Finding a Form

William H Gass

Narratives like the story of Gyges and his ring imperceptibly seduce their listeners, because they always solicit our participation: not for a naive or complacent identification with the protagonists necessarily (where each of us is Gyges, Eve or Adam, maybe God), or even with the rich raciness of their roles (where each of us takes the queen's place in bed, or the serpent's in the tree), but by an implication that extends to the idea of man in general; so even if I say to myself: "I wouldn't go down in that gorge--no way--or sneak that ring from that dead man's finger--not me--and I'm too good a guy, basically, to be bought by a little loose change, free flesh or a position of power," nevertheless (and this is Glaucon's expectation), I can believe everybody else would; so when Glaucon suggests we place one such ring on the finger of a plainly unjust man, who has already flouted society's conventions without its aid, and then another on the finger of a man who has always behaved like a good worker bee, a diligent drone, my mind moves easily along the track which has been greased for it to the right rhetorical conclusion: beneath clothes, cosmetics, and conventions, where we confront the naked soul, there is no difference to be discerned between the sinner and the saint, both souls are so stained and opaque, except that the saint, in addition to his other vices, is a successful hypocrite.