One of the themes that i've been noticing in ElIC is how language completely fails to describe the intensity of human emotion. At best it can imply what is meant, thought or said, allude to events, or give little introductions to broader concepts. But it can never do them justice. Things like Thomas Schell Sr. losing his words, the images in the books, how the story never quite deals with the event of 9/11, all denote how difficult it is to logic or articulate what's going on. But what makes this paradoxical is that we are receiving this information from a book. Words have to be used to describe that idea.
To bring this to something that we've been discussing in class, is the nature of the unspeakable. What makes these truths so difficult to illustrate verbally? If I've been beat up, stabbed, tortured and electrocuted, you can absolutely relate what was happening in bloody, grim, caustic detail. But when someone important to us dies, even if it's peaceful, why is it so difficult to relate the emotion? Can you relate emotion with words? Is there a sequence of words, sounds and phrases that completely describe American Slavery, The Holocaust, the Vietnam War, or 9/11? Is William Black's 1 word description for movie personalities, events, etc. less detailed than a 30 volume book series? What's the point of communicating? If it can't accurately describe my ideas, experiences or emotions, then why bother?
Because humans need to anyway.
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