Black Hole: So much mystery
Black Hole is a really thick graphic novel. Every time I carried it in my bag, I thought a whole would bust through. A book as heavy as Black Hole, I was expecting a lot of detail and concepts to be explained fully,but, I was left with many unanswered questions. A lot of the stuff that happened in the book, I had to either make an educated guess as to why something occurred or just leave it open ended and deal with it. I felt that this novel was more mysterious than creepy but perhaps its because I read it trying to understand the characters motives than looking at the overall scariness of the book.
One of the first mysteries that I really wanted to understand but there was no answer was, how did this disease get started? Who was patient zero and why would some people willing get themselves infected if they saw people like that thrown from society? Rob and his other band of high school misfits lived in the woods because they were infected with this strange disease but it doesn’t tell the readers how they were infected. We know that it is something like an STD because it spreads during sex or transmission of body fluids, but did some of these kids know what would happen to them if they agreed? It was common knowledge that sex would lead to infection by the time Chris was, but was it before? I would think no one would willingly have sex with someone with that disease unless they were fully committed to that person. Having sex with a person who is infected changes your life forever and I do not understand why some people would make that choice, unless they felt their lives were worthless already. This whole patient zero idea is something that really bugged me and I wish they had answered.
Another mystery that I am unsure of is the death of Rob. I made an educated guess that the death of Rob was Dave’s fault, but the way it happened made these infected teens appear like savage beasts. At the end of the story if the readers haven’t realized already, Dave had a huge crush on Chris and didn’t want anyone to get in the way of it. He then starts shooting everyone in sight and says that if he can’t have her, no one will. This to me made me think that Dave told Roy to kill Rob. Roy beats Rob to death but says that he made me do it or something to that affect. It is beacuse of Dave’s love for Chris that he has Rob murdered, but I still don’t fully understand Dave’s meltdown and his reasons for killing all of the other infected kids.
Chris’s knowing of something about Rob is also a mystery. At the party she claims to know something about Rob which he assumes it to be his infection, but it isn’t. They sleep together and then Chris discovers his extra mouth and is a little shocked. He says he thought she knew but apparently she didn’t. I really wish the book had explained what it was she thought she knew about him if it wasn’t that he was infected.
There were other instances of mystery like Keith and his attraction to that girl with a tail, his shock when he found little tails on his chest, etc… I guess the book serves its title well. While reading it I felt I was in an extremely weird and mysterious world and that is what a black hole is. It is sort of a weird and mysterious place that just sucks you in and it is easy to get lost.
I think you have the key to understanding this book, in this remark of yours: “I do not understand why some people would make that choice, unless they felt their lives were worthless already.”
Well, they did.
Black Hole is about people making a lot of bad choices. It’s a horror film where everyone takes a turn being the monster and the victim until they are both, one way or the other. And in that flattening of distinctions is a metaphor, for human experience.
People do a lot of bad things that leave a mark, or could—drinking, smoking, driving too much, driving drunk. It’s easy to say, “Why would they do that?” But harder to really look at why they did that. At the loneliness that’s at the center of the book—the title referring to it–the loneliness that seems bottomless, and sucks everyone into it. When someone willingly goes with someone who’s going to do them harm, it’s that feeling–like they’re alone and this is their chance to not be alone–that makes them do stuff like this. They do it thinking it’s like a commitment. And yes, it’s sad, and in one way it looks really dumb, but all over the world, people are doing things that put them at risk.