Quote:
Originally Posted by Sol Falling
However pitiful a character's past is, pity alone is not enough to make me like a character. Actually, as far as I'm concerned, pity is a pretty useless emotion. I completely agree with anybody who says that Rolo had no choice; could not have acted in any other manner, because of the way he'd lived and been raised, but forgiveness isn't the issue here. The reason I reject Rolo is because he has no meaningful qualities aside from being pitiable. People who've undergone hardships and painful pasts can be found everywhere. The point is what you can achieve despite the hardships, or perhaps even what you can learn because of them, and in Rolo's case the answer is, pretty clear to say, nothing significant.
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I have to disagree with this, or at least offer my interpretation. Rolo demonstrates an incredible amount of strength just by choosing to side with Lelouch after Turn 4. You might think that of course, he's doing it for his own good, but in real life, when presented with two options, one riskier than the other but which also offers the possibility of a better result, people will still usually take the easiest and most comfortable choice. By betraying the Cult and putting his faith in trusting Lelouch's words, he knows he is from then on both in danger of being discovered and finished by VV (as he states during Turn 8) AND of being abandoned by Lelouch, but he still prefers to take the risk rather than go on with a lifestyle that would also have meant many more murder victims, actually. It would have been a much less insecure option to just continue doing missions and allow others to decide his fate, but he is able to realize (even though nobody has taught him to use his own mind to judge what's going on around him. Or now that I think about it, perhaps Lelouch did during their year together; after all, during Turn 1 Lelouch mentions how he doesn't want to have to follow somebody else's orders, and describes that the ones on top take all decisions in an ironic manner) that he has the right to be in control of his own life, and that he is going to fight as much as is needed to finally gain the freedom and happiness any human deserves.
Indeed, in this process, he doesn't take Shirley's or Nunnally's well-being into consideration, but how do you expect him to take others into consideration when nobody's ever taken
him into consideration before and he has always been exploited and had his rights as a human negated (VV blatantly calls him "defective merchandise")? Nobody is willing to help or even understand Rolo on his quest for freedom and happiness (and Lelouch clearly willingly ignores Rolo's need for affection [I say willingly because he must have been aware of it to come up with a plan that involved simply promising him a future and which he took for granted would result in Rolo immediatly switching sides]), so how could he trust or even value others when from his experience, he's arrived to the conclusion that they will try to prevent him from acquiring happiness? It is impressive enough that he is capable of valuing that Lelouch treated him kindly and that he's usually a pretty calm guy; he could have turned into a crazy person who just destroyed everything around him out of desperation, and he doesn't do that.
The effort he puts to keep clinging to hope despite the isolation and frustration that he must also endure is more than enough of a meaningful quality, for me, at least. As somebody who believes conformity is one of the most dangerous threats to society (like Ionesco, I am sure many unfortunate historical events caused by humans do not take place because the majority will profit from them, but rather because the majority do not care about complaining about them), I greatly admire the courage and will power of individuals who do fight against an unfair treatment, and pursue their self-fulfillment. I think valuing oneself is the first step into learning to fight for the rights of others too, and Rolo is a character who could tell, on his own, that he had the right to give his own life a meaning and strive for happiness, and who never gave up on this conviction. He isn't just a pitiable character, he's also a very, very strong boy
. Just look at his marks, "above average", and he's never been to school before! He's the type to give his all in trying to do things the best way possible, and even though he made mistakes that brought a lot of pain to other people, I would not say he truly held bad intentions or that his aspirations were incorrect.