Wisdom and the Meaning of Life Theme Analysis

The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water.

He had enough to live in what he considered the proper style for a gentleman without trying to earn money, and the method by which he had done so in the past was a matter which, unless you wished to lose his acquaintance, you were wise not to refer to. Thus relieved of material cares he gave himself over to the ruling passion of his life, which was social relationships.

He was in affluent circumstances and he contributed generously to the good works patronized by persons of consequence. He was always ready with his exquisite taste and his gift for organization to help in any charitable function that was widely publicized.

He was a pleasant-looking boy, neither handsome nor plain, rather shy and in no way remarkable. I was interested in the fact though, so far as I could remember, he hadn’t said half a dozen words since entering the house, he seemed perfectly at ease and in a curious way appeared to take part in the conversation without opening his mouth.

“You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.”

“You may be right. I don’t mind if I make mistakes. It may be that in one of the blind alleys I may find something to my purpose.”

“What is your purpose?”

He hesitated a moment.

“That’s just it. I don’t quite know it yet.”

“Do you know, I’ve got an idea that I want to do more with my life than sell bonds.”

“All right then. Go into a law office or study medicine.”

“No, I don’t want to do that either.”

“What do you want to do then?”

“Loaf,” he replied calmly.

“The dead look so terribly dead when they’re dead.”

“What do you mean exactly?” she asked, troubled.

“Just that.” He gave her a rueful smile. “You have a lot of time to think when you’re up in the air by yourself. You get odd ideas like that.”

“What sort of ideas?”

“Vague,” he said smiling. “Incoherent. Confused.”

Isabel thought this over for a while.

Don’t you think if you took a job they might sort themselves out and you’d know where you were?”

“I’ve thought of that. I had a notion that I might go to work with a carpenter or in a garage.”

“Oh, Larry, people would think you were crazy.”

“Would that matter?”

“To me, yes.”

“You think of a fellow who an hour before was so full of life and fun, and he’s lying dead; it’s all so cruel and so meaningless. It’s hard not to ask yourself what life is all about and whether there’s any sense to it or whether it’s all a tragic blunder of blind fate.”

“You’re impractical. You don’t know what you’re asking me to do. I’m young, I want to have fun. I want to do all the things that people do. I want to go to parties, I want to go to dances, I want to play golf and ride horseback. I want to wear nice clothes. Can’t you imagine what it means to a girl not to be as well dressed as the rest of her crowd?”

“I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of. I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It’s illimitable. It’s such a happy life. There’s only one thing like it, when you’re up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you. You feel such a sense of exhilaration that you wouldn’t exchange it for all the power and glory in the world.”

[…] “But Larry,” she interrupted him desperately, “don’t you see you’re asking something of me that I’m not fitted for, that I’m not interested in and don’t want to be interested in? How often have I got to repeat to you that I’m just an ordinary, normal girl.”

They talked of the parties they had been to and the parties they were going to. They gossiped about the latest scandal. They tore their friends to pieces. They bandied great names from one to the other. They seemed to know everybody. They were in on all the secrets. Almost in a breath they touched on the latest play, the latest dressmaker, the latest portrait painter, and the latest mistress of the latest premier. One would have thought there was nothing they didn’t know. Isabel listened with ravishment. It all seemed to her wonderfully civilized. This really was life. It gave her a thrilling sense of being in the midst of things. This was real.

“It’s a long arduous road he’s starting to travel, but it may be that at the end of it he’ll find what he’s seeking.”

“What’s that?”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you? It seems to me that in what he said to you he indicated it pretty plainly. God. […] Unfortunately you don’t know what experience he had in the war that so profoundly moved him. I think it was some sudden shock for which he was unprepared. I suggest to you that whatever it was that happened to Larry filled him with a sense of the transiency of life, and an anguish to be sure that there was a compensation for the sin and sorrow of the world.”

“I got the idea somehow that he’d taken on the hard, brutal labor of the mine to mortify his flesh. I thought he hated the great uncouth body of his and wanted to torture it, and that his cheating and his bitterness and his cruelty were the revolt of his will against—oh, I don’t know what you’d call it—against a deep-rooted instinct of holiness, against a desire for God that terrified and yet obsessed him.”

“Well, you know the Duce has been reclaiming great tracts of land in the Pontine Marshes and it was represented to me that His Holiness was gravely concerned at the lack of places of worship for the settlers. So, to cut a long story short, I built a little Romanesque church […] But no one was more surprised than I when shortly afterward it was intimated to me that he [His Holiness] had been pleased to confer a title on me.”

“D’you wish you had married [Larry]?”

She smiled engagingly.

“I’ve been happy with Gray. He’s been a wonderful husband. You know, until the crash came we had a grand time together. We like the same people, and we like doing the same things. He’s very sweet. And it’s nice being adored; he’s just as much in love with me as when we first married […]”

I asked myself if she thought she’d answered the question.

“Are you very much in love with Larry?”

“God damn you, I’ve never loved anyone else.”

“Why did you marry Gray?”

“I had to marry somebody. He was mad about me and Mamma wanted me to marry him. Everybody told me I was well rid of Larry.”

“Larry is, I think, the only person I’ve met who’s completely disinterested. It makes his actions seem peculiar. We’re not used to people who do things simply for the love of God whom they don’t believe in.”

“I suppose it was the end of the world for her when her husband and her baby were killed. I suppose she didn’t care what became of her and flung herself into the horrible degradation of drink and promiscuous copulation to get even with life that had treated her so cruelly. She’d lived in heaven and when she lost it she couldn’t put up with the common earth of common men, but in despair plunged headlong into hell. I can imagine that if she couldn’t drink the nectar of the gods any more she thought she might as well drink bathroom gin.”

“Sophie wallows in the gutter because she likes it. Other women have lost their husbands and children. It wasn’t that that made her evil. Evil doesn’t spring from good. The evil was there always. When that motor accident broke her defenses it set her free to be herself. Don’t waste your pity on her; she’s now at heart what she always has been.”

“My dear fellow, at my age one can’t afford to fall out. You don’t think I’ve moved in the highest circles for nearly fifty years without realizing that if you’re not seen everywhere you’re forgotten.”

I wondered if he realized what a lamentable confession he was then making. I had not the heart to laugh at Elliott any more; he seemed to me a profoundly pathetic object. Society was what he lived for, a party was the breath of his nostrils, not to be asked to one was an affront, to be alone was a mortification; and, an old man now, he was desperately afraid.

“I shall enter the kingdom of heaven with a letter of introduction from a prince of the Church. I fancy that all doors will be open to me.”

“I’m afraid you’ll find the company very mixed.” I smiled.

[…]

“Believe me, my dear fellow,” he went on after a pause, “there’ll be none of this damned equality in heaven.”

“Until the soul has shed the last trace of [egoism] it cannot become one with the Absolute.”

“You talk very familiarly of the Absolute, Larry, and it’s an imposing word. What does it actually signify to you?”

“Reality. You can’t say what it is; you can only say what it isn’t. The Indians call it Brahmin. It’s nowhere and everywhere. All things imply and depend on it. It’s not a person, it’s not a thing, it’s not a cause. It has no qualities. It transcends permanence and change; whole and part, finite and infinite.”

“You Europeans know nothing about Americans. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We care nothing for it; the moment we have it we spend it, sometimes well, sometimes ill, but we spend it. Money is nothing to us; it’s merely the symbol of success. We are the greatest idealists in the world; I happen to think we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.”

“The idea came to me when Uncle Elliott made all that fuss about this damned Polish liqueur. I thought it beastly, but I pretended it was the most wonderful stuff I’d ever tasted. I was certain that if [Sophie] got a chance she’d never have the strength to resist. That’s why I took her to the dress show. That’s why I offered to make her a present of her wedding dress. That day, when she was going to have the last fitting, I told Antoine I’d have the zubrovka [the Polish liqueur] after lunch and then I told him I was expecting a lady and to ask her to wait and offer her some coffee and to leave the liqueur in case she fancied a glass.”

He is without ambition and he has no desire for fame; to become anything of a public figure would be deeply distasteful to him […] but it may be he thinks that a few uncertain souls, drawn to him like moths to a candle, will be brought in time to share his own glowing belief that ultimate satisfaction can only be found in the life of the spirit, and that by himself following with selflessness and renunciation the path of perfection he will serve as well as if he wrote books or addressed multitudes.

But this is conjecture. I am of the earth, earthy; I can only admire the radiance of such a rare creature, I cannot step into his shoes and enter into his innermost heart as I sometimes think I can do with persons more nearly allied to the common run of man. Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into the tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted by so many conflicting interests, so lost in the world’s confusion, so wishful of good, so cocksure on the outside, so diffident within, so kind, so hard, so trustful, and so cagey, which is people of the United States.