Hello and welcome back to the Peerless Page-turner blog!
Lets move into todays subject-- the Approach to the Inmost Cave. For this subject I chose my third and final book, Shakespeare Saved My Life. This book is a memoir, about a convicted killer turning his life around with the help of an English professor.
In this book the ordeal occurs when Larry Newton, a convicted killer who turned his life completely around because of Shakespeare, gets sent back into solitary confinement. After being wrongfully accused of having a cell phone, Larry is sent back into a prison that only knew the old him, the violent, angry and depressed him. He is treated wrongfully by the prison guards and director, he is moved to another cell every three days, strip-searched twice a day, and his precious Shakespeare book is taken away from him.
Conditions like these would drive anyone to insanity, and Larry himself writes:
"First there are the psychological conditions: it keeps me anticipating harassment all day. That is as distractive as a drug addict awaiting his next lick. The moving keeps me isolated socially, and that creates a depressed mood." (Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life, 272)
As we can see in this passage Larry is struggling, he is trying to focus on his work and not fall back into the deadly cycle he was trapped in before he found Shakespeare. But Larry is not so easily tempted by depression. With the help of Shakespeare and Dr. Bates, Larry changed his view on the world, he no longer feels contempt and hopelessness for his condition. Larry found meaning in his life, and that meaning has helped him to prepare for the challenges that face in him his 'Ordeal'.
Early in the book Dr. Bates asks Larry if he thinks he'd ever kill again, when asked this, Larry has no answer, However, when facing his ordeal Larry says this:
"The answer is no, I will never kill again." (275)
When faced with the same conditions that caused him to stab a prison guard years ago, Larry does not make the same decision, he does not lash out or try to escape, but instead swears to never cause violence again. That change in attitude, from an angry and violent person, to who Larry is in those passages, was the life-changing preparation that helped to face his 'Ordeal' and come out successful on the other side.
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