Searching for Life in a Depraved World

So after tantalizing you with some books I have been reading, here are some thoughts from the couple of pieces.

Let me preface this by saying that I am by no means a professional literary critic. Also, I know that there is a lot more to these books and the impact they've had on society than what I'm going to talk about. This isn't a book report, it's trying to look at these through the lens of truths they reveal about life, God, and the world. Anyways, three books I've read in the past month or so are The Great Gatsby, On the Road, and Lord of the Flies. Road was the only one I hadn't read before, which was the reason I picked it up. The other two I just hadn't read in probably six or seven years, and figured I could appreciate them better now than when I was sixteen with lots of other things on the brain.

Anyways, for everything that each one of these books has to offer on it's own, I absolutely could not help but notice this resounding note of uneasy, searching, wandering, lost depression in each story. Gatsby throws parties on just hoping Daisy would wander in. Kerouac and his crew can't seem to stay in one place for more than a couple of months, and go to live life on the road and in bars. And the lost boys end up stripped down to the bare instincts of humanity, completely mad with desire to hunt and run amuck. In all three stories, sin and it's effects are smeared all over the pages, with the result being characters who are just desperate for full life.

The most vivid example of this desperation is portrayed in On the Road by a character named Dean. Dean, over the course of the book and a couple of years, ends up with I believe three partners, two of whom he married and divorced and remarried on opposite coasts, and a couple of kids. Every once in a while, he gets dissatisfied with life, wants to be on the road, and just straight up and leaves his home, wife, kids to go wander the country. Most of his traveling time is spent drunk, high, or some combination thereof. It is literally so sad, he doesn't have any larger motives for leaving ("finding himself", etc.), he is simply bored and keeps wandering.

One of the most amazing things to me is to look at is how all three stories can also be seen as ways we think to deal with the problems of life that ultimately fail. Gatsby has wealth, and that doesn't cut it. Kerouac's crew spend their life on the road, wandering towards a horizon they will never reach and remaining unsatisfied the whole time. And the lost boys escape to an island paradise, with no one or rules to keep them down. Money, freedom, and vacations have no power or ability to fulfill or deal with the problems of sin that in some form or another become brutally apparent to all the main characters in each story. How often do we seek the same things? How often do we lie to ourselves and say just this little bit extra of whatever will make things great, if not at least bearable? How can we see ourselves and our own sins in these situations?

Let the pondering begin!