The Invention of Morel

It seems that the Invention of Morel turned out to be a great book after class discussion. A complicated piece of work it took us through a sea of uncertainty about our poor narrator, only to disappoint us with an ending we shall deem, ordinary (but perhaps not in its' own time but rather ours). On a closer examination the book makes us ask tough questions about what it is that constitutes real and what it is to be an illusion. It kept picking at me as if a question I had the answer to but not the reasoning for, was Faustine’s world real or a just a recording no different than my tapes or maybe both. I kept thinking, and still do, that Faustine’s world is just a recording and that there is nothing metaphysically special about it. The world which Morel has created is just an imprint on some sort or storage device going through the automated motions the designer wished upon it. If it where anything more then Morel would have been a god but he is not, he is just a creator. An inventor as the title so nicely illustrates. The invention does not upload you but rather record you, so its entire purpose is to replay the past.
If he did travel to another world it does trouble me when the narrator decided to upload his image onto the one with Faustine. He had the regrettable, but nevertheless moral choice to make. Does he die gracefully till his root diet kills him, does he take his own life, or does he push himself onto the image of Faustine and company at the hope of love?
The answer to what do you do in this situation is a curious one. When you are confronted with a choice do you take charge of the situation, let it play out, or do the best you can and hope for the best given your similar ends different means? The narrator’s actions raise difficult questions. Namely what is the best strategy for life and how wiling are we to accept that other peoples choices for those strategies when they lead to observably the same conclusion? I find it hard to believe that if my choices are hold out long enough to die by malnutrition, die by suicide, or die by the poison of the machine with the chance I may live on as an image in a machine, that I may even consider doing anything but the first option. There is something unique about this world and the people and experiences in it that keeps people in this world. Any attempt that prolongs the chances of staying in it should be saluted.
What then of the value of knowing when is it a person’s time to go? We could say that it was just the narrator’s time. He did know that there was a chance that he would fall apart literally if he uploaded to the machine and did it anyways, but it was the radiation that killed him. And even more complicated it was Morel that made the invention, No we must hold the narrator responsible for his actions, with the foreknowledge of the dangers of the machine. This is not a defense mechanism but a consequent moral question and position. If the narrator wants to claim humanity on the basis that he gave his life to be with the image of the women he loves, because it was the best option of the few that he had remaining then we should be inclined to applaud the humanity of the child molester who kills himself in prison to avoid the same fate. The narrator lost his humanity the moment he stepped foot on the secluded island. The moment he thought a life of freedom in isolation is worth more than the interaction in society with possibility of persecution in society. Fear is a human emotion and he acted upon that in going to the island but so is courage which contrary to the vice of fear is a virtue. We would not applaud the molester for the same reason we will not applaud the narrator. Because if ever there was a crime against humanity it would to escape its scrutiny, to avoid its’ interactions in hiding, and to end ones life in a delusion of lust, forfeiting ones humanity in a calculated lunatics moment of human weakness.
We do however feel sympathy for him. Not so much for his actions but for his position. But we require more of humanity than what the narrator demonstrated was possible. We require dedication even in the darkest hours.