Le renégat and the tongue

I think that ideas about man’s place in the world correspond brilliantly with the cutting out of the tongue, which signifies so much. The tongue, as organ of speech, can be both beneficial and deviant. Its severance can be associated with (dis)honour and punishment, both in religious scripture and art. (I’m thinking particularly of Shakespearean and other Elizabethan work – sorry, once did an essay on this!) I think it’s interesting to see this in the light of freedom, and the decision/ability to speak or not speak. In Le renégat, the narrator says that “le jour où l’on m’a coupé la langue, j’ai appris à adorer l’âme immortelle de la haine!” (50). The cutting out of the tongue detaches someone from civilisation as they knew it. If it is self-inflicted, it may be an act of disengagement, a way of exercising will or showing disapproval (Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy??) In Le renégat, could the act perhaps comprise both, firstly with the narrator’s absolute disillusionment and conversion, and also the act being an assertion of power? The narrator sees that his tongue was removed “pour que sa parole ne vienne plus tromper le monde” (53), but equally he becomes disgusted by the “insolente bonté” displayed by the not-tongueless new missionary (54), and is thus disgusted by what he sees as his own former naivety. His love of goodness was sacrificed along with his autonomy; the tribal indoctrination made him blind to his own capacity to choose. Perhaps the brutal act in turn made the narrator convert to a system of brutality; the cutting of the tongue was the catalyst. I think this could go well with a lot of what we’ve said about totalitarianism: the suppression - in this case physical - of individual voices in order to eradicate choice and spread absolutism.