So I'm convinced that there's actually some god or goddess helping out Smithy. Either that or he's a god in disguise.
First off, he's survived everything thrown at him. The guy's been shot MULTIPLE times, and has survived it all. Sure, he had somebody to help him in Vietnam, but that meant he didn't die immediately, which is still impressive.
Then there's the fact that's he was some fat, chain-smoking, alcoholic who hadn't worked out in years. This same guy decided to get on his bike and start riding it across the country. I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure not doing any kinds of rigorous activity for a while and doing something really rigorous suddenly is a good way to give yourself a heart attack. Smithy wasn't even fit, yet doesn't get a heart attack. I blame it on Athena's divine intervention.
He also gets beaten so severely that he pees himself. I don't understand how he's totally fine. Is it luck? Or is Smithy just unable to get hurt too badly after having a bunch of holes in him? There's also the fact that he's hit by a car, and ends up totally fine. The people at the Emergency Room don't even do anything for Smithy, he washes himself off, goes into an examining room, and rubs antibacterial cream on himself. How doesn't he get caught? Obviously Athena was shrouding Smithy so nobody would notice him.
Lastly, in part of his journey, Smithy decides to take a nap. Okay, nothing wrong with that, but when he wakes up, THERE'S A BLIZZARD. You do not wake up during a Blizzard and come out totally fine, other than some cut on his neck from a bullet.
I don't know if I'm just being really anal about all of this, but I don't think Smithy should be perfectly fine. These incidents I listed, to me, seem to be instances where Smithy should have died. In each of these instances, Smithy comes out relatively fine. That's why I'm convinced there's only two explanations for this. Either Smithy is being helped every step of his journey by Athena, or Smithy is actually immortal, and so he doesn't need to worry about being injured because he can't die from the injuries.
Ha, never really thought about it this way. I can't argue though, Smithy is far more lucky than anyone I've heard of. I mean... he gets battered over and over again. And some of it happens really close together! He get's hit by a car, doesn't get any treatment, and then is beat up in a span of a few days. I'm also sure Smithy was concussed at some point during this. And yet he was back on his bike soon after? Really? It kind of makes me question the believability if some parts of the novel, but I guess divine intervention is another possibility.
ReplyDeleteWhen I had a concussion I wasn't supposed to do any physical activity for a while, and then I was closely monitored. If I'd been through what Smithy went through I would either be dead or on the couch watching Netflix while having someone else nurse me back to a perfect healthiness, not riding hundreds more miles across the states on a bike.
So there are two likely scenarios going on here.
ReplyDeleteScenario #1:
Smithy really is being guarded by Athena, and every time he's beat down, Athena pulls him from the brink of death, heals him, and then gives him an air of coolness and/or pity, enough to make the person that wronged him feel so sorry that they did it/sorry for him that they give him stuff.
Scenario #2
It's the artistic liberty of the author to make the story seem as unreal as he wants in order to make a point.
I personally am rooting for scenario #1...
I think that the author was just using the idea of the suspension of disbelief (which I talked about some on Tiye's blog) but it just didn't work out for a realistic fiction novel. Though in real life, there are some people who do crazy things like that guy who cut off his arm or whatever.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. Maybe I'm just a credulous reader, but given all the unlikely things people are depicted to achieve throughout the annals of literature, Smithy's story doesn't seem all that implausible to me. That's not to say it's easy, or obvious, and he does suffer quite a bit over the course of this journey. But he is also taken in and nursed at various points, and whether there is some kind of supernatural force watching over him, human "providence" does play that role many times. In short, he would not have survived without the help of others. In some ways, aside from the concussion and shooting, when he's got the fever and is out in the frigid night-desert air feeling miserable, that's when he seems at his most desperate to me. Maybe I just hate being sick, and even worse hate trying to do anything productive when I'm feeling sick, and the idea of pedaling a bike in the cold wind with a fever does seem like a kind of superhuman feat.
ReplyDeleteThe sense that Smithy's journey is unbelievable has certainly occurred to Smithy himself--he literally can't believe he's doing this, and probably never would have started if he'd actually thought about it.