Forced Into Damnation

Fire is often said to be the one single discovery which led man to rise above the beasts and enabled him to distinguish himself as a ruler of the earth. But to a man standing on the sidewalk in his pajamas and watching a holocaust of orange flame destroying his home and with it everything that he spent his life accumulating, fire is a damnation - an evil invented by the devil for his persecution. And so it is with all the wonders of life on our planet. The rains which make our crops grow also make the rivers swell occasionally, drowning us without regard to our age, wealth or station in life. The electricity which powers our factories breaks loose sometimes, blackening the bodies of the unwary and terminating their stay on earth. Each and, every force which makes life possible is capable of destroying it as well. In order to protect ourselves from the dangers that result from the abuse or excess of one of life's natural forces, we must educate ourselves and our children in their use. What would happen if the man who watched his house burn down reacted by teaching his children that fire was evil and that they should not only never play with matches, but also that they should never use them, look at a flame, or even think about fire? The result, of course, would be disastrous. For, since no one in contemporary human society can isolate himself from fire, they would inevitably come into contact with it at some point in their lives. And without the understanding that can only come with informed contemplation, they would have no means of protecting themselves against its dangers. This is a story about a woman who grew up with an unreasoning and unreasonable fear of another of life's vital forces - the force of sex. Because her mother bad suffered the consequences of its abuse, she had been taught to eschew all sexual contact and to resist all sexual thought. The result, of course, is catastrophic. Connie Dresden is a lady cop - a woman who was devoting her life to the fight against the forces of evil and corruption. But because of her repressed upbringing, she's ill-equipped to deal with these forces. She's like a hunter who shoots at the first boar that he has ever seen. Because he has never had the opportunity to study or to contemplate the enemy, he empties his gun at the thick bony armor which protects the creature's, skull, never realizing that its only vulnerable spot is between its front legs. Then, his weapon useless and empty, his is torn to shreds by the boar. Since sex has always been an unknown quantity to Connie, she's not prepared for it when she faces it for the first time - an encounter which was inevitable. Again and again she's attacked by the little-understood enemy, each attack adding to her knowledge of its nature. But by the time she has acquired enough knowledge to fight intelligently, it's too late, for she has been destroyed. The author's message is only too clear: that fear and ignorance lead to weakness. They propagate and foster the very evils from which they run. They corrupt as surely as corruption itself, honorable intentions a poor substitute for knowledge and understanding. And Connie Dresden stands as a symbol of the fear and ignorance which leads each of us to turn his back on the things that he should study most. Johnny Walker, the Black gang leader, is also a symbol - representing the mysterious evil in which each of us shrouds the things that he fears most. And just as Connie's encounter with Johnny and with sex, the nemesis of her life, is inevitable, so, too, must each of us face that from which he would prefer to run. And whether the encounter destroys us, tearing our bodies to pieces like a wild boar on a rampage, or it broadens us because we have learned to rise above it, will always be seen to depend on how hard we have worked at learning to understand ourselves and the forces which oppose us.