Homunculi and deadly sins analysis
The main antagonist of Arakawa’s work is the Father, born as a little one inside the flask: initially it’s an disembodied entity commissioned by the king of Xerxes, terrified by the idea of aging and dying. The little one inside the flask is the emblematic representation of the challenge of human beings to divinity. What distinguishes the human being from a hypothetical God is the ability to generate life from nothing. But the determination of the little homunculus is so overwhelming that he turns against the same humanity that generated him, sacrificing the whole kingdom of Xerxes for the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone. With the aim of assimilating the Truth, he decides, as already said, to free himself of the deadly sins to become a perfect being. On the other hand, this is precisely the point that will make him vulnerable: the desire to free himself of all the deadly sins emphasizes the inability to completely free himself of the worst of the deadly sins, that is, pride. On the Gate of Truth we can glimpse an apple: the Father is like the first man, the first sinner who hasn’t resisted to reap the fruit of original sin and devour it, despite the warnings, a slave to his own thirst for absolute knowledge. In the end, in fact, the homunculus will suffer at his own expense the most important lesson: “Truth gives men the right amount of desperation so that they don’t become proud”.
Now, let’s analyze the personification of the vices. In the Christian tradition, pride, envy, sloth and greed are vices that corrupt the soul, while gluttony, wrath and lust corrupt the body. The term “deadly sins” is very old, already present in St. Thomas Aquinas, and indicates that the choices determined by the vices don’t remain circumscribed, but influence with a chain effect all the choices that we make: many small steps that lead to evil.
There is Lust: she’s a beautiful, busty woman with generous forms. His uroboro tattoo is placed on her breast. Lust is “the ultimate spear”, a subtle (but not too much) reference to the act of penetration. She will die burnt by Colonel Mustang’s alchemy of fire. Fire is the torment and the agonizing rage of Roy that is similar to a form of passion. If lust is, following Catholic rhetoric, a mortal sin, then chastity is one of the greatest sources of virtue, since to preserve it we must resort to martyrdom (suffered by Lust), rebelling against our natural sexual instinct.
Then there’s Gluttony. He simply wants to eat anything. This sin was particularly frowned upon in the Catholic doctrine of the Middle Ages because his constantly swallowing up was an affront to the widespread misery. Continuous gulping won’t fill the inner emptiness: we could also devour the whole world but we wouldn’t gain harmony. Perhaps this is why this homunculus itself contains the Father’s attempt to recreate the Portal of Truth: the hunger of omniscience can never generate infinity. Even his death will be emblematic: he will be devoured by Pride. It’s also representative his link with the sin of lust. It’s known, lust and gluttony are the sins of pleasure and concupiscence and go hand in hand.
Then there is Pride. It is outwardly a child, but in reality it’s the personification of the shadows and is the strongest of the Homunculi. In the Dantesque hell, the proud walk under the weight of the boulder that oppresses them: those who wanted to overwhelm others are condemned to be crushed - and this recalls the enormous stone dome in which Hohenheim tries to keep Selim locked up, together with Alphonse. Shadows exist only where there are lights: pride is the only sin that can arise from essentially positive attitudes, a breath of pride due to their successes, their generosity and goodness. For this reason pride is the most dangerous of the deadly sins, because it’s insidious like the shadows of the little Selim. He will die because unable to accept his own weakness. On the other hand, precisely because he’s the result of a positive attitude, Pride is reborn in his true form, that of a helpless baby, raised by Wrath’s wife. I want to emphasize how Pride is the first homunculus that we see interacting with Hohenheim. In fact, in my honest opinion, pride is the closest sin to the personality of the father of Elric’s brothers, as he himself has sinned the same infinite thirst for knowledge of the dwarf in the flask, learning alchemy and sharing - though unwittingly - with him the gift of eternal life.
Wrath, the wrath or better known as King Bradley, the Führer of the state of Amestris. St. Paul tsaid: “Go angry, but don’t sin; the sun doesn’t set on your anger”. In fact, in Catholic doctrine anger becomes sin when it’s constant, as a symbol of contempt and hatred nourished towards others and when it stimulates the desire for annihilation of the others. It’s also considered the most easily correctable sin: its public evidence leads to self-discipline and repentance. Precisely for this reason, King Bradley maintains for all the time a semblance of apparent calm, which he will be able to achieve only at the moment of his death. King Bradley is the “ultimate eye” or, if you want to talk about it in esoteric terms, it’s the Eye that sees everything: the symbol of the single eye was used by many religions to indicate an ever present divinity which it’s connected to this Homunculus obsession of control; today it symbolizes the dominance of a shadow elite (for example, masonry), which brings us back to the conspiracies of the upper spheres of Amestris.
Greed, avarice, is the only Homunculus that sided with the protagonists. St. Francis de Sales in the fourteenth century said: “Nobody in the world will ever admit to being stingy! All deny being infected by this woodworm that dries up the heart”; according to Catholic doctrine, in fact, the miser always tries to disguise his own sin and, consequently, his true nature. Greed hides the real himself through a shield in carbon fiber: he’s the “ultimate shield”. The only one who will be able to look inside (literally speaking) is Ling Yao, whose body will be shared with Greed - Ling among other things wants a philosopher’s stone, so who better than him could contain the sin of avarice (?). Ling will succeed in making Greed understand that his avarice is not limited only to fame, sex and money but also to spiritual avarice: Greed in fact wants more affection, he wants the acceptance of others, esteem, friendship. According to psychology, greed instigates self-frustrating behavior and is linked to an unbridgeable inner void almost opposed to pride and selfishness, very often due to unmet child needs. Greed dies sacrificing himself for others, thus filling his inner emptiness. It must be said that, as pride seems to belong to Hohenheim, avarice seems to be the sin of Edward who as a child, driven by the desire to bring his mother back at all costs, makes the biggest mistake of his life. He refuses to accept that something very important for him has been taken away. He doesn’t accept death and doesn’t want to deny himself anything. In addition, from a certain point in history, Greedling is alongside Ed and it’s not clear who between the two of them is “the head” of the gang. Interesting is also the iconic back-and-forth between our protagonist and Greedling concerning the sin of avarice, during which he explains how this sin can be destructive - even though Winry (according to Greedling) is attracted to it. Little EdWin parenthesis: in the course of this exchange between the two of them, Greedling seems to greatly appreciate Ed’s “girlfriend”, which further confirms how effectively the eldest of the Elric brothers can identify with this capital sin. It will be Greed to teach us something: his is not a “bad” sin. There is nothing wrong with wanting what you love and fighting for it. We humans don’t know how to control it and end up giving it morality because we’re frightened by the excesses it can lead us to.
Sloth is deliberately the most insignificant of the Homunculi. He’s the fastest, definitely strong, but boredom, indifference, inertia, aversion to work make him indolent and cancel all his potential. Sloth speaks little, he just obey orders passively. From the biblical point of view we can speak of spiritual inappetence, of negligence of the Christian virtues exercise aimed at the sanctification of the spirit. Petrarch in the Secretum describes sloth substantially as a rejection of life. By the law of retaliation that distinguishes the deaths of Homunculi, Sloth will perish by fighting with all his strength (which tires him very much) and his last words will be: “dying is such a pain but such a pain living”.
The last but not the least is Envy. We hated him from the first episodes due to the attack on Maes Hughes and the way his murder took place. Envy is a transformist, changes his/her form as he/she pleases, as well as the envious tend to modify themselves to assume the characteristics of the object of their resentment. He really has three forms: humanized personification, a gigantic and horrible monster (as opposed to the human body he is envious of) and a small creature similar to an embryo or an eight-legged parasite. It’s a sin for Catholic doctrine as it’s totally opposed to the concept of mercy and charity: Lucifer insinuates himself in the life of Adam and Eve because he’s envious of their harmonic relationship with God, a relationship that he had lost because of his pride, and that’s why he wants to destroy them. Envy holds the primacy for implication in human relationships: it is sin, in this sense, more socially dangerous. Envy just tries to undermine the harmony of relationships between Edward, Roy, Riza and Scar, but now the truth has been revealed: the Homunculus is simply envious of the feelings between human beings. Envy will commit suicide by getting rid of what he most despises: himself.
In a sense, the Homunculi also travel the path of atonement through their death. So all the characters in the series, “good” and “bad” are looking for Truth. What the work shows is that vices and virtues coexist and contribute to the formation of the individual and to the development of society to the same extent, thus passing from a totalitarian and doctrinal conception to the opening of the Age of Enlightenment.
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