The old dying man says something like “I went to the funeral of my friend and it was such a waste. He couldn’t hear all the great things said about him”. So how does this guy know that? He doesn’t.
I read two books once that struck me in a similar way. I read THE BELL JAR about a spoiled brat who attempts suicide and eventually the author really commits suicide. I read Bell Jar right after reading CANCER WARD by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. On one level CANCER WARD is about hospitals in the old USSR (in this case Tashkent), on a deeper level it is about the USSR, and on a still deeper level it is about life and the love of life. Its characters have little but desperately love life and want to live while in the BELL JAR the young woman has so much but wants to end her life. Guess which book gets the most reprints and is assigned in the most classes at American universities.
Thank you, I’ll read Cancer Ward but I think that I’ll just leave Bell Jar alone. See, I can hardly muster the sympathy.