Thursday, April 15, 2021

Chapter 1: Section 5: Page 41: Lines 123-125 (705-707)

 "First of all," he advised, "I can't speak for God, but your wife is not going to forgive you. She's never coming back. If that's what you thought the payoff here was going to be, you need to re-evaluate."

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This line made me think of Memento. The main character in Memento is purportedly looking for revenge against the person who killed his wife. But, if the evidence we're given as viewers is to be believed, he killed his own wife, accidentally because she didn't believe his amnesia and risked her life testing him. So in actuality, the man should be looking for atonement. But if he believed that, what good is repeatedly making himself believe a different person has killed his wife just so he can hunt them down and kill that person? It's like the philosophical quandary about how much pleasure one gets from beating a horse that's already deceased. He explains that he has one spot on his body for his final tattoo, the one that declares he's done it when he gets revenge. But we see he's not getting revenge and when he kills, he simply sets up another jerk, and he's never getting the tattoo. The only time we see him with the "I've done it" tattoo is when he fantasizes about having his wife back. That's all he wants. And since that can't happen, he's lost himself in a revenge fantasy loop that keeps him feeling like he's moving forward and accomplishing something. But he's not moving forward; he's moving backwards. It's just that he can't move backwards quite far enough to bring her back.
    (Caveat: I've only seen Memento once, in the the theater when it came out, and I've never read any essays or reviews of it. So take my opinion with that grain of salt or whatnot.)
    Anyway, this line reminded me of that because Drave seems to sense that Lew doesn't give a shit about atonement. He's just looking to get Troth back.

"I can't speak for God"
If Lew's wife isn't going to forgive him then God had better or else why bother atoning at all? I suppose if we want to get all daytime talk show about it, Lew needs to forgive himself. But since he doesn't know what he did and seemingly is never going to, maybe he should just forget it altogether? Hmm, wasn't that Drave's suggestion in the first place? I suppose it was but the implication was that Lew can only move on with the help of Drave and his community.

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