Note that I haven’t found the theory I’m about to explain in any books or papers, so it might be wrong. But it seems simple and obvious, so I’ll wager that it’s well known and accepted.

Here’s the thing. Parent’s don’t teach the words for “mother” and “father” to their babies; babies teach the words to their parents.

Upon birth, before their first meal and well before they can control their breathing, babies have a reflex to open and close their mouths when they see an adult open and close a mouth. This reflex is ancient and involuntary, like breathing.

Later, babies learn to voluntarily control their breathing and their vocal chords, to voluntarily create sighing or humming noises. During this phase, when the babies are experimenting with noise, a parent need only trigger the mouth open/close reflex (even accidentally) for the baby’s humming to accidentally produce a “mama” or “baba/papa” noise. Try it yourself: make humming noises with your lips closed, and while continuing to hum, open and close your mouth the way that an infant reflexively does.

From here, the excited reaction of the parents (”He said ‘mama’! What a smart baby! Everyone come here!) is enough to reinforce the behavior, and the parents have been trained.

Here’s another way to think about it. Suppose that a culture were “advanced” enough to use the words “thrir” and “frish” instead of “mama” and “baba”. It would not be long before the parents gave up and stopped trying to get the babies to say “thrir” or “frish”. The babies would undoubtedly win in the end, and thrirs would joyfully adopt the name “mama”. Frishes would only slightly less joyfully accept the name “papa”, since “mama” is easier to say (as you should have easily verified in the humming exercise above), and everyone knows that, after baby, thrir always wins. ‘Cause when thrir ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!

The first person to solve the Parity Encoding Puzzle correctly after I published it was Vittorio’s wife, Iwona, with a very elegant and compact solution, which is slightly different from mine.

First, I will explain my thought process in solving the puzzle, then show my code, and then show you Iwona’s code (which makes my code look clumsy).  If you still want to try solving it for yourself, don’t read any further.  If you have solved it using another language or technique, feel free to post your solution here.

With a 2-bit buffer

The first step is to start with a smaller version of the problem.  If a buffer of size 2^n can store n bits of information, then a 2-bit buffer can store 1 bit.  All possible initial states of the random buffer are:

00
01
10
11

It’s pretty easy to see what to do.  If you want to send a ‘1’, just flip the first bit if it’s zero, otherwise flip the second bit.

At this point, you’re probably noticing that the second bit has no informational value; it’s sort of a “throwaway bit”.  If the rules were different, and you were permitted to either flip a bit or abstain, it would be similar (for the case of a 2-bit buffer).

With a 4-bit buffer

In a 4-bit buffer, you can store 2 bits of information (4 possible values).  A 4-bit buffer has only 16 possible initial states, so it’s easy to sketch on paper, and try the 4 possible coded values.

Encoding the first bit of the information is easy.  Just apply the pattern from the 2-bit solution, but use the parity of the first 2-bits of the 4-bit buffer as your value.  In other words, if the first bit of your information is a ‘1’, the parity of the left half of the 4-bit buffer should be even, otherwise it should be odd.

Switching the parity is easy; you just flip a bit in the target half, and the parity toggles.  But you’re then faced with the question of which bit to flip.  For example, if your starting buffer is 1011 and the value to code is 10, you need to flip a bit on the left half – you could do that by flipping either the first or second bit, resulting in either 1111 or 0011.  Additionally, you’re faced with the problem that you’ve used up your only allowed toggle, and you still haven’t encoded the second bit.

This latter fact should make the way forward obvious.  The bit that you choose to flip (resulting in a 0011 or 1111) should be determined by the second bit of information (10).  You can do this by saying that the parity of the opposite half (the final 2 bits in this case: 1011) must match the value of the second bit in the half being toggled (in this case, the 1011), if the bit being communicated is a 1.  You can arbitrarily decide that a bit value of 0 represents odd parity, and 1 represents even parity.  In this case, the second bit of information (10) is not a 1, so you want the value of the second bit to be different from the parity of the opposite side.  The second bit, representing odd parity (1011) is already different from the parity of the opposite half (1011) so you needn’t flip the second bit – flip the first bit instead.  The encoded buffer, therefore, is 0011.

You can easily prove this technique on paper or by writing a quick program.  It is worth working through the combinations yourself to make sure you understand what’s happening.

Note that you always think in terms of “opposite side”, since you’ll only be flipping a bit on the left side half of the time.  Also note that the decision to compare the second bit to the parity of the opposite side is completely arbitrary, just like the decision to use 1 to mean “even”.  You could change the rules, as long as you are consistent.

With an 8-bit buffer

At this point, you might be feeling confident, and think that you only need to recursively apply the 4-bit solution to manage a buffer of any size.  You would be right, but it’s easier said than done.  My first attempt worked 90+% of the time, but failed on some edge cases.

An 8-bit buffer holds 3 bits of information.  You could try something like this (colors show parity comparison):

1. 1010 1010 – first bit
2. 1010 1010 – second bit
3. 1010 1010 – third bit

Obviously, the position of the second and third bit will vary, depending on where the previous bits are selected.

Observation: If you implement this, you’ll notice 2 things (besides the fact that it fails some of the time).  First is that decoding has no idea whether you moved left or right in a given step, so half the time it will get the right answer only accidentally.  Second is that you’re leaving a lot of bits unused (for parity comparison purposes), which intuitively shouldn’t work.  It’s true that you will have a “throwaway bit”, but it should only be one bit.

This leads to the key intuition required to solve the puzzle generally.

The Solution

You need to “stripe” the parities; using every bit except the throwaway bit.  An simple example of decoding a value will make it clear.  Suppose that the received buffer is 10110000.  How do you decode it?

(For this case, we arbitrarily decide that parity equals the number of 1’s in the red area, and that 1 is “odd” [since it has an odd number of 1’s])

1. 1011 0000 – parity of left half = 1 (odd)
2. 1011 0000 – parity = 1 (odd)
3. 1011 0000 – parity = 0 (even)

Therefore, the encoded value is 110.

Step 3 is the key step: you notice that we are using 2 extra bits in our parity calculation more than we used in the failed attempt.  The only bit which is never used is the last bit, which you would flip only if the random buffer exactly matched the message you wanted to send.

You can also detect a pattern here:

1. Step 1: combine alternating blocks of 4 bits and calculate parity.
2. Step 2: combine alternating blocks of 2 bits and calculate parity.
3. Step 3: combine alternating blocks of 1 bits and calculate parity.

It’s easy to generalize this to a buffer of any size.  For example, if you are using a 128 bit buffer, you would use parity “stripes” of size 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, and 1 (for 7 bits of information).

If you’d like to try writing your own code before looking at mine, you can pause here.

My Code

I used a very direct implementation of the process described above.  The “Parity” function takes a bit buffer and a width, and combines alternating blocks of size “width” before spitting out a parity.  The Encode and Decode functions use this Parity function.  You can trace through a  few examples on paper to see how easy it is.

public int Parity(int width, BitBuffer buffer)
{
    int p = 0;

    bool even = true;

    while (p < buffer.Length)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < width; i++)
        {
            if (buffer[p + i] == 1) even = !even;
        }
        p += width * 2;
    }

    return (even ? 0 : 1);
}

public BitBuffer Decode(BitBuffer buff)
{
    string value = "";

    int width = buff.Length;

    while (width > 1)
    {
        width = (int)Math.Truncate((double)width / 2);
        value += Parity(width, buff).ToString();
    }

    return new BitBuffer(value);
}

public void Encode(BitBuffer encode, BitBuffer initial )
{
    int[] bits = encode.GetBuffer();

    int pos = 0;
    int width = initial.Length;

    for (int idx = 0; idx < bits.Length; idx++)
    {
        pos *= 2;
        width = (int)Math.Truncate((double)width / 2);

        int half = (int)Math.Truncate((double)initial.Length / width / 2);

        if (Parity(width) == bits[idx]) pos += 1;  // the left half is good; don't mess with it
    }

    if (initial[pos] == 0) initial[pos] = 1;
    else initial[pos] = 0;
}

Iwona’s Code

Iwona’s Code is very compact, using xors and bit shifts, and not needing a separate parity stripe test (solved for 64-bit, but will work on any buffer size).  Very nice!

private static UInt64 Encode(UInt64 buffer, byte number)
{
    byte i = 0;
    UInt64 tempBuffer = buffer;
    while (tempBuffer > 0)
    {
        if (tempBuffer % 2 == 1)
        {
            number ^= i;
        }
        i++;
        tempBuffer = (tempBuffer >> 1);
    }
    return buffer ^ ((UInt64)1 << number);
}

private static byte Decode(UInt64 buffer)
{
    byte i = 0;
    byte number = 0;
    while (buffer > 0)
    {
        if (buffer % 2 == 1)
        {
            number ^= i;
        }
        i++;
        buffer = (buffer >> 1);
    }
    return number;
}

A few weekends ago, a friend introduced me to this puzzle while we were walking around the park.  It took me a few hours to find the solution and write a program to test it.  It’s a fun puzzle which I have never seen before, so I’m posting it to my blog.  I’ll reveal the solution in a separate post, so you can try solving it without any spoilers.

Introduction

Imagine that you have a 64-bit buffer, where you can alter one bit only before passing the buffer on to a friend.

If the initial state of the buffer is known beforehand (all zeros, for example), you will be able to send 64 different unique values to your friend.  This means that you can send 6 bits of information (2^6 = 64) by flipping only a single bit of a 64-bit buffer.  This is enough to encode all upper and lower case letters of the alphabet, for example.

Random Initial State

Now, imagine that the 64-bit buffer you receive is initially filled with random information.  This time, your friend does not know the initial state of the buffer.  Ad before, you are allowed to flip only one bit in the buffer.

Now, how many bits of information would you be able to communicate to your friend?

Obviously, you would be able to communicate at least one bit of information (for example, a “yes/no”).  You could do this by agreeing with your friend beforehand that the “yes/no” would be encoded in the first bit, and then you would flip the first bit if necessary before sending the buffer on, otherwise, you would flip a different bit.

Challenge

It turns out that it’s possible to encode a full 6-bits of information by flipping only one bit on a random buffer, with the recipient not knowing the initial state of the buffer.

Note that the same holds true for any buffer size that is a power of 2.  For example, you can encode 8 bits of information in a 256 bit buffer, using this technique.

Your challenge is to figure out what technique needs to be used, and write a program to encode a message in a random buffer of arbitrary size, and a program that can decode the message without knowing the initial state.

The method signatures might look something like:

bit[64] encodeBuffer(bit[64] randBuffer, bit[6] value);
bit[6] decodeBuffer(bit[64] encodedBuffer);

// the below will always be true

decodeBuffer(encodeBuffer(r, val)) == val

Hint

At first, I started down the route of using some sort of run length encoding, but that quickly hit a brick wall.

Instead, think of this as information being encoded in the parity.  For example, you could encode a “yes/no” by saying, if the first 32 bits have an even number of zeros, the answer will be “yes”, otherwise “no”.  To encode the “yes/no” message, you just flip a bit on one half or the other to get the desired parity.

With this hint, you can set about generalizing the solution.

When entering comments, you just use your handle (or the handle of your favorite celebrity) from Facebook, Twitter, or whatever else, and the site automatically finds your avatar.  Of course it works with gravatar, too.

You can get this functionality on your own blog by using the free “Incarnate” WordPress plugin built by our team.  It also works with non-WordPress blogs.

At that time, I immediately defended the name Hulu, calling it a “great name”, based on it’s close auditory association with the candy known as Bing Tang Hu Lu.  (Yes, I beat Alex Bosworth to the punch on that one).  Now with the name “Bing”, we have appropriated the other part of that tasty treat’s name.  I can hardly contain my excitement!  Look at pictures of Bing Tang Hu Lu on Bing!

We should call it “Bing Bing” in China.  And we should hire the actress Bing Bing to be the spokesperson.

Some have theorized that the name comes from Groundhog Day’s “Ned Ryerson – Bing!” skit.  Others think it might be a riff on Mitch Kapor’s old project, Chandler.  Or Monty Python.  Yet others have pointed out the possible reference to the bar in The Sopranos or the sidekick in the Lethal Weapon series.  Jon Stewart has already “Disrespected the Bing!”

While the “bada boom, bada bing” reference seems to be hinted in our marketing materials, I believe that the Stallmanesque explanation probably holds some truth: The name is a recursive acronym, “Bing Is Not Google”.  How incredibly geeky.

His philosophy and approach reminded me a lot of Barfield, but I couldn’t find an explicit link. 

Here is an excerpt from a review of his book Hieroglyphics, describing his theory of “ecstasy”:

"Hieroglyphics" is Arthur Machen’s theory of literature, brilliantly exposited by that "cyclical mode of discoursing" that was affected by Coleridge. In it he promulgates the admirable doctrine that fine literature must be, in effect, an allegory and not the careful history of particular persons. He seeks a mark of division which is to separate fine literature from mere literature, and finds the solution in the one word ecstasy (or, if you prefer, beauty, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of the unknown, desire for the unknown), with this conclusion : "If ecstasy be present, then I say there is fine literature, if it be absent, then, in spite of all the cleverness, all the talents, all the workmanship and observation and dexterity you may show me, then, I think, we have a product (possibly a very interesting one) which is not fine literature."

There is something slightly incongruous about trying to rationally explain why great ideas cannot be communicated purely rationally.  This of course hasn’t stopped Aristotle with Poetics, Coleridge on Wordsworth, Steiner on Goethe, Bandler on Erickson, or countless others.  And Machen seems to practice what he preaches.  For example, this passage from Machen’s “Hill of Dreams”:

"Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and further removed from the domain of strict thought than the impressions excited by music itself.  Here lay hidden the secret of suggestion, the art of causing sensation by the use of words."

You can easily see the influence on Lovecraft, who went on to influence Neal Stephenson’s “Nam-Shub of Enki”.  Machen’s friend A.E. Waite and Waite’s Golden Dawn colleagues were familiar with the stories of the Golem of Rabbi Judah Loew, which was perhaps the first variant of the “nam-shub” story in print 50-100 years before Lovecraft, and could be seen as a superior predecessor to Shelly’s “Frankenstein”.

Google Books has the full text of Hieroglyphics online.  The opening is delightful; I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

The project initially started with the goal of creating a low-cost tool for helping people learn to read.  The literacy rate across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Afghanistan is about 60% in urban areas, and as low as 10% in the target areas for this tool.  The goals for the project rapidly adapted to reality as they began researching in the field.  In some ways, the goals and the design became simpler, but also laser-focused on the needs of the villagers in a way that couldn’t really be achieved in any existing devices.

Here is a video interview with Cliff that has a demo.  During the demo today, I was impressed with the audio quality of the device and microphone, and the design of the software driving the interface.  Cliff talked about some of the user experience changes that had been made so far, supported by a very flexible underlying software architecture.

~

Learning about the evolution of the Talking Book reminded me of the Talking Signs project created by my good friend (and cabal organizer) William Loughborough.  Over the years, as we’ve discussed accessibility and semantic information exchange, he’s always provided a moderating pragmatism.  Geeks like to imagine systems built of RFID and GPS combined with always-on access to RDF, and things like this.  William would gently point out that directional infrared, as low-tech as it is, can be superior for many purposes.  William was the one who first helped me realize that cognitive disabilities and illiteracy are a form of accessibility challenge just like vision impairment or deafness.  Interestingly, Cliff has found that impaired vision is far more common in the developing world, and Talking Books need to be useful for people with these disabilities.

~

Lately I have been thinking a lot about literacy and accessibility, as I attempt to pass on great ideas to the next generation.  We run into these issues when we try to teach Shakespeare, Homer, or even Torah or Talmud to children.  Basic literacy is not enough.  And even if you can expand a kid’s vocabulary to the point of having a linguistic understanding of the text, there are many additional dimensions of “literacy” that are required to really appreciate and internalize these works.  All of these works require an ability to imagine and to participate in the works.

Perhaps this is why I’ve been fascinated with George MacDonald, who is considered by Madeline L’Engle and J.R.R. Tolkien to be the grandfather of the fantasy genre.  MacDonald’s stories are much like Homer or Shakespeare, in that he is a master of symbolism, imagery, and stories within stories.  His are the sort of stories which retain their power even if retold in different words.  In fact, MacDonald’s prose skills are not the best by any means, which makes it all the more remarkable that his tales are so powerful.

MacDonald’s stories were written in the late 1800’s, and are now public domain, so you can find them easily online.  However, they are not really accessible to children (or even most adults) today, because of the old style of English used.  I’ve recently worked on translating some of them into contemporary kid-friendly English, and they really don’t lose their appeal.

This, I think, is the power of the whole “fairy tale” genre.  Good fairy tales depend on the story line, and not on the authoring ability of the person recording the tale, or the literacy of the person receiving it.  Today The Guardian ran a story arguing that the whole “fairy tale” genre evolved as a result of the printing press, rather than as a result of oral tradition.  The article quotes George MacDonald a few times, and is worth a read.  One is reminded of Theseus’s line in Midsummer Night’s Dream:

More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.

Of course, the idea that “fairy tales” originated in 1550 is absurd, unless you take a hopelessly restrictive definition.  Homer himself was a master of the fairy tale, and even if you limit yourself to stories like Cinderella, you must admit that The Story of Sinuhe, written 4000 years ago, is of that genre.

In any case, it certainly was a big deal when talk became books, empowered by the printing press.  But now we have books that become talk.  Great works like the Quran and Homer’s epics were spread primarily by spoken word at first.  How might history have been different if these had been spread as talking books? 

~

This was one of the most fascinating things Cliff discovered in his research.  Cliff is primarily trying to expand access to practical information about basic survival needs.  But when given the chance to record their own content to these talking books, Cliff found that villagers would sometimes start recording folk stories.  At first glance, nothing could seem less practical than folk tales, but I believe this is actually very important – maybe the most important type of “book” that can be shared.  And the impulse of the villagers to share this content shows that they know it to be important.  The other information is undoubtedly important.  But perhaps we’ll find that the “talking book” does far more than just virally disseminate agricultural and how-to advice.  Perhaps we’ll see the local fairy tales evolve and disseminate to create deeper shared contextual meaning, and layers of culture from which even better things can grow.

However, appreciation can turn to slavish religion and the blessing becomes a curse.  In today’s world, the very word “subjective” is often considered synonymous with “untrustworthy”, and this bias is to our own detriment.  I believe that our skewed focus on “objectivity” has led many modern people to vastly underappreciate subjectivity and introspection – and that our failure to appreciate subjectivity is impairing our ability to appreciate reality.

~

To understand how, let’s take a look at an experiment performed by behavioral economist Dan Ariely, head of the delightfully named “Center for Advanced Hindsight” at MIT, and documented in his must-read book, “Predictably Irrational”.

In summary, the researchers gave students a task which would earn money, divided the students into groups with varying levels of ability to cover up any misdeeds, and tempted the students with the opportunity to cheat.   When asked to predict how much the students would cheat, people predicted that the students with more opportunity to cover up the “crime” would cheat more.  But empirical testing showed that students all cheated exactly the same amount, regardless of whether or not they could easily cover their tracks.

~

Dan Ariely’s career has contributed impressively to our understanding of human nature, and his book is a masterpiece.  I felt that every experiment and conclusion were reasoned with impeccably disciplined judgment – except for this one example.

In the book, the results of experiment are used to argue that we cannot trust our intuitions (since nobody predicted the outcome).  But then Ariely resorts to introspection in attempting to explain why the results were what they were.  His explanation “after the fact” isn’t all that bad, and might even be correct, but that isn’t the point.

~

If you wanted to know why students cheated the same regardless of opportunity to hide it, you’d probably start by asking someone who actually predicted the outcome.  You might congratulate him or her for being right, and then ask, “how did you know?”  It’s possible that the explanation offered would be pure rationalization, but it would certainly be less suspect than an “after the fact” rationalization by someone who got the answer wrong in the first place.

This search can be performed even after the experiment has been completed.  In essence, you are looking for people who have a good understanding of human nature, who have not been exposed to the experimental evidence.

~

I believe that there is good reason that Dan Ariely did not find anyone who could predict the results in advance, and thus lend credibility to the explanation – he didn’t find these people because he didn’t look for them.

This is no surprise, because the empirical mindset assumes that any predictions made without hard experimental evidence are, essentially, random.  Why spend any significant effort looking for something which you don’t believe is there?  Incentives were offered for cheating, but there was no credible incentive offered for making correct predictions.

The question was posed to people at a university, operating in a context where a tendency to think subjectively and empathically would have been suppressed long ago.  If you are a student, scientist, or engineer, introspection is probably an unused muscle, and you’re not likely to spend much time exercising it to make a prediction – especially if there is no serious reward or punishment offered.

Furthermore, the question was posed in a moral context, where a perverted emphasis on objectivity could easily lead a person to mistrust the applicability of introspection beyond themselves: “Well, I don’t think that *I* would cheat much, but I cannot predict what *other* people would do.”

I have found that young children are generally better at answering questions like these, because they are naturally introspective, have better imaginations, and do not hesitate to project onto others.  We literally have to indoctrinate this superior ability out of children, and the retention of these skills seems to be negatively correlated with education.

~

The point here is that this is a perfect example of something which can be understood via introspection, and which should be understood via introspection.  Introspection, when well-trained and exercised, is far faster and more enlightening than empirical experimentation. 

Yes, introspection can lie.  But this is not a reason to distrust all introspection.  This is a reason to train people to use introspection wisely and honestly.  It’s smart to use objective methods to test the subjective conclusions, but don’t completely abandon subjectivity as a tool.

The Story

The story is about a young man named Werther who becomes obsessed with a woman he knows to be taken, and he eventually destroys himself over his inability to possess her.  It was partially based on Goethe’s real-life obsession with a woman he met, and the story became wildly popular during Goethe’s lifetime. 

It has widely been seen as a celebration and of the tortured and passionate “romantic” spirit, based in large part on the readers’ appreciation of Goethe’s genius and the autobiographical nature of the story.  The entire “romantic” movement in Western European literature owes a large and well-chronicled debt to this story, as do many obsessive lovers to this very day.  However, I believe that this particular popular interpretation is exactly wrong.  The story is in fact a cautionary allegory about pride and will, and Goethe creates Werther explicitly as a caricature to drive home this point.

The Haggadah

There are many ways to demonstrate my point, including Shakespeare, or Werther’s beloved Homer, but in honor of Passover, let’s use the tradition of Haggadah, which would have been quite familiar and important to Goethe, and was directly alluded in Werther.  Every year during Passover, millions of families around the world read Haggadah: the story of the Exodus from Egypt, embellished with commentary.  The story itself is foundational to Jews, Muslims, and Christians.  Even for the non-religious, the story is central to many civil rights and liberation movements.  Some families see the story as being an accurate chronicle of history faithfully recorded by the story’s protagonist, while many see it as being more or less embellished; just as with the readers of Werther.  Despite the divergent opinions about how strictly autobiographical the story is, these families all agree that the story is full of profound insights.

Different families may choose to focus on different parts of the story, and may emphasize different conclusions from the story.  This diversity is part of the beauty of the story.  The story as told in the book of Exodus is rather short, but the inspired Haggadot could fill many volumes.

Enter Pharaoh

Werther’s genius is that it focuses on only one part of the story – a part which is normally glossed over and misunderstood – and does so with exquisite clarity.  In short, Werther is Haggadah seen from Pharaoh’s perspective.

When most people read the story of the Exodus, they typically focus on the themes of redemption and deliverance, from the perspective of those delivered from bondage.  We gloss over the fact that there were many other actors in this story: the Hebrew slaves who chose to stay in Egypt, those who were unfaithful and died (or were killed) along the way, the Egyptian people who were punished and in some cases died, and the Pharaoh himself. 

To the Pharaoh and many others, the story is not a story of redemption and deliverance – it is a story of condemnation and destruction.

To ignore these other characters is to do a grave injustice to the story, and turns the story into a children’s fable with little credibility or depth.  It is easy to identify with the gratitude of the slaves who were delivered from bondage, but we convince ourselves that it is more difficult to understand the supremely powerful leader who would throw himself to destruction.  After thousands of years, we have grown into the habit of treating these characters, and especially the Pharaoh, simply as cartoonish cardboard props.

Goethe shows us that this assumption is dangerously false.  In fact, the Pharaoh’s attitude is all too believable, and the condemned were perhaps the most human and least remarkable characters in the story.  Indeed, Goethe’s portrayal of Pharaoh’s motivation is so impeccable that two centuries of readers have unwittingly identified Pharaoh as the true hero and role model of the story. 

It was not Goethe’s intention to make Pharaoh out to be a role model – in fact, it was quite the opposite.  Goethe wanted to show just how dangerous it is to flirt with these attitudes, and how easily they become a slippery slope.  The fact that so many have identified with young Werther, and use him as an excuse to glorify a “romantic” attachment to sensuality and self-destruction, is a testament to Goethe’s epic genius, and shows that Haggadah remains sympathetic to the modern human condition.

Werther as Pharaoh

When attempting to understand Pharaoh, we are faced with a number of questions.  Moses and Pharaoh were raised together from childhood as brothers, so we wonder how Pharaoh’s heart could change so dramatically, replacing these fraternal bonds of love with self-destructive hatred of his brother.  Why was he so possessive and unwilling to cede control?  And why did he ignore so many vivid signs foretelling his own destruction?  We find all three questions examined  in Werther: selfish and possessive will, vivid warnings ignored, and a thorough hardening of the heart.

Although Werther learns in the very beginning that Lotte is promised to another man, it becomes clear that he does not care about Lotte’s wishes or that of anyone else.  (Lotte represents Moses and the Hebrew people – her name sounds like “Lot”, the protagonist of the first great story of deliverance.)  Werther repeatedly compares her to a sister, admitting that their many hours together allow them to understand one another.  But this closeness does not deter him from wanting to force his desire upon her.

Like Pharaoh, Werther considers himself the supreme author of this narrative, and is incapable of considering any will but his own.  Goethe underscores this point brilliantly by creating the tale as a series of letters written by Werther.  By crafting the tale as a series of letters, Werther deposes the narrator and takes full control of the story.  None of the other characters are permitted to speak for themselves, they are given life only through Werther’s pen.  Just as Egyptian history was written by the Pharaoh, Werther feels that he alone can write Lotte’s heart:

“Oh, dare I utter the words, those words that contain all heaven for me? – I can feel that she loves me!  She loves me! – And I have grown in stature in my own eyes, – I can tell you this, you who understand such things – I worship myself, ever since she loves me!”

This exchange comes early in the book, when Lotte most certainly does not love Werther.  It’s a remarkably self-centered declaration, which demonstrates that Lotte is merely a prop which Werther uses to feed his narcissism.  Several passages attest to Werther’s belief that his obsession with Lotte – whether she returns his feelings or not – is the source of his powers to create.

Goethe goes to great lengths to demonstrate how one-sided and possessive this obsession is, and the entire story is littered with allusions to Werther’s high opinion of his own power and will.  Once, when reprimanded by his friend, Werther replies:

“Forgive me then, if I concede your entire argument and still try to find a loophole between the either and the or.”

He pretends to be concerned about obtaining his friend’s forgiveness while simultaneously demonstrating that he cares only about his own desires – selfish will masked as concern for others which is Werther’s modus operandi throughout the story.  In fact, he sees it as something of a game:

“if I indulged myself in the sport, I could compose an entire litany of antitheses.”

It is clear that he takes great pride in his strong will.  For example, he is offended when he is complimented for something so trifling as intellect:

“I am disturbed that he values my mind and abilities more highly than my heart, which is my only source of pride, and indeed, of everything, all my strength and happiness and misery.  The things I know, anyone can know – but my heart is mine, and mine alone.”

The wording Goethe chooses here is very unambiguous.  By “heart” and “passion”, Werther is talking about the selfish will.

So we begin to see how the slippery slope begins.  Not only does Werther resist and avoid coming to terms with the wills of others, he takes great pride in having a dominant will.  Far from seeing this prideful will as a source of potential trouble, he sees it as the source of his happiness.  Soon, we learn more:

“And yet, whenever she speaks of her intended, speaks of him with such warmth and love, I feel as if I had been stripped of all honor and rank and had my sword taken from me.”

He uses his fantasies of illegitimate dominion over Lotte to sustain his ego, but when he is forced to face the fact that she is promised to another, Werther’s ego is crushed.  He speaks as if he has been victimized and humiliated, and his very identity is imploding.

Likewise, Pharaoh spent his entire life assuming that he was destined for dominion over his brother Moses and the Hebrew slaves.  We can imagine the demands to “let my people go”, cutting like a knife.

Ultimately, Werther stops pretending to care about whether he is right, and honestly speaks his resolve to get his way no matter what the cost.  His climactic declaration could just as well have been spoken by Pharaoh:

“What use is it if I repeat over and over to myself that he is a good and worthy man?  It is tearing my heart in two; I cannot be just.”

The Warnings

Just as in the story of the Exodus, there are repeated and vivid warnings of the fate to come.  And just like Pharaoh, Werther at first admits his wrong and appears to turn back from the path of destruction, but is ultimately sucked in.  At the beginning of the story, Werther in fact takes the role of moral instructor and declares himself to be above the sort of error which later befalls him. 

First, Werther relates to his friend the story of a young woman who became attached to sensual things, made poor choices in love and became so emotionally distraught that she committed suicide.  Werther lucidly explains to his friend how such situations are to be avoided and escaped.

Later, Werther encounters a person who has “ill-humour”, which is the “human evil” which Werther “despises above all others”.  Werther confronts this person and condemns him for not having better command of his emotions, and for making others unhappy.  Werther, still relatively lucid, narrates his observations about maintaining good humour.

As his condition deteriorates into the very diseases he has condemned, he has a flash of clarity.  The very letters and journals he has been using to create his own reality are now the evidence that might cause him to come to his senses:

“Today I happened upon my diary, which I have been neglecting for some time, and I am astounded to see how I went ahead in all this, step by step, in full awareness of what I was doing!”

Alas, like Pharaoh, Werther’s sense of remorse is short-lived, soon to be suppressed by the will.  The Warnings become even more pointed and explicit.

Eventually, Werther comes across a man who has gone mentally insane over unrequited love of Lotte.  Like many readers of Goethe who sympathize with Werther, Werther fails to take this man’s insanity as a warning, and instead begins to sympathize with him.

The most vivid warning comes in the death of a peasant named Hans who Werther met at the very beginning, and who he has grown to respect and esteem almost as a son.  Hans has been rejected in his bid to love a certain widow, and one of the widow’s other jilted lovers murders him.  The scene mirrors the final sign to Pharaoh – the death of the firstborn of Egypt and the events of the Passover:

“To reach the inn, where the body had been carried, he had to pass the linden trees, and now he felt horror for the place he had loved so dearly.  That threshold where the children of the neighborhood had so often played was splashed with blood.  Love and constancy, the most beautiful of human emotions, had been transformed into violence and murder.”

The symbol of Passover is the blood splashed on the threshold of the homes of the children.  And while this sign symbolized redemption to the protagonists of Haggadah, it symbolized violence and murder to Pharaoh and the Egyptians.

Just as he sympathizes with Hans’s romantic obsession, Werther sympathizes with the romantic obsession of the man who killed Hans.  Blurring the men together, he attempts to save the murderer.  His failure to save the man is symbolic of his powerlessness, and foreshadows his inability to save himself.

Lotte’s Faithfulness

Throughout the story, Lotte is compassionate and respectful toward Werther, but remains firm in her obedience to her commitments.  It is not the purpose of this Haggadah to examine the motivations of the chosen onese, but the following passage is a good example of how the story portrays the same “compassionate but firm” orientation that Moses held with his brother:

“One thing is certain: that she was quite determined to do everything she could to remove Werther from her presence; and any hesitation was due to her heartfelt wish to spare her friend, since she knew how much it would cost him, and indeed that he would find it well-nigh impossible.  Yet during this period she was under increased pressure to be firm … she felt all the more need to prove by her actions that her feelings were worthy of her husband’s respect.”

Hardened Heart

We have already seen how Werther, like Pharaoh, grew successively more stubborn and unyielding after ignoring several warnings.  In the story of the Exodus, this is described as “hardened heart”.  In fact, the story of the Exodus makes a very important distinction in telling this tale – at first, it is reported that “Pharaoh hardened his heart”, but at some point the locus of control is changed, and the record then says “The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart”.

This linguistic twist has been subject of many intellectual exegeses over the past two thousand years.  Did Pharaoh freely disobey, or was his disobedience orchestrated by God?  Do humans operate in a sphere of free will, or under predestination?

This question is the central theme of Werther.  Werther begins by celebrating the power of free will, and ends by submitting to cruel destiny.  Every major event in the story combines the tension of free will with predestination.

Goethe’s answer to this apparent paradox is most lucidly expounded in the very beginning of the story, with Werther’s narrative of the romantically obsessed young lady.  Werther describes how the freely made alliances with physical or sensual things become a slippery slope, and eventually free will is lost.  Werther makes it clear that freedom to seek redemption can be sacrificed before death – that there is a “point of no turning back” which can be passed well before the actual moment of death.

This insight about Pharaoh’s “point of no turning back” is triumphantly underscored in the very structure of Gothe’s story of Werther.

At the point when Werther is no longer hardening his own heart – at the point where there is no longer any possibility for him to change course – the story abruptly stops being narrated by him.  Although he is still alive, and there are many pages left in the story, the rest of the story is narrated by others.  The roles are reversed.  No longer are the other characters at the mercy of his pen; no longer is Werther the author of his own story.  Now Werther is being interpreted and defined by the pens of those who will ultimately survive him, and this transition is introduced with an acknowledgement of the subjectivity now being introduced into the portrait of Werther.

~

This narrative inversion at the end is awe-inspiring genius, and standing on its own could justify Goethe’s reputation.  But it would be wrong to think that Haggadah is the only theme in Werther.  The use of the silhouette is worth an essay of its own, as would be an examination of the role of self-fulfilling expectations.  However, these are all beyond the scope of this post, and I doubt I will make a habit of sharing literary exegeses.

On his condition in the world, Werther sounds exactly like Marcus Fenix (And no, I am not paraphrasing – this is verbatim from Hulse’s classic translation of Goethe)”:

“There is not one moment that does not wear you away, and those who are close to you, nor any one moment when you are not a destroyer, of necessity: the most innocent of walks costs thousands of wretched grubs their lives”

In Gears of War, it is never your primary objective to kill the creatures known as “grubs”, but you have to kill large numbers of them at every stage if you want to accomplish anything at all.

“And so I go my fearful way betwixt heaven and earth, and all their fearful forces; and all I can see is a monster, forever devouring, regurgitating, chewing and gorging”.

The gameplay of Gears of War 2 alternates twixt heaven and earth, and a central theme is the leviathan beast which devours everything in its path at the crust of the earth.  Here is the movie of the beast’s death.

The game even makes obsessive romance and death a central part of the storyline, which is very unique for a blockbuster video game, and was certainly not accidental.  The moment when Dom sees that Maria does not match the idealized image he holds parallels the moment when Werther begins to corrupt Lotte and can no longer see her as a silhouette.

Even more telling is the ultimate goal of the game – at first the goal is to rise up to victory, but it soon becomes apparent that victory can only be obtained through self-destruction.  In the end, you must destroy your civilization’s last outpost, and bury it in the abyss.  This theme of the abyss is constant throughout Werther.  The moment he decides that victory with Lotte can be achieved only though self-destruction, he describes it thus:

“It is as if a curtain has been drawn before my soul, and this scene of infinite life had been transformed into the abyss of the grave, forever open wide.”

The scenes of Dom and Maria are strategically aligned at the same point of the game where the abyss becomes the objective, driving home this parallel to Werther.

In fact, Werther’s favorite place of comfort beneath the linden tree, like Marcus Fenix’s city of Jacinto, is submerged beneath a symbolic flood at the end.  Here is the closing scene of Gears of War 2, showing Jacinto sinking into the abyss and being submerged beneath a flood.

~

Although not quite as “literary”, I did notice another interesting reference in Gears of War 2.  Take a look at the final boss scene again, and notice the direct visual parallels to Urotsukodoji, another story about obsessive love and destruction.  Urotsukodoji was pre-Web, so I cannot find YouTube clips of the climactic battle scenes.  But if you have seen the movie, you will know that the large climactic battle scenes in Urutsukodoji look exactly like the final boss battle of Gears of War 2.  Here is a video trailer of Urotsukodoji will give you some quick glimpses of the visual motif, though it doesn’t do justice to how integral the visual pattern is to the movie.