Optimistic Pessimist

After reading your last post, Tara, I got to thinking about all of those books they made us read in high school.

As I Lay Dying
Catch 22
The Stranger
Lord of The Flies

and whatever. I started thinking about the plot (specifically of Lord of the Flies because I know how much you hated it) and then this quote from Death Note hit me. But first a little background on Death Note.

Death Note is a manga/anime about a kid who obtains a Death Note which is a notebook that was dropped by a death god. Now this notebook gives the owner the power to kill any human. All they have to do is write their name in the book and think of the person's face. The death can be unspecified and result in a heart attack, or can be specified to control the time of death, the cause of death, and even a person's actions before death (all within reason of course).

Anyway the kid who picks up the Death Note is a freaking genius kid who starts killing criminals to rid the world of evil. Eventually the police start investigating into the matter, and the kid with the Death Note becomes more and more villainous. Making the reader start to wonder who's right? Who is justice?

So the quote I want to get at is when Ryuk (the previous owner/death god of the notebook) turns to Light (new owner/kid out to kill criminals) after Light has revealed that he wants to kill all the evil people in the world to make a perfect world full of only people that he deems are good. Ryuk then turns to him and says "You know something, I think you may be a real optimist, Light"

Ok so it's not the exact quote word for word, but it's along those lines. But that's the thing I wanted to get at!

I know you hated the Lord of The Flies book because you dont think that humans are inherently evil and that it's a horrible thing to think that a bunch of kids can go completely bestial and start killing each other, when left on a deserted island. But I took a very different message from that.

My message was this. Even when faced with great adversity, Ralph (main char.) was able to maintain the virtues that we thought were 'good' and 'true' seeing as he didnt go about smashing other children in the head with rocks. So that even though all of the other boys went completely crazy in an unstructured life with the fear of death on their minds. This one little boy was able to stop and look at the bigger picture. That he could say 'no this is wrong we need to stop this' and to actually take measures to do so. I mean given that those other boys never got into that situation, I dont think that they'd ever do something like that in a regular 'society'/'civilization'. If they had grown up to live normal lives they probably would have been perfectly fine.

My point is, that while you can take the message away from this book of.
Humans are horrible on the inside and will stop at nothing to ensure their survival, even if it means killing another human.
Or you cans see.
Even when driven to fear and madness, not all hope is lost.

And what's more, you could even argue that the other boys who go kind of nuts, were always thinking in the terms of self-preservation. It's a completely reasonable way to live. There's nothing wrong with killing so you arent killed. I mean there's claiming self-defense in the event you've killed someone. And I do feel that those boys could claim that.

Yes, I am aware that there was no actual threat on their lives, but the fear that death could be looming over your shoulder kinda drives most adults insane. So I dont think that children should be exempt from that, in fact, I think that because they were children who were scared and frightened that it couldnt be avoided. What they did was wrong. Yes it was wrong. But wouldnt you kill a rampaging dragon if it was trying to eat you? If you could kill it anyway. And if you found out later that it was in fact not a rampaging dragon but your friend who happened to be wearing a rather ill-fitting dragon costume, well then...what do you do? What do you say? You've just killed someone. It was in self-defense, sure they were technically harmless, but you didnt know that!

I dunno. I didnt mean to really make this into some kind of literature class of analyzing Lord of the Flies...it just turned out that way. But yeah, I think maybe you should try re-reading some of those old high school books. Maybe you'll see them in a different light. If it gets you thinking, I think the author has done their job. You dont have to like it, or love it or whatever, but I dont think you should call them bad outright. Just my opinion, you dont have to agree with it, it's just a little something to get you thinking.