About Preying
Post 1170:
I have a lot of friends that hunt. Big game, small game. All the games, I guess. I’ve never once been hunting in my whole life. There’s been offers. Hundreds. It’s not the guns that bother me. Guns are fun when used for sport, for sure. It’s not the nature that bothers me. I love being out in the woods, away from everything. The quiet—I’m all about the quiet. My life’s been loud enough already.
It’s the killing, surely. But more than that, the stalking. There’s a creepy sort of vibe that I get when I think about tracking something down, ending its life. This is not a moral thing. I’m not taking any stands. Just trying to figure out where my lack of taste comes from.
I think it’s from a few stories I read growing up. I can’t remember the title but there was some young adult fiction I read where some boys were put on an island to be hunted by a guy for sport. This is a whole genre, of course, and it always freaks me out. Perhaps I identify too much with the hunted, having read and seen so many of these types of books and movies.
Spoliers Ahead
The latest Jack Reacher novel I read is called Past Tense. One of the two main plots is about hunting humans for sport. You’re meant to suspect this will occur, but Lee Child doesn’t come right out and say it. Even though it’s not the weirdest or darkest version of this kind of story, it’s still freaky. It makes me feel uncomfortable because there’s no way people actually hunt people for sport. That would be insane. But it makes me feel more uncomfortable presuming that in the history of history no one has hunted people for sport. That’s a bold claim. And these stories, uhhh. It’s always some really rich guys that do the hunting, like they’ve exhausted every conceivable method for obtaining kicks. If you’re needing to stalk people like prey, you’ve gone too far.
I don’t know. Try The Most Dangerous Game and go from there. Or better yet, go hunting and stop reading this messed up stuff. You’ll sleep better. Plus fresh air. Maybe miss your target intentionally and go to the supermarket like I do. Because hypocrisy courses through these veins. Weird post. I know. Cheers and see you after.
