VLVL2 (1) paternal emotions

[pynchonoid]

>When, looking at
> his sick daughter, Zoyd realizes that he "would,
> would have to, do anything
> to keep this dear small life from harm," he
> experiences "his belated moment
> of welcome to the planet Earth" (321).  

compare:

"There is a photograph, taken around 1946 in
Islington, of Orwell with his adopted son, Richard
Horatio Blair. The little boy, who would have been
around two at the time, is beaming, with unguarded
delight. Orwell is holding him gently with both hands,
smiling too, pleased, but not smugly so - it is more
complex than that, as if he has discovered something
that might be worth even more than anger - his head
tilted a bit, his eyes with a careful look that might
remind filmgoers of a Robert Duvall character with a
backstory in which he has seen more than one perhaps
would have preferred to. Winston Smith "believed that
he had been born in 1944 or 1945 . . ." Richard Blair
was born May 14, 1944. It is not difficult to guess
that Orwell, in 1984 , was imagining a future for his
son's generation, a world he was not so much wishing
upon them as warning against. He was impatient with
predictions of the inevitable, he remained confident
in the ability of ordinary people to change anything,
if they would. It is the boy's smile, in any case,
that we return to, direct and radiant, proceeding out
of an unhesitating faith that the world, at the end of
the day, is good and that human decency, like parental
love, can always be taken for granted - a faith so
honourable that we can almost imagine Orwell, and
perhaps even ourselves, for a moment anyway, swearing
to do whatever must be done to keep it from ever being
betrayed." 
-Foreword to _1984_ 


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