The Stormlight Archive is all about mental illness so this could literally be any character from that series.
1984
Sometimes I’ll read it as a hopeful story and stop the chapter before they get arrested.
If you read it that way it starts as grumpy guy in totalitarian hellscape who hates himself and ends with him having found someone, being enlightened by resistance, and having a will to live.
(Of course the point isn’t to stop there. But sometimes I feel like reading the book again without being too gloomy.)
I think it also helps to understand the context of him writing the book. Specifically his experience as a libertarian socialist in revolutionary Catalonia and the oppression (incl executions and imprisonment) he and his comrades faced from Stalinist factions who treated the anarchists as threats to their power.
Why 1984 always hit more. Dude was writing from actual lived experience.
you should read his journals, he thought Hitler was too big of a bafoon to ever become a real threat. 1984 was pretty close to just a Stalin documentary though.
Odysseus just wanted to go home, man…
[off topic?]
It’s a general rule in mysteries/thrillers that if a woman is sexy, beautiful, and independent she’ll die, usually before the main character arrives.
Three notable exceptions. “Sea Of Love” movie with Al Pacino. The sexy lady is a suspected serial killer.
“Thin Air” novel by Richard K. Morgan. In this book, it’s a man slut who gets killed. It’s amusing to look on as the narrator gets more and more jealous of the dead man’s sex life.
I can’t mention the last one without giving away the plot.
