"Fires on the Plain" by Ooka Shouhei....

"I initially thought that it was because I was still alive that I yearned for life. However, was it not because I was already dead that I longed for it so? This paradoxical conclusion consoled me, and I smiled to myself. Since I was already no longer of this world, there was no need to kill myself." Has reading a literary analysis ever made anyone else want to cry? Maybe I'm just a stupid reader and had late reactions to the overwhelming amount sensory information in the novel. I thought I wanted to study J/C/K wartime and colonial literature but am suddenly confused as to whether the feelings they convey are for me truly motivation and not hindrances to anything within my own power and reasoning...

[to be edited later for more quotes and musings on my own memory and perception of experiences and construction/repression of traumatic memories]