Theme Of Love And Hate In Dean Koontz's Life Expectancy

Love will triumph over hate. Both love and hatred are the strongest emotions that people can feel. In the novel Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz both of these emotions are expressed. It all begins the night that Jimmy Tock is born. Jimmy’s grandfather predicts five terrible days that Jimmy will have to endure, before passing away moments before Jimmy himself is born. On these dates Jimmy has, as his grandfather predicted, terrible events occur that shape Jimmy’s life for better but mostly worse. Throughout these days, Jimmy goes through hardships that reveal the truth about his life. The first definitive theme of the book is love will defeat hate. Hatred is displayed heavily throughout the story, starting at the beginning when the main antagonist Konrad Beezo’s wife dies during childbirth and Beezo kills the doctor on staff at the time. Jimmy’s father tries to help the doctor but there is nothing he can do. The doctor explains‘“She died during delivery, but it wasn’t my fault”’ (18). Beezo’s son expresses a similar deep hatred for something that even he doesn’t

Another possible theme, which is more like a social criticism, could be people can be manipulated. Beezo’s son is manipulated by Beezo to hate. He doesn’t know what to hate, he just does. This also shows that people can be trained to hate even if they may not know what they are hating. Beezo’s son in a conversation with Jimmy explains what his father told him about hospitals. “‘What kind of rotten hospital was that?”’(334). I believe that the author didn’t use the second theme because it wasn’t strong enough. The theme presented in Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz is very common. Love will defeat hatred is used as a common theme in nearly every story. I think Koontz used a common theme and did something very different with it. He put in twists that make the theme unclear until the very end. I think this story is very worth while with a timeless