Until he encounters Mozart, Salieri believes that his musical talent is a reward from God that he has earned in exchange for living as an upstanding, pious Christian. When he meets Mozart, however, Salieri's understanding of the world and of himself is torn apart. Mozart is impious, rude, obnoxious, immature, self-centered, undisciplined: in Salieri's opinion, a terrible example of a human being. Yet Mozart is also undeniably a musician of astonishing talent, a talent that Salieri can only understand as a "miraculous" gift from God. Salieri's conflict, what tears him apart, is his new belief that God is laughing at or mocking him with Mozart. He, Salieri, has been the best of men: why then would God put the most extraordinary musical talent of the generation not into his hands, but into the hands of a miserable person like Mozart? Salieri becomes so eaten with anger and jealously at this, to him, unfair twist of the knife on God's part that he plots to murder Mozart and take credit for his final work.
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