From the character’s point of view this breaking, in my opinion, represents a point in life where the past falls away and the character must, in order to go on living, fling himself upon the face of the formless night and create a world, a new world, in which to live. To me—rightly or wrongly—the hallmark of good writing resides precisely in this sense of creating the new, the freedom and the need and the desire to create this new.
