“It is the black curtain of destiny which drops down before our brightest dreams. How often the phantoms of joy regale us, dance before us,-gold-winged, angel-faced, heart-warming, and make an Elysium in which the dreaming soul bathes, and feels translated to another existence; and then-sudden as night, or a cloud-a word, a step, a thought, a memory will chase away, like a scared deer vanishing over a grey horizon of moorland.”
Illusions are pleasurable for they create a utopia- like outlook. Enthralling illusions makes individuals to relish their existence. However, the delusions are not enduring for they vanish ultimately. Destiny hinders the illusions from transmuting into reality. The ‘black curtain’ signifies the split-up between fantasy and practicality.
“A man without some sort of religion is at best a poor reprobate, the foot-ball of destiny, with no tie linking him to infinity, and the wondrous eternity that is begun with him; but a woman without it is even worse- a flame without heat, a rainbow without color, a flower without perfume!”
Religion is contributory in a man’s existence because it bids expectations of perpetuity. Absence of religion in a man’s life renders him a despondent soul. Similarly, religion intensifies the worth of a woman’s being. A religious woman is more appealing than one deprived of religion. Religion is indispensable and unsubstitutable for all genders.
“I take up a coal with the tongs, and setting the end of my cigar against it, puff- and puff again; but there is no smoke. There is very little hope of lighting from a dead coal; no more hope, thought I , than kindling one’s heart into a flame by contact with a dead heart.”
The ‘ dead coal’ is emblematic of non-existent Eros. An individual whose heart is erotically dead cannot love. The bachelor’s attempts to reignite the coal using a dead one are in vain owing to the nonexistence of embers that would have expedited the ignition process.
