The Ogre (Day 2)

Something that I found interesting was when Abel compared himself to Eugene Weidmann. “He’s nearly six foot three and weighs two hundred and forty-five pounds. Exactly like me” (95). Weidmann was a murderer of seven people. Abel brings this back up again on 114, “Every day I read the reports of Eugene Weidmann’s trial. Not only does the sight of all society seeking the destruction of this one man…but it’s as if fate were going out of its way to make him and me alike.” Abel went on to say that Eugene committed all of his sinister crimes with his left hand; just like Abel write his sinister writings with his left hand. The fact that they both write with their left hand represents their superiority of other people, but also foretells the bad heading their way later on. Eugene is the last person to be executed in France. Also, society looks at them both as monsters. What these men do society sees as horrific and wrong. Murder is wrong, but I supposed they both had their personal motives for what they did.

Another aspect of the reading I found interesting was Abel and his camera. “I enjoy being equipped with a huge leather-clad sex whose Cyclopean eye opens like lightening when I command it to look, and closes again inexorably on what it has seen. It is a marvelous organ, seer and remembrancer…” (103). It is interesting that Abel personifies this camera by calling it an organ and also gives it monstrous characteristics. Abel’s sexuality is other and he is viewed more as a monster. He gets pleasure from taking pictures of these children. The camera he uses is what helps him get this pleasure, since he is neither homosexual nor heterosexual.