Wieland

All the characters struggle to distinguish reality from fantasy, but Theodore is clearly the most detached from reality. Readers and critics debate whether the author’s intent is to show that Theodore’s religious fervor—like that of his father—caused his mental illness. In real-world terms, it seems unlikely that religious fanaticism is the cause of the characters’ mental illness. Theodore does nothing that hasn’t been done by otherwise completely sane people under the influence of religious conviction. In today’s world, religious or political conviction remains a powerful force that may compel a person with no history of mental illness to commit extraordinarily antisocial acts—even murder. Whatever the cause, it is the extremity that ultimately does the harm.

Another question posed by readers is, to what extent did Carwin’s machinations precipitate Theodore’s delusions. Carwin’s tricks fill Wieland’s head with false information, and wrong data results in wrong conclusions. Initially, all the characters hear the same disembodied voices that Theodore does, confirming their reality. When he begins hearing other voices, he apparently assumes that if one disembodied voice is really there, then all disembodied voices must be equally real. He reaches this false conclusion even though Carwin has described many ways in which disembodied voices might be produced.

Theodore has removed all reason from the process of moral judgment. He argues that he shouldn’t be punished because he has done nothing wrong. In his view, he did what he did in the service of God, and men have no right to punish what God has ordained. Here, the author argues that critical thinking must be applied to religion. The Romantic ideal of relying entirely on one’s own senses and emotions leads to chaos; there must be something more than blind faith on which to anchor one’s beliefs.

The characters’ senses continue to be disrupted. More than any of the others, Theodore needs reality checks to confirm the evidence of his senses, but Carwin has disconnected the senses from reality. Clara, when she saw and heard Carwin throwing his voice, was too disoriented to connect the two senses. Theodore, on the other hand, is now so disoriented that he both sees and hears the imaginary entity that orders him to kill his family. His sense of sight and hearing are reunified. However, without the power of critical thinking, his error is simply redoubled. Theodore is now spontaneously creating the illusion introduced by Carwin. He even uses a second voice, speaking to himself in the second person as “you.”

In trying to find some way for her brother to be both sane and morally innocent, Clara falls to a logical fallacy that says if you cannot disprove a thing, then it must be true; she has no proof demons don’t exist, therefore that is a reasonable explanation for Theodore’s behavior. For Clara, the supernatural explanations are more palatable than the idea that the seeds of Theodore’s destruction might have been present in him all along.