Humanity

strong-willed enough to master the entire spectrum of what it means to be a human. Ugly, beautiful. Happy, sad. Terrifying, wonderful.

And now, racked with sobs, I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering and that I was human after all.

If the only thing that differentiates us from animals is the fact that we hide to defecate, then being human rests on very little, I thought. I

But human beings need to speak, otherwise they lose their humanity, as I’ve realised these past few years.

She is an example of a person raised without culture, without societal constructs, without knowledge. She is a pure experiment asking: what does a person become when stripped to the core, raised in isolation? What might a woman be like under these conditions? It is testament to the strength and beauty of this novel that she remains a character too,

No life is ordinary, the book seems to say. No life is without hope, without light, even during the unimaginable.

What could be more human than want and desire: the machinations of your body kicking in? (And what a strange thing we are forced to admit desire is, when seen at this distance.)

It is human to be afraid of death, of unimaginable pain, and it’s another kind of humanity to transcend it.

‘I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all’,