Vinland Saga Season 2

Episode 18

I'm going to tell a story that I don't share very often, because it deals with some pretty heavy stuff. Given what goes on in “The First Method,” though, I feel compelled to share a specific moment of my own past, as it drives a lot of my strong reactions to this episode. If you're not down to read about trauma, domestic abuse, and that sort of thing, then you may want to sit this week out.

The first time I ever wanted to hurt someone—to kill someone—was when I was somewhere between five and seven years old. I was sitting in the passenger seat of a truck while I watched a man scream at and beat my mother. This was not the first time I'd been forced to sit behind a locked door and be utterly helpless as this man abused my mother, but this is the first time that I can recall feeling my helplessness twist and writhe inside my guts as it transformed into a very different kind of emotion: Loathing. Black, viscous hatred. Pure, simple, and stark.

It was such a raw and overwhelming emotion that, to this day, almost 30 years later, I find myself reliving that moment, over and over, at least once or twice a week. It doesn't matter where I am, or who I am with, or how good of a day it has been in the meantime. All of a sudden, I'll be a little kid again, sitting behind the locked door of that truck. I'll be watching my mother hold up her hands and scream, only for that man reach down to pick her up by the wrists to throw her again. I'll look down at the gravel driveway that the truck is parked in and see one of those big cinder blocks that was always lying around for some reason, and I will think to myself, “If only I was big enough to pick up one of those blocks and lift it high above my head. If only I was brave enough to open up this door, run over across the grass, and bash his brains out with it.” I didn't do that, of course. I was just a kid. Instead, the guy eventually found God, and he made a big show of how sorry he was, and how much he was committed to changing his ways. He even ended up being a fairly decent surrogate father to my half-sister. Sometimes, I would even end up going to visit him with her, and I'd have to smile, and make nice, and act like everything was perfectly fine.

I am not a violent person. I've never been in a single fight in my life, unless you count the one time that I annoyed a friend of mine into tackling me on the playground in the fourth grade. The only law I've ever broken involved getting caught in a speed trap outside my work going five mph over the limit. I like to think of myself as a reasonably well-adjusted guy, given the circumstances. I was able to build years of good memories with my father once I finally moved in with him. I was fortunate enough to have a family that could pay for me to go to college, which is where I met my wife, who is the shining beacon of my entire world. Despite all of that, though, whenever I find myself trapped, again, in the passenger seat of that truck, I feel it. The desire to lash out, and even to take a life, if only I were strong enough.

I wanted to share all of this because, for reasons that hopefully make sense now, “The First Method” hit me pretty hard. Not just because of the horrible violence that Ketil inflicts upon Arnheid, and the deeply personal memories that the scene stirred within me, but also because of what that scene represents in the larger thematic context of this series. All throughout the episode, Thorfinn is stuck in his chains with Einar, and he cannot help but wonder if breaking his oath was the right thing to do. Einar assures him that there was no other way to protect Arnheid, and that Thorfinn's violence was, in this case, rooted in a righteous cause. Thorfinn cannot help but be skeptical, though. Surely, there has to be a better way.

For Thorfinn, the justification of a “righteous clause” is hardly an excuse at all, because everyone considers themselves to be righteous in the heat of their anger and violence. That's why the earlier episodes that contextualize Ketil's reluctance to be violent and cruel are so important. It isn't because Ketil is a good person; it's because Ketil believes he is a good person, even when he is participating in a system that is fundamentally dehumanizing and evil. It is what allows him to sleep at night, the fact that, yes, he beats his slaves, but he feels bad about it, because he had to do it. He feels plenty justified, too, when he beats Arnheid within an inch of her life, even after he is told that she is carrying his child. What else is a man to do, when the rest of the world is out to get him?

Thorfinn's whole philosophy is becoming rooted in the notion that no violence is ever justifiable, because to even believe another human being can “deserve” to be hurt is to give credence to men like Ketil, and Thorgil, and Askeladd, and to every last son of a bitch who has made another person feel small, and weak, and scared, all because they cannot reckon with the depths of their own smallness and inadequacy in the face of life's hardships. It gives their noxious worldview legitimacy and power, and thus it can never be truly erased from the world.

That Vinland Saga is willing to grapple with such difficult and painful subject matter is already a mark in its favor; that it can do so with such clarity of purpose and evident pathos is a miracle. What makes it so hard for me to wrestle with as a viewer is also what makes it so important. The defining moment of my entire childhood was when I realized that I was capable of hating and fearing someone enough to wish them dead. As I have discovered over the years, that kind of trauma can shape you more deeply and irrevocably than any of the happiest memories of your life. I want to believe that I am better than the kinds of men who leave nothing but broken lives in their wake, but would I be, if I were to give into that part of myself that sometimes still believes that some people deserve every bit of pain that is coming to them?

I don't know. I truly don't. So long as there are men like Thorfinn, though, who are willing to seek a better way, then maybe there is hope enough for any one of us to be better, too.

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Vinland Saga Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.