just a thought...

I have began reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot, and so far its been a great read. One of the first great thoughts that book imposed on me was torture versus quick death. The main character, Prince Myshkin, explains how the common thought of a quick death being better than a long painful one can be misleading. When your head is under the guillotine, or in modern days strapped to the chair, you become certain that death is a couple minutes away. This is a feeling that no one should experience, and you can imagine how horrible it would be to come to the realization that it really is over. The feeling of certainty is extremely scary. On the other hand, a person that is in a horrible situation in which they are being tortured, will always have some little hope that some miracle would occur and they would be saved. As Dostoevsky put it, someone who escapes a stabbing attack will run away in the need of help and never want to die. As weird as it may sound, even if that person ends up dying, they had that feeling of hope and it empowers them to live that much longer. So to us, the audience, we may think that the quick way out is the best because of the absence of pain. But that person's mind would be going through hell knowing that it is the end. Just a thought....