#eaglehoe

the idea of loss  &  the impermanence of people was a concept ingrained into him early in his life.  so i don’t believe john took many things for granted aside from his wealth.  as a young boy,  henry thought very highly of john  ;  he was taking the beginner steps of an artist by impulsively drawing,  &  showed high aptitude---- - later on in life,  people lauded john for being a quick study  (  he knew many languages,  although i wouldn’t say was very familiar with them  ;  look at his latin.  )  he was a very good french speaker  &  caught on quickly to most things.  

furthermore,  john was trained in genteel talents----- - fencing  &  horseback riding in geneva,  most notably,  &  so the idea of upholding himself to this standard was forced on him early on,  coming from an aristocratic family.  however,  being such a good study,  it also raised henry’s expectations of him---- expectations he sometimes failed to uphold.  john held such a rigid set of expectations for himself for this “constructed identity” he created ( a good republican, virtuous, valorous, )  &  this you must understand :  most of the time,  they were not his own.  there was a dichotomy between the constructed  &  private identity.  you can argue here that his abolitionism falls into the constructed identity category,  &  i would argue that his private identity was certainly different from his public----he was much more prone to giving into things he was beguiled by,  &  not,  from what i remember,  outspokenly religious.  he was still religious,  of course,  but not in the degree henry was----- john did,  after all,  lash out  paroxysmally  at religious intolerance.  above all else,  john wanted to appear like a good republican----basically what was “expected” of him at the time. 

he burned at chastisement.  he took it as the ultimate umbrage,  &  when henry reprimanded him for a bad choice in friends,  he quivered  &  dropped all of them immediately,  &  devalued himself to win forgiveness.  

john was also exposed to interesting ideas in geneva  :  abolitionism,  &  a romanticization of suicide.  while i disagree with mass.ey on many things,  i sometimes consider the idea he put forth that john might have learned this ... romanticization of death from goethe’s sorrows of young werther,  which established a movement of teen suicides inspired by goethe.  additionally,  geneva was taking a liberal view toward suicide------ - while the typical belief was that you were damned for hell,  they thought quite different :  they should be shown forgiveness  &  absolved.  i am not saying this is rigid fact----most of this is purely speculation.  i wholeheartedly believe that john was depressed  &  suicidal for a very long time,  &  that his final engagement was intentional.  this influence might have exacerbated it.  i don’t think it is something that should be ignored.

another important facet is his need to do the right thing :  this is demonstrated by his vacillation to pick a profession.  he laments law,  exclaiming that he doesn’t want to profit off of humanity’s woes,  even though he knows how profitable the profession is  ;  of course,  his true heart lay in medicine,  which henry subtly disapproved of.  although he did give into henry’s wishes,  he ended up in the war with a half - baked law degree  &  not really thinking where he would go from there. 

before the war  &  his marriage,  especially,  john was highly idealistic  &  threw himself into this patriotic fervor that had swept up the colonies in the americas,  even though he was living in britain.  he spurned his friend kinloch for harboring loyalist views----he told him to go get fucked in simplest terms.  in london is where you can see this festering cynicism----he was sequestered by a marriage  (  &  also guilty for not loving martha  &  for being gay, )   when he thought his true purpose lay across the sea to achieve what he had always dreamed of:  glory.