Essay #2 Excerpt

This book also describes the process of going to the bathroom, which you can imagine is incredibly painstaking. In the second chapter, Tod’s passenger examines the way people live this horrid life. “Never watching where they are going, the people move through something prearranged, armed with lies.” Life in reverse yields very little control. Nobody knows where they’re going or what will happen next. One of the few things the passenger does know is that Tod will have another day’s work as a doctor. “Two go in. But only one comes out. Oh, the poor mothers, you can see how they feel during the long goodbye to babies.” Giving birth is never taken lightly, but would ultimately yield more pain if the baby went in instead of out. Doctors being highly trustworthy in our lives is completely flipped in a backwards world. They pay you to hurt you, which is not a world we would want to live in.

The Opposite of Tragedy

The title of this post is the basic summary of the book I'm reading: Time's Arrow. The general story follows a passenger living inside Tod Friendly. Tod is living his life in reverse, and the passenger can't really make sense of it. In some aspect, everything around him is a tragedy. Poop goes back into people, doctors pay people to hurt them, and Tod steals candy from babies for some quick cash. However, as this is the 2nd time I've read this book, I know how it ends. It leads up to one event in history where reversing things is actually good: World War II. The transition of living a new life as unsatisfied doctor under a fake name to helping people who had nothing (plus getting a hot, young wife) makes this the opposite of tragedy.