so that he could love her back. She keeps on believing in that bad faith. When the reality punches her hard, she still believes in her bad faith that probably things
would work out if she gives him something. But she is wrong. Feeling all alone and forlorn, she has no more hope and decides to kill herself. She decides to run
and escape from her problems, since she has no more hope and feels there is nothing else for her to do with no one she can turn to for help.
3. Victor Delamonte
Victor Delamonte is another character who is being watched by Dor. He is a rich man. It is portrayed in the narration that “Victor Delamonte is the
fourteenth- richest man in the world, according to a national business magazine”
Albom, 2012: 52. The story starts when he is already in his mid-eighties. He is sick at that time and his life is almost over. Just like the previous analysis, this
character analysis starts from his past story to make the analysis clearer and deeper.
Young Victor is a boy who prays to God, asking for yesterday. He prays often since his father is dead. He wants to see his father again.
He asked his mother. She said they should pray. Perhaps God knew a way they could all be together. They knelt by a small fireplace, and she pulled a
shawl over their shoulders. She closed her eyes and mumbled something, so Victor did the same. What he said is, “Please make it yesterday, when
Papa came home.” Albom, 2012: 132 He is an innocent and hopeful young Victor. This is very different from his
condition later, which involves deeply longing for tomorrow. He has changed after his mother leaps from the bridge, which is the result of his inner conflict. He
stops praying and feels powerless as he is left behind and fall into desperation and since he cannot live alone, he lives with his uncle. He continues to live.
During his stay, he has another problem and he learns that he should avoid attachments. He has cried for some time for things that he had lost. After that, he
learn s that “holding on to things ‘would only break your heart’ Albom, 2012:
52. He then starts to work, earns money and buys things that he could use as investments. He then buys, sells, and begins investing in most of things that he
could use. He is naturally good at this since he could solve the problems that most investors could not see and fix them immediately. Thus, he becomes a rich man.
This trait makes him to be a careful and clever person. He is also a man with high confidence. Without this confidence, he would
not be able to make it to this point in his life. His confidence could be especially seen from his actions toward the problems he confronts. He always has a plan and
is “able to see a problem, find its weak spot and crack it open” Albom, 2012: 59. When he meets Dor, he even does not have any interest in seeing things that he
has left behind. He said, “My story is different” and “you know I have a plan, right?” when Dor wanted to show the result of his plan Albom, 2012: 198. This
emphasizes that actually he is a man with high confidence. Other than that, he is basically a good person. He has created a charitable
foundation for those who needed his help. He also married a widow who is left behind because her ex-husband is killed in the Korean War. He spends much
money for her and he loved her. Unfortunately, they never have children. That situation is one of the challenges that made them talk less Albom, 2012: 54.
But since he has learned not to have attachments to things, he grows as an egoist. As they talk less and less, he buries himself in his work again. He does not
try to break the wall between him and his wife. In fact, he even ignores his wife who has tried to be closer with him. The marriage feels more like a duty. He is
just playing his role as a husband. He focuses more on how he could gain more. But he is ill and he knew that death is coming upon him. He rejects this fact. Yet,
the reason is solely because of his egoistic reasoning: Like other men of enormous power, Victor could not imagine the world
without him. He felt almost obligated to stay alive. Cancer is a stumble. But the real hurdle is human mortality. Albom, 2012: 60
While he is planning on a new life in the future, his wife, Grace, is still trying to prolong his life in the present days. He does not notice how she tried to be nicer
and calmer even when he decided to keep on working while he is supposed to have his dialysis. Grace knows that he hates to lose, and it makes her sad because
he has to have his last fight with death, which cannot be avoided. He would lose against death, she thinks. She has no idea at all about Victor’s plan about the
cryonics and building a new life in the future. He does not tell her. He also decided to stop the dialysis without asking about her opinion and without thinking
about how she would feel. These acts emphasize the egoistic trait that he has. Since he knows that he has limited time and he always lived for tomorrow,
he is described as an impatient person. He does not want to lose even a minute of his work. As described before, he even keeps on working while he has to do his
dialysis. There is also a fragment which showed his impatience: “I’m looking for the oldest pocket watch you have.”
The man closed his eyes. He appeared to be thinking. Victor never a patient man, glanced at the owner, who shrugged.
“He is very knowledgeable,” the proprietor whispered. “Well, let’s not take a lifetime,” Victor said. He chuckled to himself. “Or
another lifetime.” Albom, 2012: 110 At that time, he could not even wait for just a few seconds to let Dor think about
the watch that he wanted. This impatience probably is also because he has to hurry to jump to the future in order to live longer.
His inner conflict starts to appear when he asks Grace to go to attend the Gala by herself, so that he could finish the cryonics process.
“I’ll see you in a few hours.” “All right.”
“I’ll be as quick as I can.” “I’ll be...”
His voice trailed off. “What, sweetheart?”
“Here. I’ll be here.” “Good.”
She kissed him on the forehead and patted his chest. Then she quickly rose, hiding her tears, and walked away. Her heels clicked on the hallway
tile until the sound faded. Victor felt torn and guilty.
His final sentence to Grace had been a lie. He would not be here when she returned. Albom, 2012: 156
At this moment, he is fighting inside. He knows that he should have told her. He knows that she would be looking for him when she comes back. He is about to
call her back and tell her everything. However, he decides to stick with the plan and goes to the cryonics facility.
When he meets Dor and is brought to see the result of his choice through which he would freeze himself at the cryonics facility, he has never imagined that
his wife would watch him there. He saw that his wife is disappointed. He starts to be ashamed of his choice.
In his race to cheat death, he’d trusted scientists more than his wife. He had denied her their final intimacy. He had not even left a body to bury.
How would she grieve him now? He doubted she would ever come to this place again. Albom, 2012: 200
At this point, it is clear that actually he loves Grace so much. However, his love is covered by his ambition to live longer. He starts to reflect and doubts whether he
makes the right choice or not as he asks Dor to show him the result of his plan. At first, he is happy to know that they have gone to the far future.
However, when he sees that he is being an exhibition instead of being revived, he starts to feel anger inside.
Victor spun to Dor. “I have documents Files” “Gone now,” Dor said.
“I hired people to protect me.” “Gone now, too.”
“What about my wealth?” “Taken.”
“There are laws” “There are new laws.”
Victor slumped. Is this really how his grand plan turned out? Betrayal? Victimization? A futuristic freak show?
“What are they all doing?” “Watching your memories.”
“Why?” “To remember how to feel.” Albom, 2012: 204
He then realizes how his memories have shown emotion everywhere. He never thought of himself that way. “Isn’t he always the hurried, insatiable one?”
Albom, 2012: 205. The statement shows that he has inner conflict in his mind. He then realizes how much emotion that he has. He then sees the scene when he
last met Grace, realizing that he is so cruel for leaving her with the hope that he would come back. He suddenly regrets all of the things he has done and he
strongly wanted to go back to meet her. In the end, he finally understands that he made the wrong decision to fight against time and death.
He does come back into the present time. Just before he is frozen, he speaks the w
ord, ‘Grace’. His assistant, Roger, understands this code and immediately stops the whole process. He then calls an ambulance to save his
master. In the end, Victor uses his last moment to build more happiness with Grace. He also becomes the benefactor of Sarah to study at the medical school, so
that she could identify more about his illness and find the cure. By all of the analysis above, we can see that Victor actually has an inner
conflict. When the narrator explains that Victor avoids attachments after he lost many things, he does not recognize that he actually has attachments with time
while his death is inevitably coming. He is longing for more time. He tries so hard to make his time longer so that he could avoid death. To achieve that goal, he
plans to use the cryonics technology to freeze himself in order to be restored in the future. He has a plan that he thinks is unstoppable. However, the plan becomes a
boomerang back on him. Instead of being revived, he sees himself becoming a display for people in the future because he has emotions that the people in the
future no longer feel. When he knows that actually he will never be able to win against death since Dor shows him the results of his plan, he decides to live on
and enjoy every moment that he has left with his wife.
B. The Inner Conflicts and the Existentialism Ideas
