Jarroc as a Betrayer Essay example -- Star Trek Defecting Essays Paper

Jarroc as a Betrayer Defection is a word which Americans have been taught to fear,from the days of Joseph McCarthy to Moscow on the Hudson. In our collectiveconsciousness, we viewed defectors as both fascinating and repellent. Defectorsfrom outside theconvivial aloneied sphere of North America and Western Europe--persons fromthose Communist places, especially--served a recyclable purpose because ofwhat inside knowledge they held, and at the same time frightened usbecause they carried the taint of the traitor, and the strange, coldforeignness of the other side. The other side, if not monitored nearly, was coming to bomb us all, and break the world as we knew it. Defectors from the United States, on the other hand, had noredeeming qualities. They were those who had sold their own souls,traitors agreeing to spill the closely guarded secrets which would keepus safe from the Enemy to the enemies themselves By the nature of theact, defection was inexorably intertwined with national betrayal.(I use the terms betrayer and traitor interchangeably, since they argonsynonymous in meaning. A traitor is one who has betrayed.) Americandefectors were the worst possible kinds of criminals, and worthyrecipients of the death penalty. barely then, as now and in all times, there are a myriad of contextsin which any given situation can be considered and defection, like mostthings, is a crime to virtually and an honorable act of conscience toothers.Who is the ultimate judge of such actions? What determines whichcontext the acts truly fall in? During the Cold War, when a Sovietdefected, it was viewed very other than by officials in his own countrythan it was here. In the U.S.S.R, he... ... itfor nothing, he whispers bitterly. My home, my family....all fornothing. (12/30/89) Jarroc commits suicide rather than live with thepain of this stigma. Is Jarroc then a hero, or a defector-betrayer? He must necessarilybe both. There is no sidestepping the role in which Romulan history willpigeonhole him, and no denying the reasons they have to do so. Yet amongthose persons in the Federation who knew his true reasons for divulgingthe information, he was a man of great courage. As Jarroc himself noted,One worlds butcher is another worlds hero. The same thing could alsobe said of the defector. Works Cited Smith, Greg. Interchange on The Defector. Interchange. 30 January1996.Rogets II The New Thesaurus. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1988..The Defector. Star Trek The Next Generation. Season 3, Episode58.