Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

percy-l - Meaning of life reference

percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion on Walker Percy

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Renard Doneskey <doneskey AT swau.edu>
  • To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Meaning of life reference
  • Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 10:27:48 -0600


Regarding Traci's request about the meaning of life:

I think you may be refering to a section in the novel Lancelot. Before I
quote it, I'd like to note that Lance's view is very distorted. His idea
must be placed in the context of the whole novel--to excise it like this is
a gross misrepresentation of Percy and the theme of Lancelot as a whole.
With that said, here goes:

-----

"The great secret of the ages is that man has evolved, is born, lived, and
dies for one end and one end only: to commit a sexual assault on another
human or to submit to such an assault.

Everyone else man does is so much bushwwa and you know it and I know it and
everyody knows it.

Women have only just now discovered the secret, or part of it, the
monstrous absurdity of it. Can you blame them for being outraged? Yet even
more absurd are their pathetic attempts, once having made the discovery
which men are too dumb to make, to pretend it isn't so, to cover it up, or
to blame it on men.

What the poor dears discovered is the monstrous truth lying at the very
center of life: that their happiness and the meaning of life is to be
assaulted by a man.

Ah, sweet mystery of life indeed, indeed yes, exactly, yes indeed that is
what it is: to be rammed, jammed, stuck, stabbed, pinned, impaled, run
through, in a word:

Raped."

-----

That's from Lancelot, Chapter VIII. In the Ivy books paper back, it's pp.
206-07.

Renard





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page