APS TOGETHER
Day 8
Chapter 3, pp 142-158 (from “When she arrived at the tip of the island" through “something would happen to interfere with her departure.”)
December 10, 2020 by Claire Messud
Looking at the dark boardwalk, “Miss Goering, usually so timorous, was not frightened…She even felt…elation…common in certain unbalanced but sanguine persons… [who] approach the thing they fear.” (p.142) Bowles too did what frightened her most.
Dick’s radical politics suggest that “It is wise to destroy yourself…at least to keep only that part of you which can be of use to a big group of people.” (p.156) Parodic, perhaps, but less outré than one might wish.
Miss Goering, less gnomic than she seems, argues that humanity’s problem is that they (we?!) “hold on so hard…to all the ideals by which they have always lived,” (p.157) clarified as “the dark and all the dragons” – mythical terrors, indeed
