When confronted with suffering, fictional or real accounts, in books or on screen, I get the perverse temptation to imagine what I would do in the victim’s position. A hero or heroin faced with violence either screams and fights or bears the trial in silence. I am averse to noise and always imagine myself a stoically unwilling to waste my breath.

Catholic saints were often depicted as extraordinarily courageous… St. Lawrence, placed on a gridiron over coals, famously told his tormentors to turn him over, to roast the other side. Hagiography abounds in such stories. As a teenager, I admired Lawrence of Arabia’s secular fortitude.

I’m reading Hope Against Hope by Nadeshda Mandelstam in which she wrote: “Later I often wondered whether it is right to scream when you are being beaten and trampled underfoot. Isn’t it better to face one’s tormentors in a stance of satanic pride, answering them with contemptuous silence? I decided that it is better to scream. This pitiful sound, which sometimes, goodness knows how, reaches into the remotest prison cell, is a concentrated expression of the last vestige of human dignity. It is a man’s way of leaving a trace, of telling people how he lived and died. By his screams he asserts his right to live, sends a message to the outside world demanding help and calling for resistance. If nothing else is left, one must scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.”

In the second season of The Last Kingdom, Uhtred and his friend Halig are sold into slavery. As punishment for trying to escape, Halig is tied to the ship’s prow as Uhtred and the other men row. Halig yells each time the prow is raised enough for him to do so. This seems to fire Uhtred’s rowing, and when Halig no longer screams, Uhtred knows that death has released his friend from the torture. Halig’s screams seemed like the final act of bravery and a kindness to Uhtred.

Silence or screams… all to say that it wasn’t until lately that I’ve learned screams could have virtue.