Comparing The Human Spirit Vs. The Human Ego

The Human Spirit VS The Human Ego

The power of the written word has been utilized across the span of human history and the conflict between Bill the infamous novelist and Jean-Claude or the prisoner who is a writer of almost no renown is my focus here. In Bill we see a writer trapped by his success, a man who would have gladly traded his fame for ambiguity and the freedom it entails except that this would compromise his name and his legacy. The written word has facilitated all of Bill’s dreams while crushing him beneath the weight of their meaning to others. Jean-Claude is a prisoner of a Maoist extremist group in Beirut led by a man who believes they are the beginning of a “world revolution.” (233) Jean-Claude is introduced already imprisoned

These antagonists are personified in the boy. For Jean-Claude the boy is both paingiver and life preserver. The boy brings pain through torture and assault. These attacks could be ordered and methodical or what seems more likely is a warden abusing his ward simply because there is no one to care that he does. The other side of the coin that is the boy is the life giver. It is always the boy who provide food and water. Jean- Claude is hand fed like a baby and it is done in such a way that Jean-Claude must match his captors pace or choke. This pacing provides another facet to the control the boy has over Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude finds himself feeling empathy towards the boy and feeling that he himself is in fact just a materialization of the boy’s reality and not a person at all. Jean-Claude eventually sets his will to some final drive, that his pain must be for something and the only way to ensure it was all meaningful is to put it into words. It doesn’t matter to him if it is on a wet sheet of toilet paper written in crayon as Jean-Claude says “Only writing could soak up his loneliness and pain… Let him write ten words and he would come into being once again.”