“I’ll kill you” can be anything else but a beautiful phrase, depending on who says it and how it is meant: it can be ordinary belligerence, idiotic aggression, wholly quotidian threatening behavior, or even an empty threat or term of endearment. Homicide is as old as the human family itself and we can suppose the only reason for Adam and Eve not killing each other right away is that it would have made for an extremely short Bible. No, homicide had to wait a generation for its innovator, the much maligned Cain, who merely did what half the people there were thinking at the time, anyway.
“I’ll kill you” ranks with “I love you” as a careworn and indispensable expression, at least in a world such as ours where people are so lovable and yet somehow this has not worked out into a general principle: hence: “I’ll kill you.” Note how much more useful this expression is than the present tense: “I kill you” (or sometimes “I kill you”) which is a generally useless and redundant expression (c.f. “I am here”) if you are actually killing someone: most often, it is just wishful thinking. There is, I admit, a certain pathos to “I kill you! Kill! Kill! Killlllll youuu!” especially if the speaker is hopelessly restrained and the addressee has only a pitying look in response: it illustrates a gap between our language and our world.
Yet, in itself, “I’ll kill you” is not a beautiful phrase; it can be muttered under the rummy breath of any old cranky malcontent who no one takes seriously until one day they explode in a paroxysm of violence that will be a cause for wonder only for those who write editorials. This is where “-I’ll kill all of you” comes in.
Some commentators on Christianity feel that it is a reworking of Platonic philosophy and spiritual concepts found elsewhere in Greek thought, a sort of cartoon adaptation that people could follow. Some attribute its success to the fact that, unlike the tradition of Greek thought, it could provide an individual answer to the person, a personal salvation. Christianity succeeded, they argue, because it was all inclusive.
The history of Rome may also have something to do with it, but my point being that in a kindred fashion “I’ll kill all of you,” takes a mere threat of homicide and generalizes it to a wider audience. What is the limit of the audience? Is it limited only to those immediately present? Or does it extend, like the curse of Cain (passim) to all of the “you”, all the descendants? Is it addressed to a nation? A people? All humanity? Even the speaker, gripped with homicidal fury in his illocutionary act may be unsure of its span of application. This is only one of the things that makes it beautiful.
For in extending the threat the speaker has made it clear that he is outnumbered. Yet, his homicidal desires, far from being restrained by this fact, expand to accommodate it. He has gone from a simple personal attack to a vendetta, from a skirmish to a war, from a mere atrocity to a holocaust. If he had any sympathetic listeners, it doesn’t matter now: they are included. For this person to make such a turn, I would argue, is a beautiful thing. Especially if it is blurted out at the end of a long series of reversals for the speaker at a bar, a wedding, or a baby shower. Reversals that have made the speaker into an existential hero, a true rebel.
Note that the dash in “I’ll kill you -I’ll kill all of you!” is essential to it’s beauty. The dash is the essence of the modern style, capturing its revolutionary and immediate character, its ability to shock and juxtapose. Many thoughts that could otherwise never be completed or thought -or are still unthinkable -are achieved only with -the dash.
Nietzsche -understood -this.
In the case of “I’ll kill you -I’ll kill all of you!”, the dash represents a poignant and profound turn in the speaker’s thoughts (c.f. “Deaner -Who are you?” “I am -I am the Stallion”). Perhaps she has just realized that no single co-worker is perhaps responsible for informing the staff of Chili’s that it is her birthday. Or perhaps she feels that the judgement of the spelling bee judges does not reflect the way English is actually used today. Or perhaps quite simply, Southern Comfort should never have been served at the baby shower in the first place. In any case, it is the dash that shows the soul’s flight from mere homicide to genocidal program.
NEXT IN THIS SERIES: “HOW MUCH TO LIE DOWN WITHOUT CLOTHES?”
64th TURN; STANDING OVER THE BODY OF WILLIAM SAFIRE
WEEK: 51; WORDS: 57,187
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