I will pick up on where I left off last week with the living, dead man. It's hard to pattern him right away because he is still under the effects of being burried for a few hours. He and Ren make few interactions, Ren has a gun leveled at the man, but he suckers the boy in anyway and sweeps him up into a great bear hug. It seemed to signify that the Man had power over the boy because nothing more came of it. The Man turns out to be named Dolly, and works as an assassin. He has a tattoo of a chain around his abdomin, every link represents a man he has killed. Bragging about how many he's killed! For the time, I suppose that's just an occupation, that's how it is. I think about now: What do we brag about? Dolly is very good at killing people, "I was made for killing" (190), so indeed, he brags about it in one way or another. I brag about my car because it is one of my strong-points. What do you brag about?
A recurring theme in the book is faith. Dolly openly kills a friar who prodded into someone else's business, someone else being Dolly. Ren just about faints as he walks outside to see the eyeless man with a crushed face on the pavement. Ren remembers, "Father John always said the Day of Judgement would come during this lifetime. Ren looked behind and saw no one following, and no judgement" (200). Ren is slowly but surely losing his faith. He's realizing it's ok to do these bad things because nothing bad is coming back to haunt him (take that as you will). Its a question I fight with quite often myself. What is the purpose of faith and is it really real? Between AP Euro and looking at the event around me I find it hard to believe in. People seem to turn on faith when their lives suck, they abandon faith when they realize there is nothing to fear. In the book we read, Night, Eliezer turned on his faith because of the terrible things happening. Of course there are many religious explanations for the lack of an active god. It's all opinion.
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3 comments:
Bieng brought up in an all catholic orphanage would obviously have a profound effect on Ren, and when he sees someone kill another person, expecially when the victim is a religious man, that had to bring up religious issues. I definatly agree that a recurring theme is faith, and I think that Ren is slowly losing it because of his interactions with Benjamin and Tom.
I think that this all makes sense for Ren to question his faith, everyone does when something goes horribly wrong right in front of them and I defiantly agree though that it is all in opinion and what you personally believe when it comes to your faith.
Benjamin and Tom destroyed Ren's faith and put him in a horrible place in life. However, I believe that Ren hasn't lost ALL of his faith and morals, because he doesn't shoot the man he has a gun pointed at. This shows how you can't take people's faith entirely away from them.
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