Questions to Guide Your Reading

Philip Hallie, In the Eye of the Hurrican: Tales of Good and Evil, Help and Harm

2. The Cockroach Building

1. What was the "Cockroach Building"?

2. On p. 11, Hallie says: "My uncle had rescued me from the coercion of despair, and he had done it by empowering me."  What does he mean?  What event is he describing?  What do you think of what his uncle did?

3. Hallie's description of Chicago in the thirties is of a "dog-eat-dog" world.  Except, he says, for "two beautiful moments."  What were they?  Did those two things affect his everyday life?  Why or why not?

4. Why was going into combat against the Germans in World War II no real shock for Hallie?

5. What did Hallie do during the Second World War?  Was Hallie ashamed of what he did during the war?  Describe his experience looking at the "blond, beautifully symmetrical head of a young man, with its SS cadet cap still firmly on it."

6. What was the thesis of Hallie's first book, The Paradox of Cruelty ?

7. According to Hallie, during the years after the war, he learned to enjoy literature, the arts, and philosophical reasoning.  What did he think about these things?   What did he think "life" was like?


3. Magda and the Great Virtues

1. What does Hallie mean when he says on p. 23: "Only the stars are neutral"?

2. When Hallie sat down in his chair, depressed and nearly suicidal, on that April evening "without a shred of hope," what did he think was the only way of prevailing over "the besetting need in manunkind to smash the weak"?  (Note: "Manunkind" is an ironic twist on the term "mankind" – because, you see, we're not always so "kind"; it's a term Hallie borrowed from the poet e. e. cummings.)

3. What story did Hallie read that night that make tears run down his cheeks?  Why did it make him weep?

4. What was Hallie's attitude for most of his life toward nonviolent people?  Why did he dislike them?

5. According to Hallie, most ethical theories have both negative rules and positive rules.  What are examples of the first and of the second.  What important things is true of the yes ethic that is not always true of the no ethic?
 
6. Once he began to read about the actions in the little village of Le Chambon, Hallie also recalled his mother's sabbath prayers.  What was the mystery that she drew him into?

7. What, according to Hallie, does "goodness" have "something to do with"?

8. At a certain point, Hallie said to himself, "Why fight spring?"  What did that mean?  He then recalled these lines by one of his favorite poets, the Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins:

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

What is the meaning of this verse, and how does it apply to Hallie's situation?

9. Hallie went to interview Magda Trocmé to find out about why the events happened in the little village of Le Chambon.  What dominated her stories?

10. When Hallie says to Magda at one point, "But you are good people, good," what was her reaction and why?

11. What did Associate Pastor Edouard Theis say when Hallie once asked him: "Pastor Theis, didn't you ever hate these Germans for what they were doing to the parents of these children?"

12. What was written above the main entrance to the church of Le Chambon?

13. According to Hallie, Pastor Trocmé's sermons inspired the people of the village to follow in the footsteps of whom?  What did that mean for them?

14. When Edouard Theis put all the money in his pocket into the alms box, and Hallie asked him, somewhat impulsively, "But Monsieur Theis, all that money you gave – where is it going?  How will you do without it?", what was the response?

15. What seemed to be the motto of that very short French woman by the name of Gabrielle Barruad?

16. What was Magda Trocmé's usual greeting to new refugees whom she suddenly found standing in terror and hunger outside the door of the presbytery (which is the house for the pastor of the church)?  How long did such people stay with the Trocmé's?

17.  What does Hallie say about "habit"?  What was the "habit" – the "iron axiom" – of the villagers in Le Chambon?  Why are such "habits" important?

18. Are such "habits" by definition inborn?  What does the term "second nature" mean?

19. According to Hallie, what are (using a term from Italian novelist and essayist Natalia Ginzburg) the "great virtues"?  What are the "little virtues" (piccole virtu)?  What do we spend more time teaching our children about?  Indeed, how do you have to teach "the great virtues"?

20. On p. 40 in his text, Hallie makes the following comment: "If all we do for our children is pound into their heads reasons for protecting their own hides, their second nature will be as wide as the confines of their own self-seeking skins.  One's life is usually about as wide as one's love.  But if we make the often-impractical great virtues part of their lives, their second nature will be as wide as their love."  Do you believe that "one's life is about as wide as one's love"?  What evidence do you have for it?  What evidence do you have against it?  Would you be willing to make it an "iron axiom" of your life?  How would you even begin to do that?  On p. 45, Hallie says about helping others: "You are not the center; the helped person is."  Are you willing to do that?


Chapter 4, 5, and 6

21. Hallie reports that, a few weeks after the publication of his book about the villagers of Le Chambon (entitled Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed), he received a letter from a man who began his first paragraph with the statement: "Nothing happened west of National Route 7 in southern France."  What did the man mean?  What do you think?  Did anything happen in the little village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the years 1940 to 1944?

22. What was the likely role of Major Julius Schmäling of the German Wehrmacht in the circumstances of the villagers of Le Chambon?

23. What was Major Schmäling's role in the death of the pacifist doctor Roger LeForstier?

24. At the bottom of p. 81, Hallie makes the following comment: "But the fact remains that he [Schmäling] was a successfully functioning part of a state that murdered millions of defenseless human beings.  In a world dominated by the Nazis, he would have enjoyed a full life by reason of his record.  He served the Reich well.  He did nothing to slow down – let alone stop – the triumphant march of Nazism."  What is your judgment in the matter?  How would you judge the war record of one Major Julius Schmäling of the German Wehrmacht?

25. What lesson does Philip Hallie draw from his study of the life of Julius Schmäling?

26. In a chapter entitled "An Apology to my Mother," Hallie tells the story of German university professor Kurt Huber.  Describe how Hallie compares the characters of Huber and Schmäling.  (Remember that here we have two university professors, both of whom joined the Nazi Party.)

27. Why did Hallie's mother so desperately not want him to go to Germany to interview Schmäling?

28.  At this point, please also go back and re-read Hallie's description of Schmäling's emotional temperament (in sections 6, 7, and 8).  What was he like?  What moral do you suppose Hallie was trying to bring out by describing Schmäling as he did?  What was the character of his temperament that – perhaps – caused him to end up as the commandant of German troops in the Haute-Loire, doing the things he did in that role, rather than ending up, like Kurt Huber, as a man who was executed by guillotine in a grimy German prison cell?

29.  We have been introduced to several major characters.  Of all the major characters you have met – Magda Trocmé and her husband, Julius Schmäling, Kurt Huber, and Hallie himself – whose life would you most like to have lived during the years 1938 to 1945?  Would you have preferred to have been Magda Trocmé or her husband?  Or would you have preferred to play the part of Major Schmäling?  And between Schmäling and Huber, whom would you have rather been?  Or perhaps you would have rather played the part of Philip Hallie?  Give it some thought. [And, I hope it goes without saying, that the reasons for your decisions should be a little more profound than something like:  "I just don't like the name Schmäling," or "I don't think I'd like to be a short, Italian woman."  That's not the point.  The point is, what sort of person, and which moral role, is the kind of person and the kind of moral character  you would have wanted then (and perhaps would still prefer to have now)?]