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By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Dani argues that beauty and light are what give pain meaning, while Michael admits he can no longer believe in God and answers with a South America story about a gangster made to fight bare-fisted under guns and rich spectators for a year.
The exchange pulls Michael's violence into a larger moral frame: Dani keeps pushing toward faith and light, while Michael answers with spectacle, rackets, and bodily ordeal. South America arrives not as travel but as another proof that power turns men into entertainment.
The doctrine of light is laid out: 'The beyond is always there... Mankind would not endure, if there was no belief in light,' though it is 'seldom' reached because 'man seldom has the strength to go beyond faith.' The warning is stark - 'there will have to be a final explosion for you, or death.' Michael says Daniel has 'already accepted the light' while he himself 'find[s] it very difficult to believe in God anymore.' The South American 'hell journey' then yields its grimmest parable: the gangster who became 'a gladiator,' fighting 'bare fisted' under the 'cat walk' where men 'walk with tommie guns to protect the money,' for a year - 'That was his business orientation,' and 'one of the better business people.'