Down Street- Will you encounter the Beast?
Pages 131-132
“Richard was not dead. He was sitting in the dark, on a ledge, on the side of a storm drain, wondering what to do, wondering how much further out of his league he could possibly get. His life so far, he decided, had prepared him perfectly for a job in Securities, for shopping at the supermarket, for watching soccer on the television on the weekends, for turning up the thermostat if he got cold. It had magnificently failed to prepare him for life as an un-person on the roofs and in the sewers of London, for a life in the cold and the wet and the dark. A light glimmered. Footsteps came toward him. If, he decided, it was a bunch of murderers, cannibals, or monsters, he would not even put up a fight. Let them end it all for him; he’d had enough. He stared down into the dark, to the place where his feet should be. The footsteps came closer.”
Starting out with "Richard was not dead" indicates he is lying on the brink of defeat. But defeat of what? Further reading reveals the implication of him being almost dead: his unpreparedness for the unexpected challenges that have arisen in his life. Richard's seemingly dull and comfortable life prior to his adventure with Door taught him to be passive. This passage suggests that more and more individuals in society are sitting around wallowing in self-pity and defeat. People leave their families emotionally immature because they had an overall easy, comfortable upbringing that did not challenge them. We see the same trends with unprepared students in education: high school graduates are not adequately equipped to tackle the immensely more difficult studying expectations they face in college. Despair then kicks in, which sets up the person for disillusionment where their perspective of reality is skewed. Luckily for Richard, the approaching footsteps do not belong to cannibals or monsters, and he chooses the option to pick himself up. Throughout the novel, Richard wishes he had his own life back because he is not used to the constant shifting of events that happens in life, yet by the end of the book we see the results of an adult man's Bildungsroman, a change and growth in Richard that compels him to choose a life of uncertainty and adventure over his previous life of predictability and relative ease. Like Richard at the beginning of the novel, people within society are more child-like than adult, but once they successfully withstand the unexpected turbulence life throws at them they are better people because of it.
