Resumo de Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

Tom Robbins? Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates penetrates the depths of the human mind in search of purpose and enlightenment, only to find its essence in the most surface form: perception. Perception of language, of sexuality, of religion (and, though sickeningly Freudian as it may appear, sexuality in religion), of friendships, of guilt, and of measly living and all the substance that infiltrates the gut of those breathing without living. According to Robbins, perception of life?s direst challenges requires lightheartedness, making Fierce Invalids a timeless oxymoron divulging the secrets of the purposelessness of life.
CIA agent Switters revels in, rather than fighting against a multitude of obsessions, particularly in his attempt to divulge the secrets of Finnegan?s Wake, by James Joyce. In each of his novels, Joyce creates a protagonist in his own image, particularly in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The reader encounters a caged hero drowning in his own shallow puddle of self-pity (and drool over drink and dames), your typical Irish Catholic struggling to break free from the unnatural, and unnerving, restraints placed upon him by hair-shirt wearing Jesuits suffering from an overdrive in the libido. The Joyce hero wants sex and enlightenment, something all of the ceaseless Bible-beating can't squelch. In a true celebration of the Joyce hero, Robbins paints Switters, our fierce invalid, as someone who values ritual but finds a life full of monotonous routine unbearable, hence his combined fascination with Suzy, Switters? sixteen-year-old stepsister, in all her glorified, innocent lustiness and the Catholic church; indeed, his own twisted version of sex and enlightenment. Switters pursues Suzy because she represents life in its purest form; she's real - she wants sex, she wants church, she wants ball games, and she doesn't feel guilty for wanting any of it, or for wanting all of it. She's a feeler, and he's a mere seeker, which is what creates his drive in wanting her to strive to find the Third Secret of Fatima (something which the Vatican fails to unleash on what is donned an uneducated, frantic community, making the Vatican the CIA of the spiritual community), while she simply revels in the glorious story of the poor children who were deemed worthy of the Madonna herself (not to be confused with today?s Magdalene-esque pop icon).

In creating Switters, Robbins capitalizes on the Joyce hero, taking him to a level that exceeds the soul searching of Hamlet. Because Robbins remains so longingly engrossed in exhibiting the human need to be perceived as godly, while searching for sex and enlightenment, he commits fully to making each secondary character an extension of Switters, a tossed salad of one man's character flaws. Suzy is his sexuality, Maestra is his conscience, Pot is his intellect, Case is his reality check, and, finally, Domino encompasses each of those qualities aforementioned, thus serving as Switters? false goal: enlightenment. Robbins intentionally fails to expand on most of these characters, leaving you to perceive Switters through both his perceptions and others' perceptions of him.

An example is in the argument between various men over the translation of South American End of Time's (Today is Tomorrow?) name. Nobody truly knows because language barriers transcend simple multilingualism. As children, one learns a language based entirely on his/her culture's perception of the world, and even upon learning additional languages, a mastery of knowledge of that culture is moot; we are simply exchanging words that we own for others in the tradition of Sapir and Whorf. When contemplating snow (because so many actually contemplate snow) one has visions of white, and white and white and white. We have sleet and snow. We have wet snow and dry snow. That's what we have and that's what we see and that's what we call it. Snow. The Eskimos have thirteen different words foro, they don't consider them derivatives of the same word, or of the same matter. Each word is different, and each word is a symbol for an entirely unique piece of matter. Switters? fascination lies not in the realm of white; instead, he is fascinated by the female anatomy, and thus utters the word vagina in seventy-one languages. Is Switters an expert? No, to Switters, a vagina is a vagina is a vagina, and he is fascinated with knowing the word in other languages, but he doesn't understand the cultural implications of the word in other languages. Through his journey toward understanding the secrets of the world, Switters becomes a man of the world, but not a worldly man. He enjoys people's perceptions of him, but he doesn't really know what he is. That's because he not only enjoys people's perceptions of his self; he is obsessed with perception, only he doesn't want to perceive. He doesn't want people to see him for what he is?a mere man. No better, no less. In other words, he'll take sex over enlightenment any day, thank you very much. No dinner, just dessert.Check please.

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