In most popular conceptions of hell and its capital Pandemonium, fire is the norm. A locale of flames, sulphur and all other necessary burning elements. “Burn in hell.” “Eternal flames”. These are just some of the terms anyone amongst us has had the chance to hear. Yet, in Dante’sInferno, in the center of hell, where the devil himself lies, no such flames can be found. Instead, it is not only an environ that is cold, but it is of ice, and in this frozen lake, are the traitors trapped. For apparently, treachery is the gravest iniquity. This replacement of fire with ice, could certainly have rhetorical implications when one considers the following -Hot as hell, I hope you roast in hell, Hellfire,and all other associations of hell and corrosive heat.
To Be Human
And to whom shall we run in times as these
When abandonments of hope are so replete
The longing pain stings like that of rabid bees
And despondency engulfs the mind complete
But we rise and fall and yet we rise again
Recapturing a strength we believed lost once more
We step into the night amidst the thundering rain
Forever tearing apart misery’s unbreakable door.
From Hürtgen, Salinger sent a letter to his friend Elizabeth Murray, saying that he had been writing as much as possible. He claimed to have completed five stories since January and to be in the process of finishing another three. Years later, Salinger’s counter-intelligence colleagues would remember him as constantly stealing away to write. One recalled a time when the unit came under heavy fire. Everyone began ducking for cover. Glancing over, the soldiers caught sight of Salinger typing away under a table.
If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.
Indigo Grey: Chapter, Unknown
He had for a while now ruminated on this thought. That it pretty much does not matter how clear a guy makes it that he likes a girl. What matters is whether she likes him or not; because if that’s a negative, then his efforts are pretty much worthless and he might as well be trying to cart a horse up a cliff.
He had seen it before. A guy could be the meanest and coldest bastard to a girl, but if she liked him, or even more, loved him, she did not give a damn. He saw guys make girls cry one minute, only to see the sniveling, red-eyed beauty making her way back to the fella. Quite vexing. Some chicks even get battered by a brute, and when advised to leave him, give the infuriating response, “But I love him.”
All the while, you could bring her the brightest stars in the night sky if possible, and she would just smile an insincere one, thank you, and be one her way to the other. These thoughts fortified in him a resolution. That it was better to find out as early as possible if a dame liked you or not. If she did, then you could hardly do any wrong by her. If she didn’t, forget she ever existed. For happiness can sometimes depend on such calculated actions.
When ever I walk into a Starbucks cafe for a coffee and a rapid exit, I frequently find myself surrounded by those so many jokes have been cracked about being pretentious souls - going about as though a novel is in the works, staring at a Mac computer. And I think to myself, these are the types Holden would not waste a minute to call “phonies”.
