May 29, 2025
To:Han Quixote
I'll admit, I'm leaving these comments half-heartedly. You don't need to take them seriously.
But on a deeper note, sure, I'll concede your points. However, let's dissect the presentation here. This chapter explicitly frames Atlas's conflict as a paradox, without actually giving us one. If you think about it, he is actually stuck between a rock and a hard place: he either sacrifices his humanity to save the rest of the world, or sacrifices the rest of the world to save his humanity. That sucks, but it's not like it is self-conflicting.
What is self-conflicting, and what I've tried and failed to see in this chapter upon rereading it, is the real paradox at play. Namely, that whether Atlas saves the world or doesn't, he will still be lonely :) In the end, he either saves the world and spends eternity alone holding up the sky, or he doesn't and spends eternity alone stuck in infinity. But he never ponders that catch-22. Instead, we get the following framing:
"And in a tragic and paradoxical way, the very cost of fulfilling his ideals was none other than those same ideals. His identity."
Tragic? Yes. Paradoxical... not quite. There's no contradiction so much as a kind of bitter irony.
