War According to the Artful Dodger

After getting sidetracked for a while, I recently resumed reading Oliver Twist. One passage in particular stood out to me as I read it several nights ago, and I thought it would be worth sharing.

To set this up, the pure and innocent character of Oliver is in the midst of being indoctrinated into a band of young pickpockets headed by the cunning and self-interested Fagin. One of Fagin's most gifted boys, the artful Dodger, is attempting to help Oliver overcome his intrinsic moral objections to adopting a criminal lifestyle:

'If you don't take pocket-handkechers and watches,' said the Dodger, reducing the conversation to the level of Oliver's capacity, 'some other cove will; so that the coves that lose 'em will be all the worse, and you'll be all the worse too, and nobody half a ha'p'orth the better, except the chaps wot gets them--and you've just as good a right to them as they have.'

Fagin commends this explanation and directs the impressionable Oliver to take the Dodger's word for it; he being a boy who "understands the catechism of his trade."

Within the larger context of the book, I think what Dickens wants us to be aware of are the underhanded, often imperceptible ways in which society is taught to accept and even perpetuate various forms of violent exploitation (particularly in this book, systematized, class-based poverty). Taking this a step further (and I'm sure this will roll a few eyeballs belonging to some of you who think I sound like a broken record) I couldn't help but think while reading this how similar the Dodger's enticement is to many contemporary justifications for war.

What the Dodger has successfully done is create an argument which appeals to both the altruistic and the selfish aspects of human nature. People are going to get robbed; that is a fact of life. If indeed people must be robbed, wouldn't they be better off in the end if a good person like you did the robbing? There's no telling what a very bad person might do to the poor soul in the process of robbing them. Furthermore, not only will the person getting robbed be better off if you do the robbing, but you will better your own situation in the process. Everyone wins!

It is worth adding here that in a later conversation with Bill Sykes, Fagin reveals that he sees great promise in the future criminal career of Oliver (a career which will almost strictly profit Fagin himself). However, the key would be to entice the boy to commit his first robbery; then and only then would Oliver fall securely into Fagin's pocket. There he could develop into the next Bill Sykes (but conveniently less strong-willed), who, in addition to burglary, would not shy away from taking a person's life if he saw fit.

I admonish the reader to seek a deeper sensitivity to the sly way in which our societies are sold a proverbial bill of goods relating to matters of war. What the Dodger does not disclose to Oliver is that one's perceived righteousness in carrying out an immoral act does not make the action any less evil. This I believe includes supposed "necessary" evils, as well as those which seem "natural" or inherent to our present reality as robbery in this case was made out to be.

I also found it interesting that Fagin refers to the Dodger's explanation as being an illustration of the "catechism" of the criminal trade; the term catechism being typically used in a religious sense to describe an outline of the beliefs within a given faith. This is another aspect of the way we think about war which I think we need to be keenly aware of. In accepting the rationale for--thus necessarily, acts of and loss of innocent life resulting from--war and warfare, we are not simply making a one-time decision or casting our vote for a single issue; we are choosing to adopt an entire system of belief.

We must also seek an awareness of the principalities (to use the old Biblical term) into whose control we place ourselves when we affirm the tenets of such a "catechism." In many cases, one well-intentioned act can have far-reaching repercussions which place control of our lives (as well as the lives of countless others) in the hands of very dark forces that seek only to desensitize us and further justify increasingly abominable acts.