The Ticking is the bomb

One of the continuous themes throughout Nick Flynn’s The Ticking Is The Bomb is torture and loss. Torture and loss serve as demons. Nick Flynn has live a life full of demons. From his mothers suicide, to his alcoholic father, and then to worldwide demons such as war, we see him struggle with accepting these as well as bracing the future.

A pivotal chapter that portrays this is the chapter Istanbul redux.He write “I’ve come to believe that the function of torture in our society is not about getting information, in spite of what we might want to believe. It is merely about power. It tells the world that there is now no limit to what we will do when we feel threatened”(228) I think that Flynn is expressing that torture is inevitable, there is nothing we can to prevent it. It is how we handle the torture that will shape the future. I think this passage is almost a foreshadowing to Flynn unborn child. He doesn’t want his child born into a world of torture, but realizes that is virtually impossible.

One of the most influential quotes i found in this book was in the very first sentence. Flynn writes ” everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. You will lose your way, you will wake up one morning and find yourself lost. This is a hard simple truth”(5). He is summing up life in one sentence. It is never what we expect.At some point something will happen that will seem like your life is upside down. But we need to remember torture happens, and eventually life goes on. Flynn struggles but eventually is graced with his child and it seems his life is back on track and no longer lost.