Analysis of "Lost" by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Essay by yelli123High School, 11th grade April 2004

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Lost

Kenneth Rexroth has said of Isaac Bashevis Singer's works that they seem to illustrate a specific view of the world. He described this theory on life saying that "life itself is haunted...We all live in the shadowy frivolous world of a spiritualistic séance... The point is that somewhere at the heart of reality something is running down." At first this seems to be just an eloquent masterpiece of a sentence but is it backed by truth? In my modest opinion I think that everything we live and every day we live is somewhat supernatural. It just doesn't seem that way because it's been happening for so long that it has all become natural to us. The way the world keeps turning and people keep moving. The way the race perpetuates itself and that the food supply isn't as bad as it technically could be. These things are crazy if you think about them and even though modern technology has discovered a lot of the "whys" it all still can't cease to amaze me.

We know the laws of nature and of attraction and the theories of evolution and psychology. Yet we don't know why things always work out, not necessarily well, but nevertheless for every means there is an end. We don't know why bad things happen to good people or really why anything ever happens at all. We are indeed living in a "shadowy" world where we think we know what is going on but where we can't even attach a meaning to our existence. Too many of us think that we have got it all figured out only to realize in the final days that we had been living blind.

Despite my opinion that life in itself is supernatural I recognize the possibility that there are...