Self Preservation (The Finder post #5)

When a person is threatened, just like all animals, they are faced with the choice to either flee the scene or fight against it. This is an instinct that effects people in different ways. In Shakespeare's King Lear, Edgar flees from his family and disguises himself as Poor Tom when he hears that his father is trying to kill him. We also see several different responses to threats in Colin Harrison's book The Finder. Although in general, we may think of a threat as a physical threat, a person can also face the threat of economic ruin and the loss of pride. This is what threatens Martz, a billionaire Hedge fund manager whose choice of a certain stock has drastically fallen. In order to save his face and his wealth, he arranges for an illegal stock lift. He threatens Chen, Jin Li's brother, who provides information to investors, in order to get his help. He tells him that if he he does not cooperate, he will turn him into the authorities. He says, "The last thing you want to do is be arrested for illegal trading here. This will launch an investigation into everything you have ever done, and like a fatal disease it will touch all of the people to whom you have ever given information. It will cause loss of face" (276). Martz knows that in order to save himself, he must carry out the stock price lift. He is willing to threaten and terrorize others in order to do this. This is one example of how, when backed into a corner, a person will either try to flee or will fight for themselves.

In addition to the less tangible threat of economic and personal ruin, there is also the more obvious physical threat to a person. When Jin Li is kidnapped by the man that murdered the two Mexican girls at the beginning of the book, she is afraid that he will eventually torture, rape, and kill her. She is trapped in a hidden room, chained to the wall. Also in the room with her is a bathtub full of a reeking brown goop that is, unknown to her, the remains of another man dissolved in acid. Using her chemistry knowledge, she uses a bucket to concentrate the acid to prepare for anything that might come:

"She watched the liquid settle and ever so subtly separate, the water rising to the top. She took off her shoe and stirred the stuff with it. The shoe started to smoke, but the water was brought to the surface. She tipped the bucket and poured of the brownish water, and it trickled across the cement floor toward the drain. . . Jin Li coughed a moment, then remembered to slide the bucket around the edge of the mattress, where he would be less likely to see it and discover what she had done." (299)

In order to prepare for what might happen to her, Jin Li uses her resourcefulness to come up with a way to protect herself if she needs to. This response will eventually help save her life later. When faced with adversity, human beings resourcefully use whatever means available to them to devise ways to save themselves.