A review by mantissss
Freedom or Death by Nikos Kazantzakis

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 "The blood of the killed is crying out."

Crete revolted seven times. Seven times men clad in black sariki took up their arms, took to the mountains, and fought for freedom. The first ended in a public torture and flaying of the revolt's leader, while the last ended with the kissing of Prince George of Greece's hand as he set foot on Crete, unifying the long-suffered island with her "beggar mother." Kazantzakis saw the last as a child, walking the laurel and myrtle strewn streets his fathers dreamed of seeing, feeling those forefathers rise again within him bellowing and screeching with joy and relief. He felt their bones rattling in their graves with the fulfilled promise of freedom, shorn of it six times over a hundred years. It is that sixth revolt, the penultimate struggle of Crete becoming Greek, that he wrote of in this book, immortalizing his monstrous father within it forever.

For me, this book solidified Kazantzakis' position as one of the greatest writers of modern Greek literature. Owing to his being the inheritor of ancient literary traditions, (once he said that Homer, alongside Christ, Buddha, and Nietzsche were his spiritual masters) he seamlessly blends magical realism into grounded historical context. His words bring to life a love of "suffering Crete," poignantly depicted through a tormented woman-Christ on a cross, crying "Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani." For Kazantzakis, Crete and her suffering goes beyond religion. For what is salvation, if the motherland is not saved? For her, heresy is worth it. Such is the weight of Crete's sufferance. Yet, there is also an emphasis on Crete's beauty, with her "close-knit body," her "gleams" and "glows" when white sand turns blood-red as the sun sets. Through this juxtaposition, Kazantzakis's writing embodies another of his major influences: Nietzsche. For only when one realizes the meaninglessness and suffering of life would they be free to make their own meaning, to find their own personal idea of beauty in it. This idea, I perceive, is explored further in Captain Michales's final fate, wreathed with the other themes of the book.

"Who's that nice girl?" He indicated Renio with a glance. "I've seen her somewhere. But where?"
Katerina sighed. "She's your daughter."
Captain Michales bent his head and made no sound after that.

In this book, Cretan manhood and her freedom are intertwined. The soul of a Cretan is with their land, and a Cretan man is not a man unless he fights for her freedom, whether that be at the end of his knife or at the crack of his gun. Such ideas of manhood and its costs are illustrated by Kazantzakis, embodied by Captain Michales. And its costs are heavy. Having taken an oath to not laugh nor shave his beard, to only wear black until Crete has thrown off her Ottoman yoke, this captain has indeed grown monstrous. He knows not his daughter, having forbidden her from his sight the day she turned 12. He regards a newfound love as a "worm," gnawing away at his resolve for the "ancient duty" of Cretan freedom. Repeatedly he is referred to as a "wild beast" of a man, and in the end, he dies as a wild beast does. He dies hopelessly and pointlessly, ultimately free forevermore of any other worms aside from Cretan independence, left only with the single mind of his idea of self-determination, for himself, and for his motherland. Readers would be quick to criticize these concepts, and they would be right to. But by no means does that take away from the literary value this book holds. For with such beauty and pathos in his words, Kazantzakis shows that through this pointlessness, Captain Michales ultimately attains freedom and death.