Genesis and Catastrophe: A True Story by Rauld Dahl
Genesis and Catastrophe is a short story by Rauld Dahl. It is featured in the book Kiss Kiss along with many other stories that will shock, and maybe disgust, you. It is said that if you’re taste is for the macabre and the sick then Kiss Kiss is for you. Genesis and Catastrophe is one of the less gruesome books that does not deal with other people’s actions but deals with your own mental decisions.
In this short story there is a woman, Klara, who has just given birth to a baby boy. She cries when she sees him because he is small and sickly looking. She tells the doctor that the baby boy must live because she has already lost her last three children. She tells how her husband is a mean drunk and fears what he will do if the baby doesn’t live. Her husband comes storming into the room disoriented and drunk, asking for his son. He comments that the baby is frail and weak looking but the doctor assures him the baby is healthy and Klara cries. She starts to beg for God’s mercy to let her son live. This is the point where her husband reveals the baby’s name: Adolf Hitler.
The intention of the story is to make you feel sympathy for the woman. Rauld Dahl describes in detail the way she cries and begs for her son’s health and the way her husband treats her so coldly, By the end of the short story you can’t feel anything but hope for this little baby and pity for the woman. Once Rauld Dahl reveals that the baby is Hitler, a Nazi politician who killed thousands of people, you’re not sure what to feel. You want so badly for the baby to live but then you find out it’s a man who is responsible for the pain and suffering of numerous people and you wonder if maybe it is better off if the baby dies or never is born at all.
In this age, many people don’t make decisions based on what they believe. They go along with what their friends think and aren’t really opinionated. I like this story because it forces you to make a decision: should the baby live or die? It shows you both sides of the argument and you choose what you think is morally correct.
Even if this doesn’t seem like a story you would like, maybe there’s someone you know who doesn’t form their own opinions. Suggesting Genesis and Catastrophe to them will not make them all of a suddenly deep thinking but it will at least force them to make a conscious decision of what they think is just.
If you find you like this story then I would suggest checking Kiss Kiss out. It is filled with stories that have twists and turns all the way through so the ending is always a surprise.
This book sounds very interesting to me. As a person, I normally try to make decisions based on what I think, and not on what other people's expectations are. I try to be an individual, and this book seems like it would suit this aspect of my personality very well. The question the book seems to pose is that every person has people who care about them, and is it right for us to influence them based on what their future is? Would you be able to kill your own child if you knew they would grow up to perform horrific acts of cruelty? I plan to read this book, and answer that question for myself.
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