Without Remorse (John Clark, #1; Jack Ryan Universe, #1)

by Tom Clancy

Loneliness didn’t tell you what you had lost, only that something was missing.

I found this to be a fascinating idea: that while our emotions are with us all the time, the memory of the specific thing that caused those powerful and pervasive feelings comes and goes. Similarly, it seems that sometimes when we are fighting, we lose sight of the thing we are actually fighting for, and this is one of the aspects of Kelly’s character I found intriguing. On the one hand, he seems to be a man who is struggling with loss, but on the other hand what he is truly struggling with is the anger caused by that loss. As I reread the novel recently, I was struck that at various turns in the book, I couldn’t put my finger on the specific event that was motivating him – was it seeking justice in an unjust world that took his pregnant wife, was it avenging a young woman he barely knew, or hurting the people who put him in the hospital? Ultimately, his motivation is more primal – it is a generalized rage and darkness that he channels at his enemies. I find this to be a really interesting reflection on how humans process emotion, and how our focus is often not on the injustice, but on exorcising the pain caused by the injustice.