The Problem of Ambition: The Peter Principle, Star Trek Badmirals, and The Thorn Birds
(Actress Jean Simmons as Admiral Norah Satie, a typical “badmiral” in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Jean Simmons also appeared in The Thorn Birds as Meggie’s mother, Fee Cleary.)
Ambition is normally taken to be a good thing. Whether it’s getting that next promotion or getting the professional respect you finally deserve, ambition is at the core of much of what people do. What, however, are the critical problems with ambition for its own sake? In what ways does ambition backfire and undercut its own intention—one’s own happiness and the common good?
According to the Peter Principle, in the 1969 book of the same name (The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong) by Laurence J. Peter, people tend to rise to the level of their own incompetence in a hierarchy. You start out at the bottom of the professional totem pole, and you are successful and competent, so you get promoted into a new role—say, a low-level management role. This new role requires a different skill set than was required at the lower-level position, but you learn and adapt, develop some new skills, and are similarly successful at the new management role as well. So, you get promoted once again, say to a middle-management role.
Now one of two things will happen: you will either gain the additional skills it takes to be successful at this middle-management role, or you will be in over your head, having been promoted into a role for which you are not truly qualified or competent. If you’ve ever perceived in you professional life, or in any hierarchical organization, that the managers are incompetent, this is why. Those managers likely were competent in their lower-level roles, which is why they got promoted into positions of authority in the first place. And perhaps they succeeded in previous lower-level management roles as well. However, when one gets promotion after promotion, it’s likely—perhaps only a matter of time—until you are promoted into a job for which you are truly incompetent, because the skill set is so new and different from the skill set that made you successful up until that point. This is the Peter Principle in action. Your managers, and those in charge of any organization, are very likely to be incompetent.
In the fictional Star Trek universe, there are many so-called badmirals—admirals that make bad decisions, look out for their own career interests, are ambitious careerists not in the spirit of Federation values, and so on. The Peter Principle explains how those admirals came to be in positions of power but why they are also so totally incompetent as admirals. Those admirals were likely excellent junior officers, they were probably rock-star first officers for their captains, and they were very likely successful captains themselves—unless they were promoted merely to get them out of the way in a desk job where they could do no further damage, which itself is an interesting point about careerists who climb the ladder according to the Peter Principle: incompetent people at a higher management level are also fundamentally harmless to an organization because it is the lower-level worker bees who get the work done and keep the proverbial trains running on time. So even though corporate managers, and those badmirals in Star Trek, are likely to be incompetent, they are also harmless because it is the lower-level officers, captains and below, who are on the frontier making the key decisions day in and day out.
Managers have to create noise—new work tasks in the form of new strategic initiatives, seemingly important key decisions, and so on. This is because, either consciously or unconsciously aware of the fact that they themselves don’t do any of the actual work of an organization—need to justify their own position, justify the existence of the entire hierarchy in the first place. After all, since they are managers, it’s their job to manage, and, cynically, to invent new things to manage, lest it come to light that they do little of the actual work for the organization—PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets notwithstanding, the illusion of real work and productivity!
In an early scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, we see a former Captain Kirk, now Admiral Kirk, feeling old and worn out, having lost his sense of direction and his sense of purpose, no longer having the Enterprise at his command, and training cadets in a simulation of the Enterprise instead of being out on the final frontier himself in the real thing. Kirk’s longtime friend and colleague Dr. McCoy comes to his apartment on Kirk’s birthday, gifts of Romulan Ale and a pair of antique eyeglasses in hand. In response to Kirk’s moping about on his own birthday, McCoy asks him what the hell is the matter, and the following conversation ensues:
McCoy: Damn it, Jim, what the hell's the matter with you? Other people have birthdays. Why are we treating yours like a funeral?
Kirk: Bones, I don’t want to be lectured.
McCoy: What the hell do you want? ...This is not about age, ...and you know it. This is about you flying a goddamn computer console when you wanna be out there hopping Galaxies.
Kirk: Spare me your notions of poetry, please. We all have our assigned duties.
McCoy: Bull. You're hiding ...hiding behind rules and regulations.
Kirk: Who am I hiding from?
McCoy: From yourself, Admiral!
Kirk: Don't mince words, Bones, What do you really think?
McCoy: Jim, I'm your doctor and I'm your friend. Get back your command. Get it back before you turn into part of this collection. Before you really do grow old.
Kirk is in danger of becoming a badmiral himself—worn out, useless, ineffective, irrelevant. Over the course of the next two movies, from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, we get a window into Kirk’s own existential rediscovery of himself, his journey from the admiralty back home to the captaincy—a voyage home indeed!—for Kirk is only at home on the bridge of his ship, more so than in his own apartment in San Francisco with its plate-glass window looking out onto the Golden Gate Bridge. Real life isn’t lived through a window but out on the frontiers, with all its risks and messiness and potential for glory, with the potential to really live.
This theme continues years later in Kirk’s life, several movies later in Star Trek Generations, in the following discussion, made possible because of some movie-magic time travel, between Captain Kirk and his successor several times over, Captain Jean-Luc Picard:
(Kirk jumps a ravine on a horse and back in the Nexus—a dreamlike place where one’s wishes seem like reality.)
Kirk: I must have jumped that fifty times. Scared the hell out of me. Except this time. ...Because it isn't real.
(Kirk sees a woman on a horse on a distant hill.)
Picard: Antonia?
Kirk: She isn't real either, is she? Nothing here is. ...Nothing here matters.
Kirk: You know, maybe this is less about an empty house than that empty chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. Ever since I left Starfleet I haven't made a difference. ...Captain of the Enterprise, huh?
Picard: That's right.
Kirk: Close to retirement?
Picard: I'm not planning on it.
Kirk: Let me tell you something. Don't! Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there, you can make a difference.
As I get older I understand better the existential journeys of both Captain Kirk and Captain Picard. An older Admiral Kirk longs not merely to feel young again—despite his statement at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, following the death of Spock in the course of saving the Enterprise:
McCoy: He's really not dead. As long as we remember him.
Kirk: 'It's a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before. ...A far better resting place that I go to than I have ever known'.
Carol Marcus: Is that a poem?
Kirk: No, no. Something Spock was trying to tell me. On my birthday.
McCoy: You okay, Jim? How do you feel?
Kirk: Young. I feel young.
No, Kirk doesn’t just want to feel young, he wants the fight for meaning, to live a life worth living, to make a difference, to be on the frontier instead of playing it safe, to be competent instead of incompetent, to really live life instead of looking at it through a plate glass window—or through a computer terminal—to grab reality by the horns with his own free agency instead of letting reality and fate kick him around like a piece of aging flotsam.
We viewers are fundamentally dissatisfied with Admiral Kirk; instead we long to see the Machiavellian gleam in Captain Kirk’s eye as he bucks the norms and breaks the rules, as only Kirk can get away with—like the gleam in Kirk’s eye we saw return in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, just before stealing the Enterprise after being told “No” by a badmiral. More importantly, we long for those qualities in ourselves. We are, or we should be, dissatisfied living a second-hand life. We should be wary of having so much ambition that we become ineffectual and incompetent in our coveted new positions. We need to be on our own personal or professional frontiers of life, whatever those frontiers and our own existential journey may be for each of us.
Ambition can also cost us the things that bring real happiness. In the 1983 television miniseries The Thorn Birds, Richard Chamberlain’s character, Father Ralph de Bricassart, faces an ongoing choice between his ambition to climb the ladder of Catholic Church hierarchy—as he progresses from priest to archbishop to cardinal over the course of decades—and Ralph’s romantic love interest and desire of his heart, the much younger Meggie Cleary (portrayed by both Sydney Penny and Rachel Ward). Although The Thorn Birds is ostensibly a love story, of sorts, one could argue that the perils of ambition is its deeper theme. Consider the following pieces of dialog about ambition from various points in The Thorn Birds. Woven together in this way, these snippets of dialog from The Thorn Birds can be seen as a kind of philosophical dialogue on the burdens of free will and the potential price of ambition:
Father Ralph: The priest confesses. It’s true I once had ambitions, great ambitions, which I thwarted by my own stupid lack of humility, and I was sent here. And here you were, a good Catholic with Drogheda and no heirs—or so I thought.
Mrs. Carson: And you thought, “Aha! My ticket to the Vatican!”
Father Ralph: Put with typical cruelty but perhaps not undeserved. The point is I’ve changed. And it’s largely you I have to thank for it.
Mrs. Carson: Me?
Father Ralph: When you made the Clearys your heirs, you dashed all my hopes just as you intended. But it freed me, too, from all my old desires. Mary, I’m a priest, only that, and content.
Mrs. Carson: Oh, bravo, Ralph, bravo. I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a performance more.
Father Ralph: Mary….
Mrs. Carson: “All my old desires.” Oh that is wonderful, that is wonderful. Well, I’ll let you stew a while longer, but your day of reckoning is coming; don’t you ever doubt it.
Father Ralph: How you do love the illusion of your own power. Don’t make me pity you.
Mrs. Carson: Pity me? Pity me? Do you doubt I can’t make you writhe yet? Do you think I can’t make you sell yourself like a painted whore before I’m finished with you?
Father Ralph: I don’t doubt you’ll try. But take care. In trying so hard to destroy my soul, you may lose your own—if there’s still one there to lose.
Ms. Carson: Or still one there to destroy!
Mrs. Carson: Father…. She is lovely, isn’t she? There’s not a man in this room who wouldn’t give up everything just to have her, is there?
Father Ralph: Now, Mary, you’re baiting me again.
Mrs. Carson: Not one man—except perhaps you. Once a long time ago I offered you a chance at the cardinal’s robe and you turned me down. But I wonder, I wonder, if you had to choose between Meggie and the cardinal’s robe, which would you choose?
Father Ralph: Oh, Mary, what would I have done without you these past years? Your wit, your perception, your malice?
Mrs. Carson: Kiss me goodbye, Ralph.
Father Ralph: Mary, goodnight. Sleep well.
(Father Ralph kisses Mrs. Carson on the hand.)
Mrs. Carson: No! On my mouth! Kiss me on my mouth as if we were lovers!
Father Ralph: Mary, I am a priest.
Mrs. Carson: A priest? You’re not a man or a priest! You’re just some impotent, useless thing that doesn’t know how to be either!
Father Ralph: You're wrong, Mary. I know how to be a man. But to be a man on your terms is to be no priest. And I have chosen to be a priest.
Mrs. Carson: With the free will God has given us, and with that same free will I have chosen to destroy you, Priest. I'll go to hell for it, of course but it'll be nothing to the hell I'm planning for you.
Father Ralph: It's yourself you'll destroy with this everlasting hatred of yours.
Mrs. Carson: When Satan tempted Christ with the whole world is it because he hated him or because he loved him?
Archbishop Vittorio Contini: You must study your languages if you're to be a church diplomat. The dying youth in the play is Hippolytus. He is cold to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. He is cold to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. To punish him for his neglect she causes his mother to fall hopelessly in love with him. But, Hippolytus spurns her. And that's why she kills herself? Hippolytus' father blames him and has him killed by the god of the sea.
Ralph: A cruel story, and so unjust: Hippolytus dies even though he's innocent. In fact, he behaves laudably.
Archbishop Vittorio Contini: good Catholic interpretation, yes, perhaps. But to the ancient Greeks he is quite guilty of the sin of pride. You see, it is that Hippolytus holds himself above human love. He's cold. He will not even admit that human passion exists.
Ralph: And what if he would admit it? Would he then escape his fate?
Archbishop Vittorio Contini: That is the cruelty because this is his fate. He cannot choose to love anymore than his poor mother can choose to be cold. The gods have willed it for their sport. Cruel, but rather an appealing system, is it not? No decisions to make, no conscience, no agony of free will, nothing. All fated from the first.
Ralph: Rather shockingly at odds with the teachings of the Church of Rome.
Archbishop Vittorio Contini: My dear Ralph, do you not find it humbling to realize that when this play was first performed Rome was still infested with fur-clad barbarians?
Archbishop Vittorio Contini: You know, I was just thinking—of that old woman in the market. She reminded me of how very certain I once was that I had found your Achilles’ heel—those looks of yours. They had to have made you the target, or perhaps even the victim, of so many desires. But, I have tested you, had you watched, thrown you together with beautiful women, and with men. No result. Not a flicker. No. Whatever you burn for, Ralph, is not for the flesh.
Ralph: I am… surprised, Your Grace.
Archbishop Vittorio Contini: Shocked, you mean, by my methods. But you shouldn’t be. They are simply tactics of which you must be aware if your weakness lies where I think it does—in ambition.
Ralph: Well, if that is a flaw I shall try to mend it, Archbishop.
Archbishop Vittorio Contini: I might find that rather tedious, as it is a weakness which I share. And, like all self-perpetuating institutions, the church has always a place for ambitious men. In fact, you are everything the church admirers in her high officials. You are conservative, quick, subtle, you know enough never to give away what is going on behind those eyes. And you have the most exquisite gift of knowing how to please, even when it comes to pleasing those you loathe.
Ralph: You make me out to be a Machiavelli, Your Grace, except that he was an Italian.
(Vittorio laughs.)
Archbishop Vittorio Contini: Oh, my dear Ralph, you are a delight! I can scarcely wait to see your effect on our short, fat prelates in Rome.
Ralph: Rome?
Archbishop Vittorio Contini: The beautiful, sleek cat among the plump, started pigeons. In time, my ambitious friend, in time. These conferences will soon be over, and then (laughs), we shall see what fate has in store at the Vatican—for both of us!
Meggie: Up so late, Mum?
Meggie’s Mother: I wanted to get this summary report in order for Father Ralph. We’ve really come back very strongly since the fire. Maybe even stronger than ever. I think Ralph will be quite surprised.
Meggie: Oh? Is he back from Greece?
Meggie’s Mother: No. In fact, I had a letter just today, quite an announcement. He’s off to the Vatican with that, you know the one with the name a yard long. Ralph’s to be made a bishop. So who knows if he’ll ever be back to Australia.
Meggie: The Vatican. That’s nice.
Meggie’s Mother: Nice? I thought you’d be pleased for him.
Meggie: Well, of course I’m pleased. It’s what he always wanted, isn’t it? It’s just that I’ve got my own announcement to make: I’m going to marry Luke O’Neill.
Ralph: At 11:00 there’s a meeting on consular relations with the secretary. And I’d watch him, Your Grace. I hear he’s opposed to your position. Then the congregation for the Oriental churches to discuss the establishment of more regional seminaries—an exciting trend, don’t you think? Because a native clergy would be more sensitive to their own people.
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: No doubt, no doubt. But, oh, these endless conferences. Policy, diplomacy. Tsk tsk. Are you so very certain that you want to be a cardinal?
Ralph: Well, how else can I hope to be elected pope?
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: The perfect answer, always. Deceiving with the truth. Do you never have one unguarded moment?
Ralph: I beg your pardon. I’ve offended, Your Eminence.
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: And I wish you would stop calling me by that exalted title of mine! My name is Vittorio. When Pius X became Pope, he was given a wonderful bed. And do you know what he said? “It’s beautiful. But I shall die in it.” So much for the rewards of ambition.
Luddie Mueller: There’s a letter in there for you.
Meggie: Thanks.
Anne Mueller: That bad, girl? I can do that well.
Meggie: I’m sorry.
Anne Mueller: Meggie, what is it?
Meggie: Luke’s not taking me home for Christmas after all. He and Arne have found some extra work.
Anne Mueller: Damn! Doesn’t that man ever do anything but work?
Meggie: This big dream of his to have the best place in all Australia comes before everything! We’ve been here almost a year, and now he’s saying it’ll may be another year before we’re ready, maybe two!
Anne Mueller: Oh. I suppose you have to respect him for having a goal and being willing to sacrifice for it.
Meggie: Yes. Except I’m the sacrifice. Well, I’ve no one to blame but myself. I married Luke, and I’ll see it through.
Ralph: It’s true that we do much that is good, but often the sacrifices seem to outweigh the rewards. But doesn’t every priest, whatever his station in the Church, wonder about the sacrifices he must make?
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: Always, if he is honest with himself. When we’re young, it is the promise of chastity that is hardest to bear, isn’t it? Never to be swept away on a tidal wave of passion. And then, knowing that there will be no wife—no soft, round comfort in the night. And no child. No one to come after you. Not ever. But lately I have been feeling another kind of isolation—the simple human need to share my innermost self with someone, like any other man.
Ralph: And yet we’re not like other men. We’re priests. Our inmost selves must be shared only with God.
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: Another perfect answer. You think I am testing you again, don’t you? Still probing for the sake of the Church? Never fear, for all my probing there is still, in the very core of you, something Have not found.
Ralph: If you haven’t found it, perhaps it isn’t there.
(Ralph drops his Bible revealing a pressed dried rose.)
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: How lovely. (Sniffs the rose.) Still the faintest fragrance. I kept a rose for many years—from my mother.
Ralph: I want no memories of my mother. No, this was the sacrifice.
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: It is very fragile. We must be careful with it. (Places rose back in Ralph’s Bible.)
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: You will never tell me, will you, Ralph?
Ralph: Your Eminence?
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: Why you remain so deeply troubled. I've recommended that you take up my former post in Australia as Papal Legate.
Ralph: You wish to have me sent away? But why? Have I not been doing well?
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: Well? You've had a brilliant career so far. You've become an archbishop already. And there is nothing to stop you from rising higher. Nothing. Except the rose. When your rose fell to the ground, I understood at last the sadness you always wear like a holy mantle.
Ralph: I've tried so hard to get her out of my heart.
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: You think I don't know that?
Ralph: Then why?
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: Our God has given us free will and with that gift comes the burden of choice. It is time, far past time that you took up that burden because until you do you cannot go on.
Ralph: But sending me back to where she is is like asking me to fail.
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: It's asking you to choose.
Ralph: Fee! (Kisses Fee’s hand.)
Meggie’s Mother: Hello, Ralph. I should be kissing your hand now that you're an archbishop.
Ralph: Fee, not you. How are you? You never tell me a thing when you send me your financial reports. Where's Meggie?
Meggie’s Brother: Still in Queensland. At least I guess she is. Haven't heard a word since Christmas, and that's been six months.
Ralph: Queensland? Whatever is she doing there?
Meggie’s Brother: They're settling there, you know. Although we're all wondering if Luke will ever buy a place.
Meggie’s Mother: Luke's work takes him away most of the time, I gather. So Meggie stays with some friends of his.
Ralph: Luke?
Meggie’s Mother: Meggie's husband. Ralph, you didn't know Meggie married?
Ralph: Little Meggie? And no one told me?
Meggie’s Brother: Blimey, did she never write to you?
Meggie’s Mother: Luke's not Catholic, you see. Meggie wanted to tell you herself.
Meggie’s Mother: Well, you wanted her to marry. In fact, you're quite good at getting what you want, aren't you, Ralph? Mary Carson's been dead, how long? And here you are, an archbishop already.
Ralph: What kind of man is this Luke O'Neill that he roams about and doesn't even make a home for Meggie?
Meggie’s Mother: The ambitious kind.
Ralph: I must go soon.
Meggie: I expected that. It’s funny how you always show up for life’s great crises and then just melt away like the Holy Ghost.
Ralph: I’m sorry you’re not happier about the baby.
Meggie: Before she was born, I said I hated her. (Sighs.) I don’t. But what I wouldn’t give if she were yours instead of Luke’s!
Ralph: Meggie.
Meggie: Oh, Ralph! Why must the Church have all of you? Even that part of you she’s no use for? Your manhood.
Ralph: You already know the answer to that, My Meggie. It is a necessary sacrifice.
Meggie: Oh. (Sighs) Necessary? Come off it, Ralph! I’m not a child anymore. And I’m not your Meggie! I never was! All those years that I, that I loved you, and I waited for you, and I wanted you! You never wanted me! So I tried to forget you with someone else! And he doesn’t want me either. You think you’re no ordinary man, but there’s not a penny’s worth of difference between you and Luke O’Neill! You’re both just, just great big hairy moths bashing yourself to pieces over a silly flame! While all the while out there, in the cool night, there’s food and love and babies to get. Oh, don’t you see it? Do you want it? No. And so it’s back after the flame again, until it kills you.
Ralph: God knows how much I’ve hurt you. But I do love you.
Meggie: Yes, you love me. And God more than me. And yourself most of all, Ralph. Yourself and your ambition!
Ralph: Meggie, this is very hard, I know, I know. But, please, don’t let it make you hard. You’ve always been my rose. The most beautiful image and thought.
Meggie: (Screams) An image? A thought? That’s all I am to you, isn’t it, you romantic dreaming fool? You haven’t the least idea what real love is! Oh, go away! I can’t bear to look at you anymore! And there’s one thing you’ve forgotten about your precious roses, Ralph! They’ve got nasty, hooky thorns!
Anne Mueller: Ralph did come, didn’t he?
(Meggie nods and giggles.)
Anne Mueller: What was I to do? When we saw you weren’t here I thought the man was going to die on the spot, and he already looked like he’d been haunting houses as it was. And I thought maybe he might even mean to give it all up for you.
(Meggie shakes her head “No” but smiles.)
Anne Mueller: And you can still look so happy.
Meggie: I’ll never have what you and Luddie have together. But I can live forever on those few days with Ralph if I have to. And far better that than watching him grow to hate me more each day for keeping him from what he thinks he needs.
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: Ralph, welcome back to Rome. You have chosen.
Ralph: You said I must, if I’m to go on in the Church. But, having chosen, how can I go on? I have broken all my vows.
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: You went to the rose.
Ralph: Yes! Vittorio, I never felt such ecstasy in God’s presence as I felt with her. I found a pleasure in her I never dreamed existed—not just in her body, but because I love to be with her. To smile at her. Talk with her. Share her food, share her thoughts. I wanted never to leave her.
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: But you left her. You found the strength to leave her.
Ralph: But I haven’t let go of her! That’s what wounds me, and I don’t know how towel myself!
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: Perhaps you’re not meant to. Perhaps that wound has saved you. Do you remember the Greek story of Hippolytus?
Ralph: The play we saw in Athens? Yes. Yes, he was killed because he couldn’t love.
Cardinal Vittorio Contini: No. Because he was too proud to love. Too arrogant to count himself among mortal men. Yes, your vows are broken. But so, too, let us hope it’s that proud spirit that kept you from the thing you wanted most. You see, one cannot truly be a priest without the humility to understand that one is first a man. When you think of your rose, think that it was she that led you to understand that.
Ralph: No. Oh, no. To see her only as, as some means of saving me, would be the greatest arrogance of all. She loves, Vittorio, despite everything, and with a singleness of mind and heart. If only I could love like that.
Meggie’s Mother: I was 16 when I met him. He was everything that Paddy wasn't. Sophisticated, cultured, charming. I thought I couldn't live without him. But he was an important man, a politician, and already married. He wasn't about to sacrifice all that for me. I was nothing to his noble ambition. Just as you're nothing to Ralph's.
Meggie: I know I can never have Ralph. But at least I've got part of him the Church can never have.
Meggie’s Mother: Yes. That's what I thought. To take of him what I could. To have his child to love at least. But what have I got now? I lost Frank. I paid in the worst way a mother could. And you're going to pay, too. Believe me, God will see to that.
Meggie: You think I haven't paid already? What else have I ever done but pay for the great sin of loving Ralph de Bricassart? All my life I trod the straight and narrow for fear of God Almighty and what did it get me but a broken heart? No, Mom, I'm not afraid of God anymore. And as for Ralph he'll never know Dane's his unless you tell him. And if you do, I warn you I'll be as merciful to you as you have always been to me!
Meggie’s Mother: Yes, you'll beat God himself as I did.
Meggie: I have beaten God. Dane is mine, and nothing's gonna take him from me.
Rainer Hartheim: My reasons for coming are rather different. I’ve heard about Drogheda for years, from Dane and Justine, and from the cardinal. I am sorry that you will miss the ordination, Mrs. O’Neill. The cardinal speaks of you so very often. And he has been quite ill, you know, this winter.
Meggie: Well…. I hope that you will give my love to Ralph, and to my son for me.
Meggie’s Mother: I’ve never been very clear, Mr. Hartheim, about your relationship to Ralph.
Rainer Hartheim: I was a young soldier when I met him, quite by accident. I had come to St. Peter’s to pray. I ended up talking with him through the night, all about my hopes for Hitler’s downfall, my dreams of rebuilding a new and better Germany, single-handedly, of course.
Meggie’s Mother: Well, you’ve certainly been a part of that effort, haven’t you?
Rainer Hartheim: At a cost, yes. I'm afraid I used my wife rather badly in the process. I was quite the ambitious idealist, you see. I thought such noble ends as mine justified any means. When Cardinal de Bricassart learned of this, he told me something which has been very useful to me since. That there are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone's heart.
Fiona Cleary: He said that, did he?
Rainer Hartheim: Yes.
Ralph: You know, I was just your age when, as a priest, I came to Gilly—but for such different reasons. I was forced to go as penance for my pride. You choose it, out of humility and love.
Dane: But it is very difficult, because I love you, too. You once said to me that becoming a priest for you wasn’t a gift but something hard-won by sacrifice and suffering. I understand that better, leaving you. It is a sacrifice giving up all the things you could have made possible for me here. But I think I will feel closer to God and better able to do His work in a simpler place. And in choosing Gilly, I can make my mother happy. She deserves that.
Ralph: Yes. She deserves that. You know, I had great hopes for you, great ambitions—that you would go as far as I in the Church, perhaps even farther. But you have made me see what I only glimpsed long ago about my ambitions for myself, that they had less to do with God’s will than with my own. The truth is, you have always been far beyond me. I’m so proud of you, Dane. I doubt that a man could be prouder of his own son.
Dane: Thank you, Father. I hope I may be truly worthy of that. But, I wonder, if the time comes when I must truly suffer, can I accept it? Can I put myself into God’s hands and not fight His will?
Ralph: You must never doubt it. Because you are that rarest of things, a truly holy man.
Ralph: My Meggie. I knew you’d forgive me. I knew. All your life I’ve watched you wage your battles against God. And yet you were always closer to his desires for us than I. In the end, you’ve always been able to love. For all you’ve lost, you’ve never lost that. Somewhere in me, I must have known from the very first that Dane was mine. But, I didn’t want to know. I wanted to be Cardinal de Bricassart, more than I wanted our son—more than I wanted you. Of all the wrong I’ve done, the worst is that I ever made a choice, for love. Half given to you, half given to God. But really given to my own ambition. I knew it, and I did it anyway. I told myself it was meant to be. Long ago, I told you a story, a legend about a bird that sings only when it dies.
Meggie: The bird with the thorn in its breast. You said it pays its life for that one song. But the whole world stills to listen. And God in His heaven smiles.
Ralph: Driven to the thorn with no knowledge of the dying to come. But when we, when we press the thorn to our breast, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still, we do it.
Each of us follows that one singular desire in our hearts, at least if we are honest with ourselves and if we use our human free will as existentialists do, in search of the things that make us sing. But there is always a price to pay for the ambition to follow the truest dreams of our hearts, whether they are professional ambitions, political ambitions, artistic ambitions, or romantic ambitions. Yet we humans, time and again, are willing to pay the price for following those ambitions, whether in terms of the cost to our own effectiveness and competency as in the cases of the Peter Principle and the badmirals from Star Trek, or in terms of the cost to our own heart—and the hearts of others—as in the case of Ralph de Bricassart in The Thorn Birds.
We feel the relentless call of our own deepest desires and ambitions—and their nasty, hooky thorns, as Meggie Cleary calls them. And still we press our breasts against them anyway as if driven by madness, the kind of madness that I believe Nietzsche had in mind when speaking of madness of authenticity, the madness that transcends all reason as if driven by instinct alone, all the while justifying our own drivenness in the loftiest of terms, the language of our highest goals and aims, of our sincerest hopes and dreams, all with full knowledge of the pain to come. But, as Father Ralph says before his dying breath in The Thorn Birds, “Still, we do it.”
