`Evil': An old-fashioned word becomes a new rallying cry

Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune, 20 September 2001

It was, until last week, a word we didn't often hear outside of comic books or horror films or Sunday school class. It was an old-fashioned word, top-heavy with history and theology. It was a word that, if used at all, generally had to be accompanied by a self-consciously ironic smirk or sarcastic lift of the eyebrows -- some physical tic to indicate that we knew we were being melodramatic. We knew we were being hyperbolic. We weren't serious. We couldn't be. We were, after all, far too sophisticated for the word's immense and awesome gravity. It was our great-great-grandparents' word, not our word.

The word is evil. And suddenly, it is ours again. It is everywhere -- not just the presence of evil, the aftermath of which is visible in the ash-pit that is now the World Trade Center or at the Pentagon's wounded flank or in the stricken faces of victims' families, but the word itself.

Newspaper headlines, including those in the Tribune, now employ it unhesitatingly. President Bush refers to it constantly: "This is good versus evil," he declared, pledging "to rid the world of evildoers." TV news anchors have reached for the word repeatedly over the past week and a half, finding that no other quite works, no other possesses the fisted clarity of "evil": "Who can explain evil?" Dan Rather said to David Letterman Monday, when the latter resumed his late-night CBS show after being off the air since Sept. 11. Rather added, "We've never dealt with these kind of hateful to-the-core, evil people." We'll never be the same again, and neither will our language.

Evil is an old word, a word put out to pasture long ago, but it is instantly and shockingly relevant again. It is a word that most of us have never used straightforwardly and unambiguously, except, of course, for the intolerant few who have always invoked it casually to condemn anyone who disagrees with their politics, sexual mores or social views. For such people, "evil" isn't a special word at all; it's an ordinary, everyday word, it's the way of elbowing God in the ribs and urging him to punish those who don't share their prejudices.

Most of us, however, didn't use the word "evil" except metaphorically. We grew up hearing it in church. We know it from fairy tales and children's books, such as the Harry Potter series and Harry's nemesis, the irredeemably evil Lord Voldemort. We're familiar with it in films about supernatural happenings such as "The Exorcist" or "Stigmata," films in which beds rise and blood runs down walls and people are overtaken by forces not of this world.

What we've discovered in the past nine days, though, is that evil can be very much of this world. Abruptly, it's a reality whose impact we can't ignore. What used to be a symbolic notion has become instantly, appallingly literal. And so we turn for comfort to, among other places, those who never lost the concept of evil, even as the world grew too haughty in its enlightenment to continue to believe. The Bible will do, as Bush has reminded us, and if scripture gives you solace, by all means, seek it there.

But don't forget secular books such as Madeline L'Engle's great children's classic "A Wrinkle in Time," in which evil is embodied in a hideous creature called IT, "the most horrible, the most repellant" imaginable. Anger at IT is A-OK, the narrator notes; anger is understandable, even helpful. But when anger turns to hate, IT wins. IT thrives on hate. What IT can't abide is love -- the love of sister for brother, parent for child, friend for friend.

It's probably too soon to draw permanent lessons from last Tuesday's madness. The wound is too raw. But this we know: A venerable word -- evil -- has been restored to the world, there to do battle with another ancient word: "Good." Americans have already placed their bets.

Entered September 2002.