Jormungand - Character Spotlight: Jonah - Control

Jormungand is all about the nature of man. The protagonist, Jonathan Mar, is the litmus paper for man's folly, often speaking out against the ills of the nature of man. One of the more direct examples of this (often understated) is his opposition to firearms, made all the more ironic by his travels alongside arms dealer Koko Hekmatyar.

There is an implied understanding that the eradication of violence is impossible, and that the destruction of weapons is a fruitless effort. Jonah's current goal is simply to highlight the problem so that he (and others) may understand it better.

"Give a gun to an ordinary civilian and see what happens. Nine times out of ten he'll wind up doing something he never thought he was capable of. That's the kind of twisted power weapons have, and you're in the business of selling that damned power to people."

So why is it that weapons have this power? One hypothesis is that giving someone more power in comparison to others simply premeditates domination and submission. Think Second Amendment rhetoric; if the government has more power than its citizens, then it can lord over its citizens without backlash. At a microsocietal level, the concept is the same, regardless of who the weapon is given to.

There is of course a secondary hypothesis, and this one is even more disturbing. The notion that a human lacks any and all forms of self-restraint is indeed a plausible one. If we consider humans as inept animals, then any object which could inflict injury will inevitably do so, regardless of the intent of its wielder. The idea of a "nanny state" stems from this hypothesis, as the few made aware of this fact seek to maintain some semblance of order within society.

Interestingly, these two perspectives with which to define control seem to correlate. We use control to lord over others without holding ourselves accountable to our own actions. And in understanding our lack of accountability, we seek to control others even more, for the sake of holding them accountable to theirs. We do not wish to be controlled by others, so we seek to control them thrice over, to prevent them from controlling us in the first place. This is why the world is such a power struggle, a freight train with no brakes on a collision course with the powder keg that is war.

We see this struggle constantly throughout the series, and the way in which those in power attempt to force the cycle to a stop surprises and confuses even Jonah's worldview. As you watch this series, we implore you to keep this in mind.