Life and Death (The Finder post #3)

What would you do if you were told that you had one month to live? Would you spend more time with your family or would you do things that you've always wanted to do? Throughout our lives, we never like to think about the inevitable result- death. We take many things for granted and we don't realize just how valuable they are until they are threatened or gone. These things, such as our health, family, time, are the things we miss most when our possession of them is threatened. Above all, we take life for granted. Life is the most precious thing we have and everyone reacts differently when they learn that they are dying. We see these varying reactions in Colin Harrison's book The Finder. The wife of a pharmacy financial advisor, Ann, is a physician. She works with elderly patients, many of whom are near death. She describes her views on humanity, "We are animals and subject to the mortification of the flesh. Born so that we may die" (109). This morbid view is essentially true when you strip down all of our romanticized views of human life. Humans are basically animals and they are subject to disease and the ravages of old age just like any other living organism.

Everyone deals with death differently. Some live in a constant state of denial and refuse to acknowledge the fact that they will die soon. Others succumb to their pain and the allure of pain medications, choosing to drift away the last hours of their lives. This is the case with Ray's father. He is not able to stand the pain that occurs when he is not medicated. He describes his dependency, "He loved the drug more than he could say, craved it, yes, of course- no wonder people destroyed themselves for it. I'm addicted. But these minutes were when he was most clear, the pain rising quickly yet bearable, the veil of the morphine pulled away just far enough to let his mind work" (117). He realizes that he is living under a cloud, but he cannot live without the morphine. He craves and hates the medicine that keeps the unbearable pain from consuming him. He has not chosen this fate but he must deal with it. These situations are what determine the type of people we are. We must never take anything for granted and we must always make the best of any situation we face.

The Finder post #2

A person's character is developed over time as a result of the experiences they have had. In Shakespeare's plays Much Ado About Nothing and King Lear, we see the characters of Don John and Edmund who are both illegitimate children and have lived in the shadows of their brothers. Because they have lived their lives ostracized and made fun of, they grow up seeking vengeance. In the book The Finder, the characters of Ray and Jin Li have both been shaped by their past experiences. As the plot progresses, the author, Colin Harrison, hints at Ray's background without ever truly telling us what his past experiences have been. Over time we can guess that he was possibly a spy or an elite military fighter, but we can never truly know. As he investigates the sewer for clues about the murder of two Mexican girls who were with Jin Li, he is faced with a horrible scene full of raw sewage. He tells himself, "This is nothing. You've seen much worse, pal. Just use some of the usual tricks" (94). Not many people are faced with having to crawl 100 yards through a sewage pipe, but Ray doesn't seem to think it is very much out of the ordinary. He says he has seen worse and we, the readers, are left only to imagine what else could be worse than this?

Jin Li's character has also been drastically shaped by her past experiences in China. As a child she lived in a rural village. Her mother worked in a factory but was seriously injured and her father became a government official. Jin Li was supported by her grandparents who helper her study so she could escape the life that she knew. She worked in Chemistry and in finance, making her extremely diverse in her abilities and allowing her to take care of herself easily. She describes her childhood, "Her mother retreated into their house and would not come out. Jin Li and her brother did the shopping. Her father chose to sleep in the fold-out bed in the front room and rarely spoke to her mother" (88). Because she had to care for her mother and deal with her family's problems, Jin Li was able to take care of herself from an early age and her knowledge of the world around her, both scientifically and personally, was that of someone much older. Her brother was also influenced by her father and came to see humans as only things to be used for one's own gain. These experiences led to where Jin Li has ended up and have developed and prepared her for the difficulties she will face in the future. Throughout our lives, our experiences will develop how we see and treat others as well as the way that we handle situations.

Love and The Finder (Q3 post #1)

The love between members of a family is a unique and complicated entity. This love comes in many different forms. In some families, such as those often ideally portrayed in movies and books, all the members of the family love each other unconditionally and never fight amongst themselves. In the other extreme, some family members such as Don Pedro and Don John in Shakespeare's play Much ado About Nothing, or Edmund and Edgar in the play King Lear, are driven apart by hatred and jealousy. Most families do not conform to either of these forms, but are somewhere in the middle. In the book, The Finder by Colin Harrison, this familial love is also extremely prevalent and drives many points of the story line. The actions of many of the characters is driven by their love for someone or something, and together, these twisting and overlapping desires fuel the story.

In New York City, a woman, Jin Li, narrowly escapes a gruesome murder and hides. She has been stealing classified information from corporations under the guise of a paper shredding business and giving the information to her brother, a prominent businessman in China. Because she has gone missing, he threatens Jin Li's ex-boyfriend, Ray, into searching for her. We cannot know for sure whether or not Jin Li's brother really loves her or if he is driven only by his love for profit. He tells Ray, "Jin Li, she call me and then she does not go to work, like I say before. I have to tell somebody to run my business. That is big problem just like that. Where is Jin Li, I say. She is good at the business for me" (35). Although he is worried about his sister, his greed is still his main motivation. This love between family members is shallow and thin. The love and relationship between Ray and his dying father is much more earnest. Ray knows his father is dying and that he is in great pain and doesn't have much longer to live. The thing that Ray wants most for his father is for him to be comfortable and, although he does love Jin Li, the real reason that he agrees to help her brother, Chen, is because his father is threatened. Chen's men steal Ray's father, Bill's, morphine pump in order to blackmail him. The author describes Ray's thoughts and actions:

Then he understood.

His father's morphine pump.

They'd taken it, yanked it right out of the vein in his father's right arm. He needed a forty-milligram bolus of Dilaudid every hour, or the pain was-

"Yes, yes!" Ray screamed. "I'll do it! Yes, get me up!" (40).

Ray is not driven by fear for his own safety as he is dangled 50 stories high out of a widow by his foot; he only cares about the pain his father is in. This is true respect and love and stands out in stark contrast to the superficial love between Jin Li and her brother Chen. This is what family is all about.