Did you ever wonder what keeps us going?
Claire’s world is destroyed and deprived of hope. Her son, her one and only child, was killed in Vietnam. The most ironical thing was that he used to work with computers. It would be a great overestimation to call him a soldier; he just wore a uniform and worked with an electronic death registration system. Claire’s heart was broken when she got the news. Although she was destroyed by grief, she never thought about suicide. On the contrary, she spent a lot of time thinking about “what keeps us going”. She knows that she is strong enough “to survive” but what really intrigues her is that source of strengths.
Don’t talk to me about light.
If the popular preachers, life coaches, or believers in miracles would try to tell Tillie how wonderful our life is, they would definitely regret their decision. She says “don’t talk to me about light” and she means it, for she knows for sure that light rarely dwells on the dirty streets. Light is not for her and her girls, prostitutes, drug addicts, alcoholics. All her life could serve as evidence that there “ain’t no burning bushes and there ain’t no pillars of light”.
The only thing you need to know about war, son, is: don’t go.
Mostly, the majority of people don’t know a lot about war. Of course, we know that it usually brings a lot of suffering, that people die and crimes are committed, but that is all. In spite of the fact that Claire’s son, Joshua, was killed in the war, she doesn’t know anything about it too. But the thing she knows for sure and “the only thing you need to know about war, son, is: don’t go”. She didn’t tell that her Joshua, but she tells that million other boys all around the world, she begs them not to go.
