Everyday Canvas

On Betrayal: “Et tu, Brute?”

Prompt: Karen Russell says in Granta, “I think that betrayal can often be a profound surprise to the traitor herself.” What do you think about this idea, especially when using betrayal in your fiction?

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I believe Shakespeare put the entire idea of betrayal in a nutshell in Julius Caesar with this exclamation of surprise: “Et tu, Brute?” Coming to the idea of it, most anyone will suffer at least one betrayal in their lifetime. It is inevitable. Let alone a lover, a friend, a parent, or a child who may stab the person in the back, a business or any company, the government, or even the medical practitioner one trusts may end up mistreating or bilking him or her for money under false premises. The financial type of betrayal of trust can be dealt with and healed in time, but when the heart is injured, the wound lasts a lifetime or, at least, for a very long while.

Betrayal or the somewhat the opposite of it called trust is something we give or earn. It is also something we nurture to let grow. Trust exists within a person, just like love, and most of the time, it is reciprocal. You cannot betray a person who cannot be betrayed, which means the betrayer wasn’t trusted in the first place. Blame, jealousy, shame, disrespect, and the withholding of affection damage the roots of trust and can be construed as some kind of a betrayal.

To avoid betrayal, the most important thing is hearing what isn’t being said, if one can live with oneself while constantly suspecting everyone who comes his or her way. Another way of lessening its importance is to control one’s mind to not be affected by the actions of others. Both are very difficult to do and have other unhealthy consequences.

As far as fiction writing goes, I can think of a few scenarios with the betrayal idea in the prompt's quote. For the sake of brevity, let’s call the betrayer Betrayer A and the betrayed party Character B.

Character B makes it clear to the betrayer A that the mistake was B’s fault for trusting A. This could surprise A and even make her/him feel guilty especially if he/she had a modicum of conscience.

Character B says to A “I’ll never forgive you, although you are/were my friend. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” In this instance A is surprised again for he/she expected some leniency if not forgiveness.

Character B makes it clear that he/she never trusted the betrayer A in the first place, making A wonder why B went along with it if he/she never trusted betrayer A. Did B have an ulterior motive like a frame-up that A didn’t catch on before?

Betrayer A finds out that Character B, although he or she was betrayed, didn’t mind A’s actions or the betrayal itself, as in B’s mind and culture, betrayal was considered acceptable. (Think of the Mafia or the Godfather movies in which the betrayal was thought of as “business.”)

Betrayer A is surprised at Character B’s actions when B betrays A in a worse way in return.

There’s no betrayer A. Character B, knowingly or unknowingly, betrays herself/himself with wrong actions and is surprised at herself or himself for doing that.

To close, the best words of consolation for me, where betrayal is concerned, come from Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul: “Disappointments in love, even betrayals and losses, serve the soul at the very moment they seem in life to be tragedies. The soul is partly in time and partly in eternity. We might remember the part that resides in eternity when we feel despair over the part that is in life.”