Rogers- Good and Bent

This week, through the reading of C.P. Taylor's play Good, and the viewing of the 1997 drama Bent, we are given what are really the stories of two individuals acting within the same terrible reality. Their stories are very different. The two central men in both the play and the film have different roles in the conflict. Halder, from Good, is a victimizer. He benefits from the Nazi programs, while Max, in Bent, is a victim. While their roles are clearly defined, their actions are up for consideration, as they could choose a number of ways to approach their situations.

In Good, we see a man who is among the chosen few in Hitler’s regime. He is not on the outskirts of society, like those who would be chosen to die. He is a literature professor who is valued by the Nazis. When he speaks on behalf of euthanasia, he enjoys the praise that rains down on him from the Nazis. He considers it to be a all a part of his career building, as we see repeated in Nazi Germany; notably from some accounts of the life of Adolf Eichmann. It is not until he actually visits a concentration camp that he realizes the tragic errors of his ways. He realizes that he has benefitted from some of the most despicable acts and philosophies the world has ever seen, and is overcome with grief. His mistake was approaching the conflict so nonchalantly. He didn’t realize what the Nazis true aims were, and thus didn’t choose to speak out against them. The damage is now done, and he must rectify his own existence with the deaths of millions.

In Bent, Max is on the opposite side of the fence as Halder. Max is purely a victim. As a gay man, he is under attack from the Nazi government. They find his life to be immoral and not befitting of Germany. Max chooses to approach his predicament in what many would perceive to be a cowardly way. After ignoring his boyfriend’s cries of help as he is beaten to death, Max, imagining the Nazis will be hardest on gays, chooses to identify as Jewish. He takes the yellow star instead of the pink triangle. He chooses his own victimhood, but cannot ignore his true self, falling in love with another prisoner. His new lover shows him the joy to be found in embracing one’s true self even in the worst of times. Max’s selling out of his people shames him, and he chooses to die with his new love.

The approaches taken by the two men in Good and Bent show the slippery slope that was the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Neither Halder or Max were large players in Germany, but with the sweeping political changes that were occuring, their lives were affected. Halder became an unwitting asset to the Nazis, and Max had to confront his own identity as he was pursued for death for being a supposed member of both the Jewish race and a homosexual. They both were inescapably caught in the whirlwind, and experienced great pains before finding clarity and hopefully, the path to redemption, in the end.