How to make a reader understand pain?
Answer: By making the character not understand the pain that they should feel.
The books we grew up reading, and the advice we were forced to listen to always mentioned that we don’t regret the things we do, but the things we don’t. Even then, nobody tells you that to feel a burden is to feel the pain that the person who should feel it never will. Like the burden of watching a child lose a parent at an age at which they cannot understand; at an age that leaves them oblivious to the pain they should feel.
It is a burden that doesn’t require OUR pain, yet we feel it. But what if that person isn’t a child, but someone who understands pain and can’t afford to express it?
It is a bittersweet feeling, and I wonder if ‘oblivion’ is just another, less offensive word for ‘denial’.
Perhaps, Mr. Stevens didn’t make out the difference.
How is it that one doesn’t see the pain they should feel? It makes us angry, it makes us helpless to see people not speaking up or fighting for something they definitely should. What makes them not see the wrong in something that is absolutely wrong?
Does this remind you of someone?
We always learn how to start something, to try, experiment, fail and get back up, continue and try again. But we never learn when to stop. And when we don’t, we are left in a pool of disappointment, dissatisfaction, and regret for the things we never did. But Mr. Stevens never knew that he should’ve been in the pool. Mr. Stevens had no idea that this pool was his home.
He was a fish that asked other fish where the ocean was.
Remains of a day: all that remains in a day. To finish every task, every job, and to be left with a life not lived. Remaining with an unlived life.
Mr. Stevens lived such a life that we may never understand. And he lived a happy life, for he was a fool to not even know how miserable he should be.
My overall ratings: 4.5/5