Correspondence: From the King James Bible, to Shakespeare, to composing behind the wheel

Edited by Moristotle

[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

"If I Can't Have Her, Nobody Can"

– Title of Chapter 5 of The Dangerous Passion

Otto Preminger's 1954 movie "Carmen Jones," starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte, not only holds up well after half a century, its final scene perfectly illustrates a book I'm reading, evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss's The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex. Joe, after being seduced away from his fiancée Cindy Lou and wrecking his military career by following Carmen to Chicago, watches helplessly as she throws him over to indulge her lust for glitter and excitement and, in the final desperate scene, strangles her.

As Buss writes on p. 121,

Jealousy, the dangerous passion spurred by infidelity or desertion, unleashes a fury against the partner or interloper unrivaled by any other emotion. Sometimes it results in dead bodies.