That is a fair point to make! When writing that part of my post, I was thinking about two things that I didn't explictly mention. First of all, I was thinking about it in terms of his planned future trajectory at the start of the series. That is, his father was the chief of police, and Light himself intended to follow in his footsteps and work in the criminal justice system. Within that context, and considering his particular character flaws, it wouldn't be difficult for him to fall into a more mundane kind of corruption in his pursuit of justice.
So, I didn't mean that it's impossible for him to have turned out any other way, but rather that his tragedy isn't solely because he encountered the Death Note, and in some ways he was already heading down a road which had the potential to destroy him. In other words, I was thinking about Light in the context of Shakespearean fatal flaws, and how much his arc is shaped by that. Which is in turn what makes it hard for me to shake the sense of doom when I think about him and his future in a world without the Death Note. The seeds of the tragedy are in him, and so a part of me expects to see them sprout. But you're absolutely right in that it's also not certain that things would have turned out that way, and that other events and experiences could have also happened to change his trajectory, including simply getting the chance to grow up a little more before being in a position of power.
I guess, for me, the difference is if I'm looking at him through the lens of a person, or through the lens of a narrative. As a person: absolutely, yes, he could have grown up into a much better person than he turned out to be. There's both good and bad in him, as there is in any person, and so in that sense he could have gone down another road. But if I'm looking at him through the lens of a narrative... the narrative framework I've been given is that of a tragedy, and since the tragedy is not something done to him, but rather born from something within him—it feels impossible for him to escape.
ahhh, hopefully you don't mind getting such a long comment! I don't know how coherent this was (I feel like I said the exact same thing like three times, only phrased slightly differently, lol), but your comment sparked something in me. I had this moment of, "huh, I agree with what they're saying, but what I wrote was something different, and I also agreed with that. So why is that?" And thinking through that helped me be more able to examine my feelings and be able to figure out and articulate my thoughts a bit better than I could before. So thank you for that!
I also want to say, I love how you phrased this: and most of them are not given the rope to hang themselves so surely as Light does. Yes. Yes, absolutely, and I think that also ties into why I feel that sense of pity for him.
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So, I didn't mean that it's impossible for him to have turned out any other way, but rather that his tragedy isn't solely because he encountered the Death Note, and in some ways he was already heading down a road which had the potential to destroy him. In other words, I was thinking about Light in the context of Shakespearean fatal flaws, and how much his arc is shaped by that. Which is in turn what makes it hard for me to shake the sense of doom when I think about him and his future in a world without the Death Note. The seeds of the tragedy are in him, and so a part of me expects to see them sprout. But you're absolutely right in that it's also not certain that things would have turned out that way, and that other events and experiences could have also happened to change his trajectory, including simply getting the chance to grow up a little more before being in a position of power.
I guess, for me, the difference is if I'm looking at him through the lens of a person, or through the lens of a narrative. As a person: absolutely, yes, he could have grown up into a much better person than he turned out to be. There's both good and bad in him, as there is in any person, and so in that sense he could have gone down another road. But if I'm looking at him through the lens of a narrative... the narrative framework I've been given is that of a tragedy, and since the tragedy is not something done to him, but rather born from something within him—it feels impossible for him to escape.
ahhh, hopefully you don't mind getting such a long comment! I don't know how coherent this was (I feel like I said the exact same thing like three times, only phrased slightly differently, lol), but your comment sparked something in me. I had this moment of, "huh, I agree with what they're saying, but what I wrote was something different, and I also agreed with that. So why is that?" And thinking through that helped me be more able to examine my feelings and be able to figure out and articulate my thoughts a bit better than I could before. So thank you for that!
I also want to say, I love how you phrased this: and most of them are not given the rope to hang themselves so surely as Light does. Yes. Yes, absolutely, and I think that also ties into why I feel that sense of pity for him.