safe children
MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu
MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu
Tue Feb 6 19:45:22 CST 1996
On safe children, Al writes
>Hi all,
>
>More on the stuck-in-adolescence thread:
>
>I've been rereading bits and pieces of VL recently, and came across this bit
>on p216 that I glossed over the first time around. It's where she's laying
>next to Brock in the motel room:
>
>"She understood as clearly as she could allow herself to what Brock wanted
>her to do, understood at last, dismally, that she might even do it-- not for
>him, unhappy fucker, but because she had lost just too much control, time
>was rushing all around her, these were rapids, and as far ahead as she could
>see it looked like Brock's stretch of the river, another stage, like sex,
>children, surgery, further into adulthood perilous and real, into the secret
>that life is soldiering, that soldiering includes death, that those
>soldiered for, not yet and often never in on the secret, are always, at
>every age, children."
>
>I'm not sure what to make of this: a sense and fear of impending adulthood?
>A glimmer of familial responsibility?
>
>Al
>
Don't know if it's relevant, since I'm not really following this thread, but
isn't Brock described somewhere as--the worst kind of adolescent, collegiate
dickhead grown into adulthood--I don't have the exact quote, but the idea is
great as well as a funny description. These guys, the Brocks of the world,
destroyers of children as Al's quote notes, are the real ones stuck in
adolescence. The bullying, twisted and already-defeated adolescent type who
must hurt the weaker.
john m
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