If an all-good and all-powerful God created the world, why He created evil?
Like many other veterans, Larry came back from the war transformed and full of questions. First of all, he couldn’t decide whether there was God or not. The pursuit of God became his new life mission. When he was a boy, he visited a Sunday school, but back then he had no question to ask. Many years later, Larry understood that he would never find needed answers in Christianity. He asked priests “if an all-good and all-powerful God created the world, why He created evil” and never got any reasonable answer. This question disturbed minds of many people and Larry wasn’t first to ask. Not to mention that there was no a direct answer to it, for every person should find his or her own way to God and so did Larry. For him, the answer was Brahmanism.
Life is hell anyway, but if there is any fun to be got out of it you’re only a god-damn fool if you don’t get it.
Once Sophie McDonald had been happy, madly in love with her husband and fully immersed in maternity, but then a horrible tragedy happened and she was left alone. Her child and husband were killed and there was no one to love. The story of Sophie was a story of desperateness. When she had come to a conclusion that the life was “hell anyway”, she saw no reason not to jump into a sea of entertainment. If there was “any fun to be got out of it”, one should be “only a god-damn fool”, if he or she couldn’t dare to use an opportunity. Sophie’s story was also a hymn of self-destruction. Her desperate hedonism turned out to be the most pleasurable way to finish her life. She was an opposite of Larry, who found his salvation in the spiritual pursuit.
Evil doesn’t spring from good. The evil was there always.
The nature of evil can’t be easily defined. But Isabel Maturin has no problem with it at all, for she lives in a white and black world. According to her “evil doesn’t spring from good”. Of course, Isabel has would find many supporters, but the problem is that an idea that “the evil was always there” is a key to mercilessness. This idea prevents her from seeing that she is partialy guilty in Sophie’s death.
I thought I should be a fool to allow work to interfere with a delight in passing moment that I might never enjoy again so fully.
There are two types of people: those, who don’t allow themselves to stop to enjoy the moment and those, who appreciate every minute of life. Being a successful writer, the narrator had to work a lot, but he never made a cult of it. He said that he “should be a fool to allow work to interfere with a delight in passing moment”, for he understood that he “might never enjoy again so fully”. Unlike Gray, who believed that a day without work was a wasted day, the narrator had a healthy attitude to his life and knew the true value of time. He preferred the golden middle and it helped him to find harmony.
