McVeigh left Henley's poem, "Invictus," as his final living testimony. It was a sermon he must have hoped would sum up the meaning of the 1995 bombing, which he always maintained was a patriotic rather than a murderous act.

His attempted use of Henley's 1875 poem as a sermon, however, misuses Henley and reveals McVeigh's twisted mindset of anger, arrogance and defiant resignation to his fate, concluding with these final lines of the poem: "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." Back when school children memorized poems, "Invictus" was popular in the classroom, perhaps because it appeals to the childlike-and ultimately futile-desire in all of us not to have to rely on anything or anyone beyond ourselves. Born in Gloucester, England, in 1849, Henley suffered the lifelong burden of tubercular arthritis. In his poem, he thanks "whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul," an agnostic suggestion that not only is life cruel, but it must be endured alone.

For those of us who do not approve of the death penalty, not even for heinous crimes of this magnitude, there was a pragmatic as well as amoral reason for not executing McVeigh. He was a human specimen needing more study, a living testimony of individualism gone very wrong. He expressed no regret for his crime and sought no spiritual solace beyond himself in his final hours.

What is the source and motive of such a gross human error? In McVeigh's case, we now can only speculate.

McVeigh's murderous act was intended, or so he said, to serve as an act of revenge against the United States government for the deaths that took place during the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The families at Waco were motivated, they claimed, by religious zeal.

In contrast, McVeigh's act of defiance was inspired not by religion but by his identification with the individualism and defiant attitude against authority by the Branch Davidian leaders.

Individualism gone bad can be an ugly sight. A familiar example can be found in the 1956 movie, "The Searchers." Its director, John Ford, was one of the first Hollywood film directors to break out of the Western film formula-which in his early years he helped define-by revealing that the heroic lone gunman of the West was too often motivated more by defiance and anger than by a sense of justice.

In "The Searchers," Ford gives his John Wayne character (Ethan Edwards) a motivation for revenge-the murder of his brother, his sister-in-law and three of their children by a roving band of Comanches. The film traces Ethan's search for the lone surviving family member, Debbie, and for Scar, the Comanche chief who led the raid and kidnaped Debbie.

In his smoldering rage, extended over the seven years of the search, Ethan determines not only to kill Scar, but to kill Debbie as well because as the wife of an Indian, she is now "defiled." The film concludes with Scar's death, but not Debbie's, for Edwards, coming to his senses, sweeps her up in his arms with the classic John Wayne line, "Let's go home, Debbie." Through this film, Ford tries to set parameters. In warfare, the enemy is the enemy soldier. But the Debbies of the world are not the enemy. Until he comes to his senses, Ethan had forgotten that fact; driven by racism, arrogance, anger and his defiant individualism, Ethan fully intended to execute her.

Timothy McVeigh's distorted understanding of the individual's mandate to correct injustice gave him what he believed to be justification to slay whatever victims were in his way as he employed what he termed a "legit tactic" in the Oklahoma City bombing. What McVeigh refused to allow to seep into his consciousness, however, was the fact that individualism has its limits set by the larger communities of which we are all a part.

McVeigh could have had his avenues of expression to protest Waco and to argue for the right of citizens to bear arms. But McVeigh belonged to no community, except the community of hate. He chose not to protest nor to shout out his disagreement with his government. Instead, he withdrew into himself and operating out of an individual defiance as the "master of his fate" and the "captain of his soul," he designated himself sole executor of innocent victims.

Now that he is dead, we may never learn when McVeigh encountered William Ernest Henley's poem. Was it in prison, or earlier? Either way, he misused Henley, whose poem did not express defiance against society but testified to the poet's acceptance of a lifelong physical suffering. Henley's understanding of survival is a lonely expression of individualism. McVeigh's use of Henley's poem, on the other hand, is just the last petty act of a twisted soul who is now in the hands, in Henley's phrase, of "whatever gods may be."

James M. Wall is senior contributing editor of The Christian Century, a Chicago-based magazine that focuses on Christianity and contemporary affairs

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