The Gulf Coast Is Under the Sun

"Zombies staring, looking my way, crying out for something, anything.

They can't fill their stomachs with enough to satisfy the hunger growing,

needing something real."

-Project 86, One Armed Man

You know, as I was reading The Moviegoer and observing Jack Bolling's thoughts about the world around him, one thought kept rising up in my mind...wow, this guy is nothing more than a misanthropic jerk! I have rarely seen him satisfied at all with the world or the people in it. Bolling is living in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction to the point where he can rarely find happiness in his life at all. He claims to be on some great search for meaning but at times that search seems almost completely meaningless and self-defeating. No peace, no joy, just perpetual wanderings and disillusionment. He is selfish, discouraging, and as unchristian as it gets...

...except for the fact that Bolling is totally biblical. Wait, what? How could this jerk possibly adhere to biblical principalities at all? Allow me to introduce you to King Solomon, AKA known as Qoheleth, the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes. This focus of the book is that the writer had once been the most successful man on Earth, earning and doing everything conceivable under the sun. He had seen the most beautiful sights, heard the most interesting things, and was considered by all who knew him as the wisest man in all the land. He literally was the most interesting man in the world!

Yet despite all of that, Ecclesiastes is significant in that Qoheleth, looking back on his life, realized it had absolutely no value at all. He found everything he had attempted and/or accomplished, all of the things that he loved, and all the things that he thought to have so much value to be nothing but vanity. In the end, he realized that the world was nothing but a hollow shell of what it should be and those that live in it are not better off. In fact, he could be downright misanthropic at times, and is often considered to be one of the most depressing books in all of the Bible.

Bolling, of course, is a much less successful man who may not be quite as wise as Qoheleth, but he has the advantage of realizing this biblical truth at a relatively young stage of his life and seeking to avoid it. Qoheleth calls it vanity-Bolling calls it malaise. Normal, everyday existence is hollow and pointless, and to follow the ways of the world is the way of destruction. To contrast the two, Qoheleth discovers that only through loving and obeying God can a man find any value and happiness in his life, for God resurrects the man's life and the world around him so that it is beautiful and worth existing. Bolling never really finds a definite answer (and it certainly isn't God) for his search is one that is not supposed to end, for if it did, then he would be both figuratively and physically dead. Of course, Qoheleth's point is that finding God does not equal death but resurrection, but if God is irrelevant to you than so is the aforementioned point. What matters is finding a way to live in the world in a way that does not conform to but stands out, and both these writers search for ways to do this. Existentialism has always existed, but no one really knew what it was-nothing is new under the sun.

Thank you for reading! If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, tell her I bring the horoscope myself. One must be so careful these days. I commented on Rachel Kotlan's Lip Piercing.