Wednesday, February 7, 2007
The Nuns?
I have been trying to figure out the significance of the nuns at the end of the story, I want to know why they feel that what they represent is not real (the idea of life after death) but they do it anyways because they feel it is important that everyone else feels it is real. If they do not believe that the after life is real, why do they want everyone else to believe in it? The only possible solution I can come up with is the idea of failed plots and how this book is more or less one big failed plot.
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2 comments:
The reason that the nuns aren’t as religious as a typical nun is because of what they observe while working in a hospital. They are constant witnesses to the pain, suffering, and sometimes death that violence leads to. This disgust is evident when the nun asks, “You would come in from the street dragging a body by the foot and talk of angels… Get out from here.” As far as why the nuns feel it is important that everyone else should have faith, I agree that the emphasis on failed plots could have been Delillo’s primary motivation for the nun scene. The nun attempts to justify her desire for others to believe by stating that “Hell is when no believes,” but that seems to contradict her disbelief in an afterlife. Obviously, I’m missing something as well.
I think that it is important we not forget the importance of these particular nuns being the last German nuns. Nuns, by name, typically remind us all of the belief that there is an after life. When they disassociate this common assumption, they show yet another failed plot. The Germans, Hitler, and death, all go hand in hand; Jack seems to seek out these connections to supplement his own fear of death. The Nuns were supposed to represent eternal life, and Jack would have needed that enlightenment, had he attempted to kill Mink. Now that he has this newfound power over death, he no longer needs the support that the Nuns would have given. Now, had Jack not found his control on death, the situation at the clinic would have been far more drastic, Jack would have really struggled to find comfort over his fear of death.
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