Behold the Man
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00 The story is very provocative. 02 br
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00 I tried telling my dad about it, but when I mentioned that it begins with a man in a crippled time-machine, he remembered that he had something better to do! 02 br
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00 The story is very controversial if Jesus means anything to you. It's also stunningly clever. I'm still blown away by the audacity of the author. Especially when I think when it was written. Anyone? 02 br
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00 Trent 0-
Top answer
I've read it a long time ago as a child and am now just revisiting its themes as well as suffering the misfortune of my personal life too closely matching Karl's - although born a year after it was written I would have to say that in its time it would not have been considered all that controversial since there was a plethora of libertines exploring the complexities of society; it’s inherent hypocrisies as well as Orwellian visions of the future in a corporate/consumerist utopia (think Rollerball, Silent running, Blade runner & Logan’s run – or even THX1138). Although suffering from poor prose (who am I to talk) in parts; it is an excellent examination of a doomed life and by placing the character in a position whereby with full knowledge of his fate in assuming the role of Christ he is in fact committing suicide – an act that in his own time and place would have him pilloried by his contemporizes but in creating the “myth” of a sacrificial martyr he gives rise some 2000 years later to the very society that arguably created him – a forlorn Jungian Individual. I think that it suffers from being a Novella; in that whilst having a brilliant premise, strong characterization and deft touches of irony; Jesus himself is handicapped and in the time of Karl’s life would have probably been in an institution of some sort or locked in an attic and shunned by “***-fearing Christians”; He does not examine/question closely enough the time-travel dilemma that is presented to Karl: to accept the role thrust upon him and create a world which he loathes so much he wanted to kill himself or to enter the potential paradox of altering the timeline to who knows what (would the Roman Empire had fallen without the influx of the new age religion of Christianity).
- I've read it a long time ago as a child and am now just revisiting its themes as well as suffering the misfortune of my personal life too closely matching Karl's - although born a year after it was written I would have to say that in its time it would not have been considered all that controversial since there was a plethora of libertines exploring the complexities of society; it’s inherent hypocrisies as well as Orwellian visions of the future in a corporate/consumerist utopia (think Rollerball, Silent running, Blade runner & Logan’s run – or even THX1138).
- Although suffering from poor prose (who am I to talk) in parts; it is an excellent examination of a doomed life and by placing the character in a position whereby with full knowledge of his fate in assuming the role of Christ he is in fact committing suicide – an act that in his own time and place would have him pilloried by his contemporizes but in creating the “myth” of a sacrificial martyr he gives rise some 2000 years later to the very society that arguably created him – a forlorn Jungian Individual.
- I think that it suffers from being a Novella; in that whilst having a brilliant premise, strong characterization and deft touches of irony; Jesus himself is handicapped and in the time of Karl’s life would have probably been in an institution of some sort or locked in an attic and shunned by “***-fearing Christians”; He does not examine/question closely enough the time-travel dilemma that is presented to Karl: to accept the role thrust upon him and create a world which he loathes so much he wanted to kill himself or to enter the potential paradox of altering the timeline to who knows what (would the Roman Empire had fallen without the influx of the new age religion of Christianity).
- All that being said this book is not really about Christ or Time Travel but about our conflicting attitudes to suicide Vs the ultimate sacrifice one can make for others: The Sociopath who kills himself before he becomes a danger to others and is dismissed as a sad loner destined for **** Vs the Sociopath that charges the machine gun nest in the battlefield for more or less the same reasons yet is posthumously awarded military honors and hero status for his sacrifice.
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