The most fascinating part of Confessions
for me is when St. Augustine talks about the incident where he steals the pears
with his friends. He goes into this whole thing about how people do things for
the sake of the sinful act itself. He admits that he wasn’t stealing because he
was lacking in some way but because of a “greedy love of doing wrong”. Augustine
goes on to say, “For no sooner had I picked them than I drew them away, and
tasted nothing in them but my own sin, which I relished and enjoyed. If any
part of one of those pears passed my lips, it was the sin that gave it flavor.
I really liked the way he wrote this and it almost sums up why he committed
this crime. He’s giving this completely raw insight into his life and really
into human nature because this love of sin is universal. Another interesting
point to this is when he talks about how he would never had done this if he
were alone. This communal act of sinning I found very intriguing, earlier in Book
II he says “…I used to pretend that I had done things I had not done at all,
because I was afraid that innocence would be taken for cowardice and chastity
for weakness.” Here you can see where the act of sinning is intertwined with
some sort of companionship. I won’t pretend like I know exactly why this occurs
but I have to say I’ve seen it enough to know it’s true. In 5th
grade me and my friend took a sharpie and drew inside of the school slide at
recess, I know this is really stupid but why did we do it? Because we weren’t
supposed to and I guarantee neither of us would have done it if we weren’t
together enjoying the pure act of doing something wrong.
For the sake of convenience, Ms. Ruff commented on Danielle's post "Define a Saint."
ReplyDeleteI commented on Danielle's post "Define a Saint" and also commented on Cody Martin's "Babies are evil, despicable creatures" so I'm DOUBLE studious this week.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to me too that he was able to see in his lost state how much he enjoyed doing what he knew was not good, and knew he wouldn't have done it without company. It shows that no matter how lost, we still have a concept of wrong actions and our twisted motivations for acting them out.
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