Sunday, April 22, 2007 Lim: The vessel By Melanie T. Lim Wide Awake
THE bloodbath at Virginia Tech has left the world stunned. Overnight, Cho Seung-Hui has become more hated than Hitler.
To stare into Cho’s eyes is to stare into the gateway of nothingness. His eyes stare back—empty, devoid of emotion and connection to the rest of the world. Perhaps, that is how the world made Cho feel—an outsider. An oddity. An aberration. In the end, the world’s judgment of Cho became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We vilify Cho for the carnage he caused. And we are not wrong to do so. But to solely lay blame on this troubled young man who lived in apparent torment all his life is to look at the massacre at Virginia Tech with tunnel vision. All behavior, after all, is caused.
Cho’s life was empty. He had nothing to live for. He did not value life. And so he took it without mercy. Perhaps, he did not mean to take along 32 other lives with him to another world— a world he probably believed would set him free from his rage, turmoil and pain.
But Cho could not resist the opportunity for attention and revenge. He wanted the world to sit up and listen. With his wrath running wild, no one in his path stood a chance. Clearly, Cho was mentally ill. We all agonize but we do not all kill.
The man who preferred to identify himself with a question mark obviously could not identify with the world he lived it. The question mark was a cry for help from a tormented soul who could not identify his place and purpose in the world.
Cho Seung-Hui could not have been born evil. He certainly could not have metamorphosed overnight into a cold-blooded killer on his own. Movies aside, monsters are made, not born.
He lived in agony all his life. Yet no one seemed to notice his pain, only his indifference. No one seemed to notice his loneliness, only his oddness. No one saw his rage, only his malevolence.
He wrote. He wailed. He ranted and raved. But we did not hear. We did not want to be bothered. Not by some weirdo or wacko. For a very long time, Cho suffered in silence. Growing up with ridicule and scorn, he fought back by withdrawing into a world all his own, further alienating himself from the world he so desperately sought to join.
Cho wrote with great rage, justifying his bloodbath with the sense of injustice he felt he had been subjected to all his life. And yet if one read between his lines, one would feel the excruciating pain and harrowing loneliness of a young man who had finally given up on the world.
Last Monday, only one man pulled the trigger. But we are all to blame. Somewhere along the way, we failed Cho. Somewhere along the way, we helped mold the murderer he became.
There is no justification for what Cho Seung-Hui did. But there is no denying our complicity in the final destruction of his soul.
Many will wonder where God was last Monday. Sometimes, God utilizes a villain as a vessel for a message He desperately wants to deliver: we are all accountable.
