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The Struldbrugs and Benjamin Button

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Being immortal is the great wish of human beings. Who has not dreamt of being immortal?
My first idea about the possibility of being eternal was similar to Gulliver’s: I thought it would be fantastic because we would have a lot of experience and wisdom, so we would be able to learn from our mistakes. However, the Struldbrugs’ lives are not as idyllic as I had believed. For instance, when they turned thirty they become melancholic and feel depressed and some decades later they have no memory, so it’s similar to having Alzheimer. Not only are not their lives fantastic, but they are terrible. I think this is, in some sense, a living death and it is not worth it.
As a result, I have thought a bit more about immortality. If we were immortal, we wouldn’t enjoy our lives as much as we actually do because we would know that we would have all the time of the world to do whatever we wanted. In my opinion, we appreciate (or we should do) things much more when we know they have an end. If we never died, we wouldn’t have any hopes and we wouldn’t live to the full.
On the other hand, if we lived forever, we would have a logistic problem: there wouldn’t be enough space for so many people!
Regarding Benjamin Button, he is the only person who follows a different way, the opposite one to everybody, because he is born old and he dies when he is a baby. Therefore he is considered an outrageous person and he is even rebuffed by his family.
As far as the Struldbrugs are concerned, they are not many, they are the exception. They remind me of the “untouchable” from India.
Both Benjamin Button and the Struldbrugs are rejected by the rest of the people due to the fact that they are different. The problem is that people don’t tolerate the difference.
Even though both books were written many years ago they are incredibly present. The authors criticize that society establishes rules and punishes those who can’t (or who don’t want to) follow them. This intolerance is the heart of some problems, such as racism. Sometimes I thought that human beings have learnt not much in the course of history.
Estefanía Díaz
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