Quote:
Originally Posted by fantasyfan
I have recently finished reading Letters From Earth by Mark Twain.
It is Twain at his darkest and most bitter,
In essence he takes the view that Nature is so filled with irrational horror and pain that existence is hardly worth having. Humankind is not much better as its members thrive on stupid contradictions and cruelty. The Bible is filled with thousands of lies and Jesus Christ was himself a sadistic liar.
In such a cosmos God is incredibly stupid, evil, or non-existent. That last is the most comforting thought as it at least allows human beings to concentrate on their own survival without worrying about meaningless idiotic rituals.
There is no doubt but that Twain is deeply sensitive to the very real terrors and pain of life and these are challenges that everyone must face. Unfortunately, Twain thought that humans were merely complicated automatons. If that is the case, they haven't free will and their ability to freely change anything is questionable. So don't look for answers in this challenging piece. But then Twain wasn't trying to provide an answer; he wanted to force the reader to confront the ethical dilemma of existence.
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He's right, you know. That is a Twain I should read and haven't.
The Crooked Man in John Connolly's Book of Lost Things, which I read again recently, put it pretty well and he ended up being right, for all he was The Crooked Man...
"And even if you avoid warfare and violent death, little boy, what else do you think life has in store for you? You have already seen what it is capable of doing. It took your mother from you, drained her of health and beauty, and then cast her aside like the withered rotten husk of a fruit. It will take others from you too, mark me. Those whom you care about-lovers, children-will fall by the wayside, and your love will not be enough to save them. Your health will fail you. You will become old and sick. Your limbs will ache, your eyesight will fade, and your skin will grow lined and aged. There will be pains deep within that no doctor will be able to cure. Diseases will find a warm, moist place inside you and there they will breed, spreading through your system, corrupting it cell by cell until you pray for the doctors to let you die, to put you out of your misery, but they will not. Instead you will linger on, with no one to hold your hand or soothe your brow, as Death comes and beckons you into his darkness."
~John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things