Loving Life

Life for this old woman has been misery after misery, but she has no self pity, not even after telling her story which includes the sad experiences this woman had to live through: rape, slavery, and cannibalism. Living thought this tough and horrid life has, “a hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but always I loved life more. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts; is anything more stupid than choosing to carry a burden that really one wants to cast on the ground? to hold existence in horror, and yet to cling to it? to fondle the serpent which devours us till it has eaten out our heart? —In the countries through which I have been forced to wander, in the taverns where I have had to work, I have seen a vast number of people who hated their existence; but I never saw more than a dozen who deliberately put an end to their own misery”(57). She in Voltaire’s eyes is a person who loves life, she has had all this misery at hand, and has had the opportunity to kill herself-but has not. She knows how to value life, she has not killed herself not because of Gods and the Churches disapproval, even though she is the Popes daughter but because, like most people she had seen thought her life-they all loved life.