Jarroc as a Betrayer Essay example -- Star Trek Defecting Essays Paper

Jarroc as a Betrayer Defection is a word which Americans have been taught to fear,from the days of Joseph McCarthy to Moscow on the Hudson. In our embodiedconsciousness, we viewed defectors as both fascinating and repellent. Defectorsfrom outside theconvivial allied field of force of North America and Western Europe--persons fromthose Communist places, especially--served a useful persona because ofwhat inside knowledge they held, and at the same time frightened usbecause they carried the taint of the traitor, and the strange, coldforeignness of the other side. The other side, if non monitoredclosely, was coming to bomb us all, and break the world as we knew it. Defectors from the unite States, on the other hand, had noredeeming qualities. They were those who had sold their own souls,traitors agreeing to spill the beans the closely guarded secrets which would keepus safe from the Enemy to the enemies themselves By the nature of theact, defection was inexorably inte rtwined with national betrayal.(I use the terms lowlife and traitor interchangeably, since they aresynonymous in meaning. A traitor is maven who has betrayed.) Americandefectors were the worst possible kinds of criminals, and worthyrecipients of the death penalty. unless then, as now and in all times, there are a innumerable of contextsin which any given situation can be considered and defection, same mostthings, is a crime to some and an honorable act of sense of right and wrong toothers.Who is the ultimate judge of such actions? What determines whichcontext the acts truly fall in? During the Cold War, when a Sovietdefected, it was viewed very differently by officials in his own countrythan it was here. In the U.S.S.R, he... ... itfor nothing, he whispers bitterly. My home, my family....all fornothing. (12/30/89) Jarroc commits suicide alternatively than live with thepain of this stigma. Is Jarroc then a hero, or a defector-betrayer? He must necessarilybe bo th. There is no sidestepping the role in which Romulan history willpigeonhole him, and no denying the reasons they have to do so. Yet amongthose persons in the Federation who knew his true reasons for divulgingthe information, he was a man of bully courage. As Jarroc himself noted,One worlds butcher is another worlds hero. The same thing could in like mannerbe said of the defector. Works Cited Smith, Greg. Interchange on The Defector. Interchange. 30 January1996.Rogets II The New Thesaurus. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1988..The Defector. Star Trek The Next Generation. Season 3, outcome58.