Are They Stuck In One Of Those Cycles?

I picked up some back issues yesterday. Nothing that finished out a run, but I did move considerably closer to wrapping up Hitman. I was reading #53, I think, when Tommy attends the funeral for Tiegel's grandfather, and pauses to pay his respects at Sean Noonan's grave. He talks with Sister Concepta, and she brings up what Tommy did to the people who killed Sean. Namely, he attended the wedding of the daughter of the Gallo family, and killed her and every wiseguy there (he did spare the priest). Tommy argues he did it because Sean meant a lot to him, and it was the only way he knew to make things right.

The sister is not impressed. She argues there were children there who lost their parents because of Tommy, and who will think this is how the world works. I don't quite know what she means, because I'm not sure how much the kids would understand. Do they know Tommy did it for revenge, and so the kids will learn that the way to deal with loss is anger, and if they're angry, they should kill the people they blame for the loss. Or is it the idea that the world is a chaotic place, where people can be killed at any moment, for no reason a child can discern or understand?

It makes me wonder what those kids grow up to be, in Ennis stories in general. In his Punisher works, there were definitely children left behind after Frank Castle got done with their fathers or mothers. At one point he attacked a funeral, and a small boy was the only one who saw him drive up, and drive away. That kind almost certainly lost someone close to them that day, assuming they weren't there to mourn the deaths of everyone close to them already. Do they become like their absent parents, or the men who killed those parents, or something else entirely? Maybe they're better off without mob types as parents. I suppose there's no reason they can't be wonderful, loving parents, and inhuman monsters to everyone else on the planet.

We did see Marc Navaronne near the end of Hitman, whose father was killed by Tommy, and who subsequently was set to kill Tommy. But Marc was already being trained to kill before his father crossed paths with Monaghan, so I don't know how much credit or blame could be placed on Tommy for how Marc turned out.

I think in the Punisher's world, those kids probably grow up to be crooks, because part of what Ennis worked with there was that Frank was fighting an endless war, that there would always be more criminals, and Frank knew that, and to a certain extent, accepted it. Not accepted in the sense he stopped killing, but he knew crime would continue on beyond his end, and so he'd do all he could until then.

In Tommy's world, I'm not so sure. You could argue those kids Monaghan orphaned will wind up in the same business as their parents. After all, despite Sean's best efforts, Tommy wound up a killer, and even if Pat wasn't a killer, he was still an arms dealer. But Tommy worked to protect Maggie Lorenzo and her unborn kid because he thought they deserved a chance for a good life. As a result of his (and Natt's, and McCallister's) actions, Maggie and her boy won't grow up in the Cauldron, and I think the kid will turn out OK. That's just conjecture, but it feels like the point is Tommy tried to do that good thing he was looking for, and it worked out. So maybe people aren't doomed. Though there's obviously a difference between a child and mother saved by Tommy, and a kid orphaned by Tommy, but Hitman isn't nearly as bleak as Punisher.