Today I recommend a book to everyone, "23 Letters to Lottie" by American writer Katrina Leno, which has the topic of death.
Death is an eternal topic. It is terrible, cute, mysterious, and suffocating. For us humans, death is an inevitable thing. From birth, we have been curious about it. When we see someone die, that fear will inevitably evolve into our own body. At this time, we can only carefully ask our omniscient mother: "Mom, will I die?" "Is the answer cruel or lucky? It depends on how you view life.
It is precisely because of the fear of death that we imagine that if there is a piece of Tang monk meat to eat, if there is a bottle of eternal spring water to drink, it will be happy to never die.
Out of fear of death, we must analyze what causes people to be greedy. It must be meaningful to live. What is the meaning of being alive? This is also a question that countless people are asking. Maybe someone hasn't found it in his entire life, but he must live to be able to find it, so he is afraid of death. Is the meaning of living and going to death a surrender relationship? Can't find the meaning of living, will you choose death? Did you choose to die because you could not find the meaning of life?
Is it because of the fear of death that leads to the meaningless realization of life? Lottie seems to be like this. The death of her beloved aunt makes her feel that life is meaningless. If a person loses what he loves in the end, why is it necessary to establish all this? This is a way of thinking, focusing on the result is the goal. If the goal is not achieved, what is the meaning of the process?
On this basis, we know that people with this kind of thinking just want to live forever. If they can live forever, does everything in life have meaning? It seems not, because the person you love will die, and everything seems to be no loss to you on the surface, but the inner emotions that are promoted by the outside are not easy to give up.Then go one step further, how about both you and the one you love can live forever? It doesn't seem to be great. Love is a verb. It is dynamic. Your loved ones will not be confined in a narrow range. Immortality cannot solve the proposition that life is painful.
The immortal boy Sam in this book suffers from this kind of pain, but he argues that when he loves someone, he won’t be selfish and he won’t want to spend a long time together. The years when you want to commit suicide. The solution in this book is fairy tale, even a bit like a house. How to get the immortal boy Sam to get rid of the pain of immortality, just drink the water of the immortal spring again. Although the author didn't say it explicitly, the line between the lines reveals that this is a kind of "intelligent" setting.
I watched the air around him change. The change was very subtle and hard to notice. It was a very slight, gentle, wind-like change. Something got in crookedly, as if filling a crack in the laws of the universe with putty, restoring it to its original shape.
The author's meaning is already obvious. Sam has changed back to an ordinary person and got rid of the curse of immortality.
And Sam, the identity of the immortal boy, has been guessed as early as when he appeared less than three times. It’s not because the readers are too smart, but the author’s atmosphere is overlaid. Seeing the title page of my aunt’s last book is "Dedicated to SW, for those years. And those years that I have never had." Dare to guess that it is dedicated to Sam, then why dedicated to Sam? Is Sam immortal? What story did Aunt Helen and Sam have? The author eagerly wanted to tell us this amazing secret through Lottie's eyes, so that when the secret was finally revealed, it was not surprising at all. When writing about the interaction between Lottie and Sam, he always captures the appearance of Sam that is different from ordinary people. This is an obvious hint.
Sometimes I look at her, look at the cloud on her face, the cloud that rises inexplicably. There are things in her that I can't find in others.
except Sam.
There is also that kind of cloud on Sam's face, and when he moves, the cloud also moves. The clouds will disappear under strong light. But basically wherever he goes, it will follow wherever he goes.
I wrote about the conversation between Sam and Lottie within two pages, especially when Lottie asked why Sam had so much time to attend classes. This has allowed us to confirm that Sam is an immortal boy. What is immortality and what is taken for granted? There is no doubt that it is time, and there is nothing but time.
As for Aunt Helen when she was young, she didn't drink the spring water given by Sam. This is similar to "The Fountain of Youth", but there are also differences.
Similar to Aunt Helen and Winnie, they did not accompany their beloved boy into the eternal night, they accepted the fate of mortals. The difference is that Helen has never believed that everything Sam said is true, that people can really live forever; what about Winnie? She had completely believed the story told by the Tucker family from the beginning, and Winnie didn't drink the spring water when she was seventeen. It was a decision she made after human considerations and struggles.
There is a trust issue between the two,Perhaps it is also whether or not to believe in the transformation of spirits and spirits. The story of "The Fountain of Youth" took place before industrial civilization, while the story of Aunt Helen and Sam was in a modern city, and trust has become a common crisis for people. From this point of view, the author still has a reasonable trade-off. The protagonist in "The Fountain of Ages" is actually more idealistic. The 104-year-old Jesse is still like a child, while the Sam in the book is already 300 years old, and he is indeed much more mature.
For being immortal, the first reaction of mortals is to hope for immortality, but almost all literary works tell you that immortality is a painful thing. There is a story about the immortal Sybil in Greek mythology. Elliott used these words as the inscription of " Wasteland":
Yes,
_block0quote41blockquote I saw the eyes of the ancient blockquote41blockquote p0quote41blockquote Sybil hangs in a cage.
when the children asked her: "? Sybil, what you want" when
she replied,
"I want death."
It’s not difficult to see that this book has the shadow of other works.For example, the classic children's literature "The Fountain of Youth" and the " Harry Potter " series are all too obvious. The author's imitation is very heavy. Its structure looks novel, but it is actually relatively simple. At the beginning of each chapter, there will be a reference to a work. This work is a fictional work created by the author, but this kind of intertextuality is used in many novel writing. It's not uncommon. As for each letter Lottie got, it was more like an adventure mission game.
If you get the spring water, would you drink it and why? Welcome to leave your thoughts in the message area.
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