Malachi Constant/Unk raped a young woman and murdered his best friend. Why does the reader feel sympathy for him instead of anger?

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Malachi Constant/Unk raped a young woman and murdered his best friend. Why does the reader feel sympathy for him instead of anger?

        In ‘The Sirens of Titan’ there are many places where the reader would feel anger towards Malachi Constant/Unk if it is read out of context. However there are also many occasions where the reader feels sympathy and forgives Malachi/Unk. This is helped by Winston Niles Rumfoord who knows everything and Winston’s wife, Beatrice, who is another main character.

        Malachi Constant was born rich and had everything he wanted but the reader finds out after few chapters that he had not had a happy family life. His mother was a whore and he only ever met his father once in his life.

“You said you had a very unhappy childhood and made everyone listen to how unhappy it was.”

In this quote the language is simple and repetitive. This is perhaps to show the annoyance this character has for Constant. It also makes the reader feel less sympathetic here though because he was moaning and complaining which is not a good attribute in people. This might be so that later on the reader can see how they judged him unfairly so that when there is less proof of something bad happening to him they are more easily forgiving of him.

This brings out the readers sympathy because the reader realises this is what leads to his financial ruin and bankruptcy because he gets drunk and depressed and gives away all his oil wells. However if we had not read this part then the reader would feel angry at wasting what he had.

“Every courageous thing he [Constant] had done had been motivated by spitefulness and goads from childhood”

In this quote there are lots of strong negatives that suggest a very powerful outside force. All the words here are emotive and indicate another source had dominance over Constant’s life.

        We, the readers, are told he tries to hard to be sophisticated and fashionable and this makes the reader sympathetic because the reader pities him and relates to him for trying so hard to ‘fit in’ with others.

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“Everything Rumfoord did he did with style, making all mankind look good.

Everything Constant did he did in style - aggressively, loudly, childishly, wastefully”

This is a direct comparison with Rumfoord and shows how young, eager and naïve Constant is in contrast to Rumfoord who is much older and knows everything. The adverbs are all negative showing how Rumfoord is a good person but Constant takes everything for granted.

        The story follows Constant and then Unk throughout the book giving only important facts such as what they look like and character points about the other people in the book to explain ...

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