For pity's sake, if you don't take a shine to a novel, there are loads more in the world; read something else. Continue suffering, and it's not the author's fault. It's yours.
Lionel ShriverRead
Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation; the displacements amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions the purpose of life in relation to having children and the perpetuation of aimlessness across generations.
Lionel Shriver's quote delves into the existential inquiry about life and purpose, particularly concerning parenthood. It suggests that merely continuing life through offspring does not inherently provide meaning; instead, it may reflect a cyclical distraction from the deeper questions of existence. In this view, procreation can be seen as a way of deferring the search for purpose rather than resolving it, hinting at a potentially infinite cycle of aimlessness passed down through generations.
Themes
PurposeChildrenLifeMeaningExistenceAimlessness
In practice
Example use cases
In discussions about the responsibilities of parenthood at a family gathering.
More from Lionel Shriver
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You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.
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In the big picture I write for an audience of people I've never met. By the final draft I'm looking for anything in the prose that's prospectively boring to strangers.
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Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story.
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Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.
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