During our discussion this past Monday, there was a general consensus around the table that “Let The Great World Spin” was a book very much concerned with death and how different people perceive death differently. While each of the main chapters (especially in the first book) deal with death (J.A Corrigan’s death, Jazzlyn’s death, Joshua being killed in ‘Nam, Tillie’s hinted-at suicide), the “walker sections” in between the books provide a stark contrast.

The walker’s dream of walking across the Twin Towers on a tightrope, and what some might perceive as his recklessness with his life, is not born of a desire to die, but of his desire to express the thrill of living.  The insane amount of effort the walker puts into the completion of his goal and his eventual accomplishment of it express the purest form of living there is. While he was practicing, and when he eventually performed the feat, the walker was free; free of all the shackles of an everyday life, free of all worries, and, perhaps most importantly, free of any fear of dying. In those 45 minutes on the wire, in the skies of New York City, he was truly alive.

It was this stark contrast of life/death that really fascinated me about the book and why the walker sections were particularly exciting for me to read. And with that, I leave you all with a quote that I feel applies to the walker.