My Brother’s Keeper: The Biblical Heritage in Byron’s Cain

Abstract

Byron’s Cain teaches the biblical lesson of human brotherhood. Whether it raises the question of innocent suffering latent in Genesis in all its intractable poignancy only to renew the Bible’s rejection of human recalcitrance in the face of divine inscrutability or, on the contrary, it depicts a heroic refusal to reconcile oneself to the mystery of a cosmos whose deity has lost its authority as a moral guide,¹ the drama retains ethical implications of the original story not less relevant in a secular than in a religious context:² despite my repudiation of my fellow human being I remain his or her “keeper,” accountable for my actions, and actions are irreversible. This message, imparted in the dying Abel’s final injunction to Cain to “Comfort poor Zillah,” because “she has but one brother / Now,” is internalized by the hero with the painful realization that it is he who has brought death into the world, and that now, as the Angel tells him, “what is done is done” (III.i.335–36, 516). Thus, Cain reflects t he scriptural posit ion on human relationships.