Words: 1029
Mellow’ A novel by Peter Carry There is a lot of ways you can deal with your life. Life puts you through a lot of challenges that some people are not made for. The big questions of life are “what is life about” and “what am I living for? ” Some people cannot face these questions if they don’t know how to solve them. But if you Just leave them be they’ll turn into something worse. Such meeting with a challenge can be very frustrating and for some it can cause the actions of suicide.
This is the problem for Jon, the main character in the novel Mellow’. In the novel Jon is described as overweight but in DOD physical condition forty-year-old man, who works at a magazine in London. Jon has many problems with his work. Nobody wanted to take the assignment by going to Egypt, and write about scuba diving, “The editor had forced him to come out here on this freebie learn-to-scuba-dive trip”l . When Jon drags himself down to the scuba diving training he soon realizes that he hasn’t got what it takes to become a scuba diver.
Jon also has a problem with his girlfriend back home. Whom he hasn’t been talking with lately “They hadn’t paid for his girlfriend to come, either. Mind you, the ay things were going that was probably a plus. ” He hasn’t got many friends either so he has been quite lonely lately. Jon has an inner voice talking to him throughout the whole novel, which he can’t quite handle. Normally when you come to a situation like this most people try to escape and not dealing with it.
Jon is terrified of water and he’s very angry with himself because of it. He calls himself yellow, which refers to story’s title. He thinks of himself as a coward because he’s afraid of diving and he envies the other guy on the diving school, Brain’s courage in the water. A lot of people would think that being close to death is what makes it exciting and a great experience by pushing themselves to their limits, Jon, however, does not feel the thrill of being this close to death. He is overcome with insecurity.
He drinks a lot and is kind of alcoholic, but it does not quite take the problems or the pain away, “He poured more gin, but no matter how much he swallowed it was never enough. “3 On the second diver lesson they try some practices methods. Jon is very nervous and is scared of the water. And with the fear of water comes the thought of drowning. In the eater Jon is really close to drowning because of his panic by being under water. And the thought of suicide fascinates Jon so much that he’s thinking a lot about it.
Suicide is one of the easiest ways to get away from all of your pain and troubles. On the third lesson, because Jon is already under the water and they are doing different types of practicing where Jon has to take his mouthpiece out and get Brain’s so he can get air in his lungs, he is thinking on what it would feel like not getting Brain’s mouthpiece and Just inhales the waters “He’s heard that drowning was a quick death: our lungs filled and that was more or less it, bit of thrashing about, not a bad way to go. ” For the first time Jon faces some his fears.
Ironically he does it by dying. Jon gives up on his life. He had never really livened it and now he decides to put an end to it. He doesn’t think the future contains anything more for him now, because he is “heroic” thing. He wants to convince himself that he’s not that much a coward but when he fails, he becomes very angry with himself. 5 “Well, this would show them he wasn’t yellow. ” Living and dying is one of the main themes in this novel. Because Jon is living on the edge on a decision on whether he should live or die.
By committing suicide it’s like he’s finally taking control over his own life. This is Son’s way of dealing with his problems and the way he thinks getting on looks like. This way his diving instructor, Bertie, the other diving student, Brian, his boss who forced him to go and his girlfriend whom didn’t want to talk, they all see that they should have listened to him. For them his death will seem tragic, and look like an accident. Son’s boss will regret forcing him to go on this trip in the first place.
They will all be affected by his death in one way or another and this will make him and this will make him visible compared to the invisible man he has lived his entire life as. In this case the title Mellow’ can mean coward. It fits with the description of Jon. He is running away from his problems, he refuses to look at what lies right in front of him, and takes the easiest way out of life instead of dealing with the issues. He could for instance find a new Job, if he doesn’t like the one he already has. But it can also mean his life as the color yellow.
That is the only color he has in his life. He needs some other colors in his life for it to be more interesting. The color yellow makes him mediocre and boring. This novel tells us nature can evoke the thoughts of dying. We are reminded that we do not have control over everything, especially death. In this case Jon is in an extreme situation when he is in the water diving. And despite the seriousness of his actions, the ironic this with this is that Jon actually sees this action as being a “not yellow’ thing to do. Even though it is the easiest way out.