The Protestant Era

By Melissa

Norman O.Brown's, in his book Life Against Death, takes a closer look at the protestant era. He starts off chapter thirteen with an examination of Martin Luther's vision of the devil while sitting on the privy. Luther makes the connection between his feces and the Devil. Using the symbolism that the devil consumes us and then poops us out again for us to restart the cycle of life. According to Luther, we all belong to the devil within our earthly forms, but that our souls have the potentiality to be pure. Thus if we are lucky we will rejoin God once we leave these bodies, controlled by the devil.

The society analyzed within this chapter has been seen as repressed in almost every sense of the term. They repress their bodies and their earthly desires by associating them with the devil and everything which is seen as "impure". By associating these things with the devil, they give themselves a free pass not to acknowledge them as being apart of human nature. If they were to acknowledge the existence of these desires as spawning from within them, and not the devil, then they would have to cope with the idea that humanity is by nature impure in their behaviors and thus will never get to live with God in his eternal kingdom.

Luther's experience on the privy has given way to the idea that there exists an anal character within society. An anal character is described as someone who is orderly, and overbearing (an authoritarian character). People are seen as not being able to face the devil with their own free will because everything is associated with the devil, including good works. If the devil is everywhere then how is man to face him and win? The only way of truly avoiding the devil is then to die and rejoin God. Even reason, and cognitive thought is the devil, so how can one avoid something which comes from inside their head.