Cardboard reality

There is a gruff voice, voices always seem gruff in these sorts of stories. And there is a woman, no a girl-young, innocent, naive. And that gruff voice will be her corrupter, will usher her into Maturity; and everyone will sigh how sad it is, but really they will know that this is the Way Things Must Be. They will recall their own corrupter and they will smile with faint reminisce.

Then, at the end of the novel or movie or opera, they will exit and be blinded by the reality of light. And perhaps they will discuss the plot or the characters or the motifs; or perhaps they will forget about it and go grab an ice cream, sun themselves on beach blankets and talk of everything and nothing at all.

But what of the characters themselves, the gruff voice, the innocent girl, they are trapped in that reality of the plot. They live it without ever knowing that they are simply a form of diversion for others, they do not know that their struggles and conflict are seen as purely fictional, inconsequential to the vast scheme of things. A grad student somewhere groans over the Symbolism and Meaning that the characters embody, silently cursing their very creation. The characters, not knowing the hardship they cause, struggle on with no hope of ever knowing their meaning themselves.

And who is to say we are not all these characters? That someone will not come to the end of the movie that is our reality, take out the dvd, toss it carelessly back in it's case? We will be nothing then, until we are once again forced to play out our lives for someone else's pleasure.

Being a character, at least you know you have Purpose, your are part of a Theme and a Commentary in some aspect. Otherwise, how do we know we are worth the struggle?