Into Oblivion

I recently saw the movie Oblivion, starring Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman. (A little late, I know, but such is the life of a law student.)

The hero, Jack Harper (Cruise) is inspired to do great deeds from a particular line of poetry found in Macaulay’s Lay’s of Ancient Rome. The line is from the poem Horatius, which tells of the hero who stood alone on a bridge against an entire army so that the bridge could be destroyed and Rome be saved.

The line from the poem, where Horatius is speaking, reads:

“To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his Gods.”

Jack, who was cloned by his enemy, carries these words with him on a suicide mission that will save his friends and family. When he arrives and faces his enemy, he recites the lines “And how can man die better, than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods.” The enemy however, reminds Jack he is just a clone, created by her. “I am your god, Jack,” she taunts him, yet Jack stands firm, and the movie ends happily.

However, with that closing scene, I couldn’t help but see in Jack Harper the typical modern man. He is still human and has a soul, so when he reads beautiful lines of poetry about great heroes dying for even greater loves, his soul is stirred and he feels the need to do something great. But then comes the inevitable challenge, for every hero must meet his detractors. The modern world looks at this modern man who has been inspired by a distant hero of centuries ago and asks him, “Where are your fathers? And who are your Gods?”

There is only silence. Our would-be-hero realizes he has left his father and abandoned his God. His rootless world has left him with nothing to die for but vague abstractions. There are no fathers and mothers, there are no sacred temples, and there is no great city that is built from these great things – there is only a terrible void, and it is not worth dying for.