Some prisons are made of physical constraints: walls, iron bars, and barbed fences. The prisoner sees and imagines the lights and shadows beyond, but cannot move the physical body past the barrier.
Other prisons are made of social constraints: dictates by others about what one must or must not do. The socially constrained person is obliged to be not just an anarchic spirit of free will, but a life partner, a child, a parent, a friend, a business partner, an employee, a boss, a citizen.
Still other prisons are made of internal constraints. Unlike prison walls, these tend to be weaknesses, not strengths. And unlike a prisoner, the internally constrained person often cannot see or imagine the lights and shadows beyond.
Who among us has not been imprisoned?
As the protagonist of Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment experiences imprisonment in all three ways, we are left to reflect on its horrors. Yet we also start to wonder, is imprisonment always bad? Can any good come of it, after all?
To jail-break a personal imprisonment does not always equate to improvement of life. It’s frequently met with angst and exposes one to personal assaults from those who takes pleasure in launching the attacks. It momentarily increases options, not all of them nice
Sometimes prisoner is better off, with less options
True. Any change will come with both ups and downs. Sometimes the ups are worth the downs, and sometimes not.