4. Owen claims to settle once and for all the question of his father's sanity. Does he do so? Do you think his father is sane or insane? Is Owen sane? What sort of criteria would you use to differentiate moral conviction from insanity?

[Jen]

4. Owen claims, in his account of his life, to settle once and for all the question of his father's sanity. Does he do so? Do you think his father is sane or insane? Is Owen sane? What sort of criteria would you use to differentiate moral conviction from insanity?

[Zombie]

I don't think any of them suffered any actual mental illness. They had strong beliefs and convictions which might seem like insanity to others who wouldn't be motivated to that course of action, but from the narrative I didn't think they were insane.

[Eadie]

Many people then and later believed that John Brown was insane. This novel, however, conveys the message that Brown was insane only if slavery and white supremacy were sane. As Owen expresses it, his father had a capacity singular among white men to see the world from the black man's point of view. From that perspective the insane became sane, and vice versa. "Something deep within [John Brown's] soul, regardless of his own skin color ... went out to the souls of American Negroes," Owen writes,
so that he was able to ally himself with them in their struggle against slavery and American racialism, not merely because he believed they were in the right, but because he believed that somehow he himself was one of them.... Father's progression from activist to martyr, his slow march to willed disaster, can be viewed, not as a descent into madness, but as a reasonable progression -- especially if one consider the political strength of those who in those days meant to keep chattel slavery the law of the land.... due to our obsession, we were, as it were, insane. Which to the Negroes, to Lyman, made us perfectly comprehensible and trustworthy -- sane.

[[deleted user]]

I like Eadie's point about what sane and insane meant in context of the book.

I saw John Brown as a kind of cult leader, he inspired loyalty, dedication and love but he didn't always make the wisest decisions.

From the narrative I don't think they were insane so much as possessed by what they believed was right.

[John]

Owen seems to me to be agnostic on his father's sanity. John Brown claimed to hear the voice of God, and this voice lead him to kill other men. If he didn't hear God's voice, isn't he actually insane? Is it possible to be morally correct, yet insane. Or is it clearer to suggest, that in a morally insane society, that only insanity is moral?

[Diane]

Again, John gives me a lot to think about. I like your answer especially the insane society of slavery.

[Kristel]

I felt that there was definite mental illness in members of this family. Fred, Owen and even the father. I think that Owen was able to take what was good in his father and lead his father by the nose and after the horrible killing, I think the father was definitely mentally ill.

I do not think that only insanity is moral. I do agree that we have lost morality in these times and one can only imagine where that is leading us.

I am sorry but I do not feel they were morally right to kill. I think they were morally right to oppose slavery but not to take the law into their own hands.

[John]

Kristel wrote: "I think they were morally right to oppose slavery but not to take the law into their own hands."

That was certainly the main line view of even radical abolitionists at the time. Banks suggests that Douglas supported Brown's actions, but doubted their utility, but given Banks's liberality with fact, I won't accept that until I see it in Douglas's writing myself.

What about escaping slaves, are they justified in using violence?

[Kristel]

John wrote: "Kristel wrote: "I think they were morally right to oppose slavery but not to take the law into their own hands."

That was certainly the main line view of even radical abolitionists at the time. Ba..."
I think they were under the circumstances. They often were in danger of losing their lives. But the Bible tells us that slaves should be obedient to their masters but it doesn't say that the slave owner is just in having slaves.

The people that Browns killed if the book is anywhere near the truth were Ruffians who didn't even own slaves.

I think that if Brown would have done more work on the front end to make sure that the slaves would have actually joined in the insurrection, then the plan had merit but without Douglas joining or being sure the slaves would actually join, it was an act of martyrdom. It was sad to take people with you when you knew you would die. I felt sorry for the naive members. And I think the southerners that killed people trying to surrender or escape was also very wrong and an inexcusable acts of violence.

[Pip]

I thought that there were enough hints in Owen's story (but he was an unreliable narrator, right?) that his father was bi-polar. He was prone to fits of melancholy and then of manic activity. I write this being acutely aware of Jen's expertise! I think he was disingenuous when he denied killing anyone in the Pottawatomie massacre when he was the instigator, but then, was he? Owen saying so does not make it true!

[John]

In this, according to To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown, Banks got it right, both in that Brown did not actually kill anyone himself, and that he told people that, although he was the clear instigator. In real life (always assuming the history is correct), Brown's instigation was clearer and more direct than in Cloudsplitter and Owen had no leading role.