The Magus

 One man's search for answers.  This is what almost seven hundred pages of the Godgame comes to. Answers.

Isn't that what mankind does?  We constantly need solutions to continue in life, to become satisfied and reach peace with a topic before we can move on to the next.  The answer to one's happiness.  The answer to a relationship.  Even the answer to the future.  How many times this year has a conversation come down to the dreaded What are your plans after college? conversation piece?

Not only are we constantly searching for answers, but also providing answers.  More than this, we feel obligated to provide answers.  Society requires that you have a plan or solution to your future in order to achieve a state of contentment.  Everybody knows that.

So it is not a surprise that we find Nicholas frustrated and tortured throughout these six-hundred-some pages because he is given not one reliable answer.  He is given false truths, forcing him to continue to question everything he has been told and to think one step ahead.  Towards the end of the novel, he confronts the mother of the twins, Lily, about the "game" they have played of him.

"Am I ever going to be told what you really think you're doing?"

"You have been told."

"Lie upon lie."

"Perhaps that's our way of telling the truth."

By feeding him constant stories, the makers of this game show Nicholas a truth (although through cruel and harsh methods) that he might not have discovered otherwise: always questioning allows one to truly think, and therefore truly live.  To be left without a solution, to be left with the unknown, is an uncomfortable and often scary situation.  Our minds are muddled, the human nature of inquiry pushing to overcome the obstacle by resolving the problem.  However, is it a problem?  Is it a negative thing to be satisfied with pondering instead of an answer?  When we are thinking is when we are expressing our individualism and true self, challenging our surroundings and expectations of others.

"'An answer is always a form of death.'" Lily quoted Conchis.

"I think questions are a form of life."

That they are.  Maybe not all answers are a death- when one can find solace in a solution it is a beautiful occurrence.  What I will remember personally, though, is witnessing an individual step in the direction of the unknown and move forward into life without that solace.  To forever question and find acceptance in life's mysteries- that, to me, is even more beautiful.