Betrayal in Song

I thought I'd share some of my favorite songs about betrayal, because my brain is in deadline heck and I really can't string together coherent sentences at the moment. :)


FORGET IT: BREAKING BENJAMIN WHO KNEW: PINK WE ARE BROKEN: PARAMORE Here's one from my highschool years YOU OUGHTA KNOW: ALANIS MORISSETTE MY NEXT BROKEN HEART: BROOKS & DUNN What are some of your favorite songs about betrayal?

Betrayal... It's In Us

It’s In Us

The friend who muscles in on your boyfriend while you’re away. The family member spreading the secret he or she swore to take to the grave. Politicians caught with pants down or hands in the collective cookie jar. Back-stabbers, false smilers, sucker punchers.

We’ve all experienced it, or seen it. Read about it in the history books. Bought that rag magazine because of the headline, “The Nanny Stole my Husband!” Kept the channel on Dr. Phil’s show.

Betrayal.

Just the word gives us a shiver. It’s one of those impulses we’ve all had, occasionally perhaps succumbed to and can’t stop ourselves from watching unfold when it happens in our vicinity. Like the pictures of a train wreck or car crash. You want to be strong enough NOT to look, to show the strength of disapproval or the purity of your soul by looking away, but can’t. It’s such an integral part of the human condition it’s inescapable. Whether in the end you feel it was a good thing or a bad, can understand why the betrayer did what they did or not, it still leaves a fearful, distasteful sensation in the back of your throat. If Marcus Brutus, welcomed into Julius Caesar’s inner circle, given positions of power, regarded as a friend, could raise a hand to stab Caesar, what are those around us capable of? We shudder to think.

So we guard against and watch for it, always aware of the pain and destruction betrayal can cause. We restrain ourselves from giving in to the impulse to betray those around us—keeping the secrets no matter how juicy, biting our tongue when we could get others in trouble, turning away when tempted. Yet, on a deep, dangerous level, we often want to give in, to betray someone’s trust for our own gain or pleasure, or maybe even just for the fun of it…

We’re human. No matter how civilized we believe ourselves to be, it’s in us. We can’t help that, although we can keep it in check when necessary. So we do the next best thing to actually giving in—we read and write about it. Harmlessly get our fix of drama and danger through the pages of a book, even as we keep our eyes peeled for the real thing in our own lives. Putting the dagger in someone else’s hand, watching it rise and fall, yet knowing no real people were harmed in the bloodshed fulfills a basic human need—an atavistic desire to get what we want, to appear important, to do whatever we will with no one to tell us, “No.”

And, because most often we write or want to read about the betrayer getting his or her comeuppance, we fulfill another need by making them fail, get caught, pay for their betrayal in some way. We get our happy ending without having to succumb to another of those ugly, primal needs we all feel—the one that makes us want revenge.

The Ides of March: Betrayal and Why We Love to Read (and Write) About It

This month we are going to be discussing betrayal in the stories that we write and read. Before we begin, I thought I’d talk about the Ides of March because I have to admit that I’d heard the expression but wasn’t real clear on its history. And I still haven’t seen the Clooney movie either.

Thank goodness for the internet.

The word “ides” comes from the Latin “idus”, which was used in the Roman calendar to depict the middle of the month. The Ides of March would therefore be March 15^th. As a side note, this date used to be the day to celebrated and honor the god, Mars.

So where in the world did the idea of betrayal come from?

The 15^th of March 44 B.C was the day Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by the Roman Senate. In his biography, Parallel Lives, the Greek historian Lucius Plutarchus wrote that a seer had warned Caesar that he would be harmed but no later than the Ides of March. While on his way to the Theatre of Pompey, the place where he was to be killed, a very much alive Caesar met the seer once again.

“The Ides of March have come,” Caesar said, clearly poking fun at the seer for prophesizing falsely.

The seer replied, “Aye, Caesar; but not gone.”

That night Caesar himself would be gone, murdered by a group of senators including his close friend, Marcus Junius Brutus. In modern times the phrase “You too, Brutus?” comes from the scene in William Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar (1599) where Caesar resisted his attackers until he recognized his dear friend in the mix. After after uttering the line, “Et tu, Brute?” he resigned himself to his fate and stopped struggling.

This ultimate betrayal by a friend has forevermore been linked to the Ides of March. And now we know.

Do you have any favorite betrayal stories?

For some reason, spy stories come to mind for me. Possibly because I just rented the new James Bond thriller, Skyfall. Without giving away too much, the theme in this action adventure is all about betrayal and the breaking of trust. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.

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