Recently, I read Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. Amazing that I've gone so long without reading that novel. I have mixed feelings about it. Alexi Zorba is no doubt a great fictional character. And the story keeps you turning the pages. The problems come when we see the attractive widow. The narrator, the boss, is attracted to her because she's so beautiful. The villagers hate her because...because of what? Because supposedly she doesn't attach herself to any of the free village men. She stays aloof from them. Supposedly, that brings disgrace on the village. She eventually has an assignation with the narrator, which triggers the horrible scene of her death. Her murder comes at the hands of an angry father whose son killed himself for being rejected by the widow. Not only does he kill her, but he cuts her head off in front of the baying villagers. Zorba, who had shown up in time to defend her and fight off her attackers, is taken unawares and unable to save her.
None of it makes sense to me. That a widow would be despised for not taking a man -- where does that happen? In Greece? If anything, such a church-going widow would be admired. Would she be blamed for causing the suicide of a young man? Perhaps, but only by the insanely envious. None of it would rise to the status of a deserved, justifiable murder, as the villagers feel in the book.
