Saturday, September 29, 2012

"You don't believe in God until the plane is crashing"

Throughout the last chapter there was a lot of reference to religion. When asked, Catherine said she didn't have a religion. A better answer would be my husband, or Frederic as she stated earlier. Also when the baby was dead, Frederic said even though he doesn't follow a religion, the baby would have been baptized. So we see all this secularism, the suddenly BAM!, Frederic sounds like the most religious person you would ever meet. When Catherine is in her last breaths, Frederic prays to God like he never has before. He also asks Catherine if she wants a priest to come. Where is this coming from!? He also contradicts these feelings with thoughts of death, how it is inescapable. Yes it is what is expected when someone is dying, but I never thought we would see this change in Frederic.
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9 comments:

  1. UnknownSeptember 29, 2012 at 5:58 PM

    I think part of it is, they closer you or a love one is to dying, the more you want to believe in some type of afterlife. It is easy to say you don't believe in the afterlife when you and your loved ones are healthy, but it becomes harder to accept/believe as one approaches death. As we discussed in class earlier, it is kind of scary to believe that our loved ones at some point will be forgotten. Perhaps Fredric wrote about his life with Catherine as a way to preserve her memory.

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    1. theshiz23October 2, 2012 at 5:50 PM

      Yea I guess everything becomes so much more important when it's your own. I would hate to think that one day, all my family will be is a pile of bones buried underground. Its much more comforting thinking they will live on in the afterlife.

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  2. UnknownSeptember 30, 2012 at 6:39 PM

    I agree with both Lauren and Shiza. I also think another reason that Frederick becomes so religious in this time of need is because he is otherwise helpless. When the baby dies or while Catherine is dying there is nothing that Frederick can do to help her or the baby. I think in a way he wants to feel needed or helpful so he turns to religion because that is what a lot of other people would typically do in a situation like this. He wants to believe that if he prays to god, something he hasn't done before, that he is somehow helping Catherine maybe like Lauren said into the afterlife or maybe he hopes that he can save her. Either way, I think this is the first time that we see Frederick pray like this because he has never been this desperate before and he honestly doesn't know what else to do to help Catherine. This is the weakest we have ever seen Frederick.

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    1. theshiz23October 2, 2012 at 5:48 PM

      Yea this also made me remember when Frederic was happy when the doctor handed him the control over the gas. He no longer felt helpless and felt like he was helping in Catherine some way :)

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  3. UnknownSeptember 30, 2012 at 6:39 PM

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  4. UnknownOctober 2, 2012 at 3:22 AM

    Interestingly, in the biblical story of Jonah and the whale Jonah refuses to pray to God or even acknowledge God, but when he finds himself inside the stomach of a whale the only thing he can think to do is pray. Perhaps Frederic looking to religion for help is typical behavior in a chaotic time. Also, Frederic does turn to religion throughout Catherine's final moments; however, when the book ends it appears as if Frederic doesn't believe anything. His wife and loved-one has just died, his only son was dead as soon as he was born and Frederic does not finish the novel by praying or crying - he just walks home in the rain. I think it is interesting that despite all his experiences Frederic still struggles to find something that he can grasp onto.

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    1. theshiz23October 2, 2012 at 5:54 PM

      Sophie, I guess he suddenly goes back to not believing at the very end, because he no longer has a reason to. Everything he would ever even think about praying for is now and forever gone. I think the tragic events Frederic has been through actually push him further from God because he must be thinking, "If there really was a God, this would have never happened to me." So he struggles to believe in God anymore because God has not helped him any way, so why try?

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  5. NickiOctober 4, 2012 at 6:04 PM

    I love the title of this post. There's this great idea that when you're about to die nobody is an atheist. When faced with the terrifying idea of death, and the possibility of an afterlife, even the strictest atheist prays in an attempt to comfort himself and find some kind of reassurance.

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