The Blinding Absence Of Light (6)

 is like the prison it describes,
not a place for the weak of constitution,

it being a narrative about life as prisoner
in a Moroccan prison where the indifference
of the guards is a mercy, the active attention
of the guards is a test of the prisoners will to live.

But every so often an uplifting quote comes up,
where why the prisoners were so stubborn
as to want to live is made clearer...

Chapter 21 page 108

'When I was in the hole, entire pages of Pere Goriot would come back to me me in my solitude, often at incongruous moments, for example when I had a toothache and could no longer open my mouth. The words and sentences would steam by, and I would hear myself saying them, as if I were reading to sick child or in classroom giving a dictation exercise. It was like a blessing from God. Through his grace, my memory recovered hundreds of pages read years earlier. I could recall them effortlessly: the scrolled past me all by themselves'.