
A psychiatric diagnosis does not, by itself, answer a legal question. A person can be severely depressed without being incapable of making decisions. A person can experience psychiatric symptoms without losing all understanding of right and wrong.
Furthermore, a person can receive psychiatric treatment without becoming a puppet of the medical system. And a person can suffer from a serious mental illness while still possessing some degree of personal agency. These distinctions are essential if society is going to discuss mental illness honestly without confusing a medical explanation with an automatic excuse for criminal conduct.
The trial lasted nearly six weeks, and the jury deliberated for approximately seven days before the judge declared a mistrial [2] on September 4, 2026. The jurors were unable to reach the unanimous verdict required under Massachusetts law.
Reports indicated that eleven jurors were prepared to acquit Clancy on the ground of lack of criminal responsibility while one juror would not agree, although accounts of the deliberations differed in important respects. Because the jury did not reach a unanimous verdict, Clancy was neither convicted nor found not criminally responsible. Her criminal case therefore remains unresolved, and prosecutors must decide whether to pursue another trial.
The unresolved nature of the case is important. Society should be equally cautious about declaring that Clancy was simply an evil woman who deliberately chose to murder her children and about declaring that psychiatric illness completely explains what happened.
The evidence presented at trial must be considered carefully, and allegations must remain allegations until established through the appropriate legal process. The jury’s inability to reach a unanimous verdict does not prove that the defense was right, nor does it prove that the prosecution was right. It demonstrates something else: determining the relationship between mental illness and criminal responsibility can be extraordinarily difficult.
The Difference between Illness and Responsibility
One of the greatest dangers in discussing cases such as Clancy’s is falling into one of two extremes. One extreme is cruelty—the belief that mental illness is merely an excuse and that psychiatric evidence should simply be ignored.
The opposite extreme is equally dangerous—the belief that once mental illness has been identified, personal responsibility automatically disappears. Neither position is reasonable. Mental illness can profoundly affect human behavior, but the existence of mental illness does not automatically settle the question of responsibility.
Postpartum psychosis is a particularly serious psychiatric condition. A person experiencing psychosis may hear voices, suffer delusions, or lose an ordinary understanding of reality. Such a condition can require immediate psychiatric intervention.
It is not imaginary, and it should never be treated as a character defect or dismissed as ordinary depression. Recognizing the seriousness of postpartum psychosis, however, does not mean that every criminal act committed by a person experiencing psychiatric symptoms is automatically the product of psychosis or automatically excused by it.
This principle is not unique to psychiatry. If a person has epilepsy, investigators must still determine what happened during a particular event. If a person has diabetes, the diagnosis does not automatically explain every decision that person makes.
If a person takes a prescription drug, the fact that the drug has possible side effects does not automatically establish that the drug caused a particular action. Likewise, a psychiatric diagnosis does not automatically establish that a defendant was incapable of understanding or controlling a criminal act. The relevant question remains what the evidence demonstrates about the person’s mental state at the time of the conduct.
There is another important reason to resist careless medicalization: it can harm people who suffer from mental illness. The American Psychiatric Association has emphasized that most people with mental illness are not violent and that people with mental illness are frequently victims of violence themselves [3].
When society begins treating mental illness as synonymous with dangerousness, innocent people who need treatment may become afraid of being judged, hospitalized, or stigmatized.
Mental illness deserves treatment and compassion. But mental illness should not become a universal explanation for human evil. To do so weakens moral reasoning while simultaneously reinforcing false stereotypes about millions of people who have never harmed anyone.
Compassion for those who suffer from mental illness requires that society understand the disease accurately. It does not require abandoning the concept of individual responsibility whenever a psychiatric diagnosis is present.
Andrea Yates: A Case That Changed the Conversation
The Andrea Yates case provides an important historical comparison. On June 20, 2001, Yates drowned her five children in the bathtub of her Houston-area home. The children were Noah, seven; John, five; Paul, three; Luke, two; and Mary, six months old.
Yates had a significant history of severe psychiatric illness, including hospitalizations and suicide attempts. Her legal defense argued that she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and was living in a delusional world in which she believed she was saving her children from Satan [4].
The horror of those killings and the seriousness of Yates’ mental illness existed simultaneously. One fact did not cancel out the other. Five children were dead, and their mother had committed the killings.
At the same time, the evidence concerning Yates’s psychiatric condition was extraordinarily significant to the question of whether she could legally be held responsible for those deaths.
Yates was initially convicted of murder, but that conviction was later overturned. The appellate court concluded that false testimony from prosecution psychiatrist Park Dietz concerning a nonexistent Law & Order television episode could have affected the jury’s decision.
Dietz had testified about an episode supposedly involving a woman who drowned her children, was diagnosed with postpartum depression, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The Texas Court of Appeals determined that the testimony was material to the case and that the conviction could not stand [5].
This history matters because it demonstrates how enormously influential psychiatric testimony can become in a criminal trial. Expert testimony can help a jury understand complicated medical conditions, but expert testimony must also be examined carefully. A person’s testimony does not become correct merely because he or she possesses medical credentials. Evidence must still be accurate, relevant, and subject to scrutiny.
At Yates’ second trial in 2006, the jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity. Her attorneys never disputed that she had killed the five children. Instead, they argued that her severe mental illness meant that she could not be held criminally responsible under the applicable legal standard.
The jury accepted that argument, and Yates was committed to Kerrville State Hospital, a state psychiatric hospital, where she currently still remains—apparently choosing to remain under care instead being released into the community.
That result illustrates an important principle that is frequently misunderstood. A finding of legal insanity does not mean that nothing terrible happened. It does not mean that the victims cease to matter. It does not mean that drowning five children becomes morally acceptable. It means that the jury determined that the defendant’s mental condition met the legal standard for avoiding criminal responsibility.
That determination is very different from saying, “She was sick, therefore nothing she did matters.” Everything she did mattered. Five children died. Their lives were destroyed. Their family was devastated.
The legal question was whether the law should hold their mother criminally responsible given the condition of her mind at the time of the killings. That distinction must remain clear whenever society discusses medical explanations for horrific behavior.
When the Victims Disappear
Perhaps the greatest danger of medicalizing evil is that the victims can gradually disappear from the story. The discussion becomes focused on diagnoses: Was it postpartum psychosis? Was it depression? Was it bipolar disorder? Was the medication appropriate? Should the hospital have admitted her? Did the psychiatrist miss warning signs? Those questions may all be important, but they are not the only questions.
Cora Clancy was five years old. Dawson Clancy was three. Callan Clancy was eight months old. Noah Yates was seven. John Yates was five. Paul Yates was three. Luke Yates was two. Mary Yates was six months old. They were not psychiatric case studies.
They were children. They had names, families, personalities, futures, and relationships. Their lives had value apart from whatever diagnosis, treatment history, or legal argument later became part of the story.
Their deaths should not become merely illustrations in a debate about psychiatric diagnosis. A society that values compassion must have compassion for innocent victims as well as suffering defendants. That does not require hatred of the defendant, and it does not require denying mental illness. It simply requires remembering that an explanation for an action is not the same thing as a moral evaluation of that action.
Two things can be true at the same time: a person can be desperately ill, and an innocent person can be deliberately killed. The difficult task is determining how the first fact affected responsibility for the second. Refusing to acknowledge one fact does not make the other fact disappear.
When the victim is a child, this moral distinction becomes even more important. Children have no ability to choose their parents, control their circumstances, or protect themselves from the decisions of adults.
They depend upon adults precisely because adults are expected to exercise judgment on their behalf. When that protection fails catastrophically, society has a duty to remember the children rather than allowing the entire public conversation to revolve around the suffering of the accused.
Compassion for a defendant and compassion for the victims are not competing moral obligations. A mature, well-functioning society must be capable of extending both. To remember the victims is not cruelty. To insist upon personal responsibility is not hatred. To recognize mental illness is not surrender. These principles can and should exist together.
The Temptation to Blame the Medical Profession
Another danger of medicalizing evil is the temptation to transfer responsibility entirely to doctors, psychiatrists, hospitals, or medications. Doctors should absolutely be held accountable when they commit malpractice.
If a physician fails to recognize a dangerous psychiatric condition, that failure should be investigated. If a hospital ignores warning signs, that should be investigated. If medication is prescribed negligently, that should be investigated. Medical professionals deal with human lives and should be held to high standards.
But there is a critical difference between medical negligence and responsibility for a crime. The Clancy case illustrates this distinction particularly well because the medical care she received before the killings has become a major part of the public discussion.
Her civil attorney has alleged that healthcare providers failed her, including claims involving diagnosis and psychiatric treatment. Those allegations are serious, but they remain allegations in a separate civil proceeding.
The proper response to those allegations is to examine medical records, treatment decisions, professional standards, and expert testimony. If negligence is established, the responsible parties should be held accountable. But the existence of a malpractice allegation does not, by itself, prove that medical providers caused the deaths of the children [6].
There is a profound difference between saying, “The medical system should have done more,” and saying, “The medical system caused these murders.” The first statement might ultimately be proven by evidence. The second requires a much stronger demonstration of causation.
A physician cannot control every thought or action of a patient. Psychiatric treatment is not mathematics. Doctors work with incomplete information, changing symptoms, uncertain diagnoses, and patients whose conditions can improve or deteriorate rapidly.
The medical profession should be accountable for negligence when negligence occurs. But accountability must be based upon evidence rather than upon the understandable human desire to find someone else to blame after an unimaginable event. The fact that a terrible outcome occurred does not establish that any person who interacted with the defendant beforehand caused that outcome.
Hindsight Is Not Proof
Horrific acts create an extraordinary temptation to look backward and assume that the warning signs were obvious. After a crime occurs, every earlier symptom can suddenly appear significant. A doctor’s appointment becomes a warning. A medication becomes a clue. A strange statement becomes evidence. A missed diagnosis becomes the turning point. But people make decisions without knowing the future.
Doctors diagnose patients with incomplete information, and psychiatric symptoms can be ambiguous. A medical professional can make a terrible mistake without intending harm, just as a patient can make a terrible decision without being completely controlled by illness. This situation remains the reason that malpractice claims are judged according to evidence and professional standards rather than simply by the terrible outcome.
The same principle should apply when the question is criminal responsibility. A terrible outcome does not automatically prove that a particular earlier decision caused it. Otherwise, every tragedy would become proof of someone’s negligence.
Justice cannot operate that way. It must distinguish between unfortunate circumstances, medical errors, genuine causation, and the independent decisions made by the person who ultimately committed the act.
Hindsight can also distort our understanding of psychiatric illness. Once we know that someone committed a terrible act, ordinary behavior before the crime may suddenly appear sinister. Yet families and doctors do not possess a crystal ball. A mother may be exhausted, depressed, anxious, or behaving unusually without anyone knowing that she will eventually become psychotic or violent.
It is precisely for these reasons that better research, screening, education, and treatment for postpartum psychiatric disorders are so important. The answer to uncertainty should be better medicine and better evidence—not the assumption that every unfortunate outcome proves that someone else was morally responsible.
Explanation Is Necessary—but Explanation Has Limits
Human beings naturally want causes. When something terrible happens, we ask why?That desire is understandable and necessary. Medical science advances by searching for causes.
Criminal investigations search for motives and circumstances. Courts examine mental states. Families search for explanations because accepting an apparently senseless tragedy is extraordinarily difficult. But there is a difference between finding a cause and fabricating an excuse.
A difficult childhood may help explain violence, but it does not automatically eliminate responsibility. Alcohol may help explain a person’s behavior, but intoxication does not automatically excuse a crime. A psychiatric diagnosis may explain unusual thoughts and behavior, but it does not automatically prove legal insanity.
The same principle applies to medication and medical treatment. A medication may influence a person’s condition, but it does not automatically establish that the medication caused a crime. Inadequate medical care may contribute to psychiatric deterioration, but it does not automatically establish that a doctor caused a murder. Each claim requires evidence.
These claims are not expressions of cruelty; they are expressions of intellectual honesty. If society cares about justice, it cannot decide that a diagnosis, a medication, or a doctor’s mistake must be the answer simply because that explanation makes a terrible event easier to understand.
There is also a danger in making the medical explanation too powerful. If society begins to assume that people who commit horrific acts are simply products of diseases, medications, childhood experiences, or healthcare failures, we may gradually weaken the concept of individual agency. Human beings are influenced by circumstances, but they are not merely collections of circumstances.
The law exists partly because society must distinguish between people who are genuinely incapable of understanding their actions and people who understand their actions but make terrible choices. That distinction is difficult, but difficulty does not make it unnecessary. In fact, the difficulty is precisely why the evidence must be examined so carefully.
Compassion without Moral Confusion
The strongest argument against medicalizing evil is not an argument for cruelty. It is an argument for moral clarity. We can say that a mentally ill mother deserves treatment. We can say that postpartum psychosis requires urgent medical attention. We can say that a negligent doctor should be held accountable. We can say that psychiatric patients deserve dignity and that families deserve support.
We can also say that killing innocent children is an act of such profound seriousness that neither the victims nor the question of responsibility should disappear beneath medical terminology. These ideas do not contradict one another. Compassion does not require confusion. In fact, genuine compassion requires us to face reality honestly.
If a defendant is truly insane under the law, justice requires recognition of that fact. But if a defendant is responsible for a deliberate crime, justice also requires that responsibility not automatically be transferred to a diagnosis, a prescription bottle, a psychiatrist, or a hospital. The law must examine the facts.
Medicine must examine the illness. Medical professionals must be held accountable when they truly fail their patients. And society must continue to ask moral questions that medicine alone cannot answer.
There is another reason moral clarity matters: the victims deserve it. When children are murdered, society should not speak of them only as symptoms of their mother’s psychiatric condition. They had names, personalities, potential futures, and relationships. Their lives had value independent of the medical or legal circumstances surrounding their deaths.
Whatever ultimately happens in the Clancy case, Cora, Dawson, and Callan should not become merely evidence supporting one side of a debate about postpartum psychosis. They were children whose lives ended violently. Remembering that fact is not a rejection of compassion for their mother; it is recognition that compassion must include the innocent.
Physicians Cannot Cure Evil
The medicalization of evil begins with a reasonable desire: the desire to understand why terrible things happen. Understanding is valuable. Medical science has an obligation to understand psychiatric disease, identify warning signs, develop effective treatments, and help families recognize when emergency intervention is necessary.
Mental illness is real. Postpartum psychosis is real. Psychiatric treatment can fail. Doctors can make mistakes. None of those truths should be denied. But neither should society deny another truth: human beings can be influenced by illness without necessarily being completely controlled by it.
The difficult task is determining where illness ends and responsibility begins. That determination cannot be made simply by attaching a diagnosis to a person after a terrible crime has occurred.
The Lindsay Clancy case forces Americans to confront that question. Clancy’s legal defense argued that postpartum psychosis made her not criminally responsible for the deaths of her three children.
Prosecutors challenged that account and presented evidence supporting their position that she understood what she was doing. After weeks of testimony, the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict, and the judge declared a mistrial. The case therefore remains unresolved.
Whatever happens in a future proceeding, the existence of a psychiatric defense should not cause the public to assume that medical illness automatically settles the question of responsibility. The law must determine responsibility according to the evidence and the applicable legal standard.
Andrea Yates’s case produced a different result. After her first conviction was overturned because of erroneous expert testimony, a second jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity, and she was committed to a psychiatric hospital. Her case demonstrates that the legal system can recognize profound mental illness while still treating the underlying conduct as an extraordinarily serious matter.
An insanity verdict does not mean that the children did not die. It does not mean that their deaths were unimportant. It means that the law reached a particular conclusion about the defendant’s mental state and criminal responsibility. That distinction must be preserved because without it, the words “mental illness,” “insanity,” “explanation,” and “excuse” begin to mean the same thing when they do not.
These cases do not teach us that mental illness is irrelevant. They teach us that mental illness and responsibility are difficult subjects that must be examined with extraordinary care.
We should reject the cruelty of blaming every mentally ill person for being dangerous. But we should also reject the opposite mistake: assuming that every terrible act committed by a mentally ill person is nothing more than a symptom of disease.
A diagnosis is not a verdict. A prescription is not a confession. A doctor’s mistake is not automatically the cause of a murder. And an explanation is not necessarily an excuse.
The children at the center of these tragedies deserve to be remembered not simply as evidence in a psychiatric debate, but as human beings whose lives were taken.
For those reasons, we must be careful about medicalizing evil. Medicine has an important role in explaining human suffering. It can diagnose disease, relieve pain, and sometimes save a person from the destruction caused by mental illness. But medicine cannot answer every question about right and wrong.
Those questions require moral judgment, personal responsibility, and justice. However complicated the medical evidence becomes, we must never allow the innocent victims to disappear. Understanding the reasons that a terrible act occurred is important.
Determining whether illness contributed to that act is important. Holding negligent professionals accountable, when the evidence establishes negligence, is important. But none of those responsibilities gives society permission to forget the most fundamental fact of all: innocent children died. An explanation may help us understand evil. It does not automatically excuse it.
The Lunatic Fringe
The dangers of medicalizing evil do not end with the courtroom. They can also be seen in the extraordinary public reaction to Lindsay Clancy, where sympathy for a mentally ill mother has, in some cases, evolved into something far more troubling.
Perhaps the most troubling development surrounding the Clancy case is the extraordinary identification of some women with Lindsay Clancy. More than 300 supporters gathered outside the courthouse during the trial, and social media has produced a large movement of women who not only defend Clancy but appear to see themselves in her.
On TikTok, women have posted emotional videos involving their own babies and, in some cases, have gone so far as to imitate the circumstances of the killings. What began as sympathy for postpartum mental illness has, in its more extreme manifestations, become something deeply disturbing: the romanticizing and even reenactment of a mother’s murder of her children.
Even more disturbing is the campaign against Patrick Clancy. Despite the complete absence of evidence that Patrick killed his children—and despite the fact that Lindsay Clancy’s own defense attorneys have never claimed that he did—large numbers of women on TikTok, Facebook, and other social-media platforms have convinced themselves that Patrick murdered the children and framed Lindsay.
Patrick was not charged, the defense did not present that theory, and there is no evidence implicating him. Yet the conspiracy has become so widespread that his attorney has been forced to publicly demand that the accusations stop.
The absurdity of this theory should be obvious. It requires believing that Patrick murdered his three children, somehow staged the evidence against Lindsay, and then maintained an elaborate deception while publicly supporting the woman who supposedly had been framed.
And he managed all of this subterfuge without the defense itself discovering or presenting any evidence of such a conspiracy. Yet for some supporters, the absence of evidence appears to have become evidence of a cover-up.
There is something profoundly unsettling about this development. Women are entitled to demand better treatment for postpartum psychiatric illness. They are entitled to sympathize with a severely mentally ill mother.
But when sympathy becomes identification with the killer, when women reenact the killings on social media, and when a grieving father is transformed into a murderer without a shred of evidence, the issue has moved beyond mental-health advocacy. It has become a troubling form of collective moral distortion.
Cora, Dawson, and Callan should never have become the means by which their mother’s defenders excuse her, their father is falsely accused, and murder is transformed into a story about female victimhood. Whatever ultimately happened inside Lindsay Clancy’s mind, the public should not lose its own mind trying to explain it.
some perform magic some stand & watch some educate some meditate some preach some pray some peep into your heart some reap the harvest of art some cogitate alone some congregate on street corners some bite some sport a leaky grin
some pass by your windows as silently & unobtrusively as shadows
The boat with furled sail chiseled on his tombstone prompts George Gray to speculate about his stalled life.
Introduction and Text of “George Gray”
In Edgar Lee Masters’ “George Gray” from the American classic Spoon River Anthology, the speaker philosophizes about his lost opportunities to infuse some meaning into his life.
The speaker’s tombstone features a boat “with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.” This carving motivates George to dramatize his speculation that like the still boat his own life seemed to go nowhere.
George Gray
I have studied many times The marble which was chiseled for me— A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor. In truth it pictures not my destination But my life. For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment; Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid; Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances. Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life. And now I know that we must lift the sail And catch the winds of destiny Wherever they drive the boat. To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire— It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.
Commentary on “George Gray”
In Edgar Lee Masters’ “George Gray,” the speaker is musing on his life as he philosophizes about the lost opportunities that might have given meaning to his life.
First Movement: A Twisted Symbolism
I have studied many times The marble which was chiseled for me— A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor. In truth it pictures not my destination But my life.
A boat with a furled sail resting peacefully in a harbor symbolizes a life well lived and a soul resting comfortably in the arms of the divine after that life has accomplished its finish—an appropriate and beautiful image for a tombstone monument. However, in the case of George Gray, the symbolism takes a very different twist.
George begins by stating that he has contemplated that boat image “many times,” and he has concluded that it does not represent his life’s “destination” but the course of his life itself.
Second Movement: Fear of Taking a Chance
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment; Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid; Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
George then offers the reasons that the boat image designates his course through life rather than his life’s destination. George says that he was offered “love,” but he “shrank from its disillusionment.” He would not have believed the old adage that is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
George then claims that he had the opportunity to experience “sorrow,” but he would not allow himself the luxury of that experience simply because he was “afraid.” Quite likely, the “sorrow” arose as he declined the offer of love.
A part of George wanted to return the love, but his brittle nature rejected it and along with the sorrow caused by the rejection of love. George also did not allow himself to engage in “ambition” because of dreading the “chances.” He failed to play the game because he might lose—which made it a forgone conclusion that he would not win.
Third Movement: A Hunger for Meaning in Life
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life. And now I know that we must lift the sail And catch the winds of destiny Wherever they drive the boat.
Even as George was allowing love, ambition, and other emotions to slip through his fingers, he felt a “hunger[ ] for meaning in [his] life.” He could not foretell that meaning resided in the unknown.
But now George understands that to achieve meaning one must take chances; one must “lift the sail,” “catch the winds of destiny,” and be willing to go “[w]herever they drive the boat.”
Fourth Movement: Torture Every Which Way
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire— It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.
George admits that “putt[ing] meaning in one’ life may end in madness.” The loss of love, the despair brought on by sorrow, the dreaded dashing of ambitious hopes all could lead to “madness.” But on the other hand, George now believes that “a life without meaning is the torture / Of restlessness and vague desire.”
Such a life of torture, he assumes, must be worse than the madness of unrequited love and failed ambitions. George metaphorically likens such a passionless life as his own to a “boat longing for the sea yet afraid.” Thus the only emotion he actually lived with was fear and that emotion proved to be torture.
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