themes in lost horizon Essay -- essays research papers

What is Paradise? Throughout tarradiddle man has sought to create, find, or at least image a paradise on earth, a place where there is peace, harmony, and a surcease from the pain that plagues our lives. On the eve of World War II, James Hilton imagined such(prenominal) a place in his best-selling novel, Lost Horizon.The story itself begins when an voidance of Westerners is ordered in the midst of revolution in Baksul, India. A mainsheet containing four passengers is hi-jacked and flown far away into the Keun-Lun Mountains of Tibet. The plane crashes and the passengers are welcomed to the valley of the good-for-naught Moon, and the lamasery of Shangri-la. Here they see an isolated monastery shrouded in mystery, which combines Christianity and Buddhism with a focus on the progression of knowledge. The four passengers who land in Shangri-la are Barnard, a boisterous American, Miss Brinklow, a Christian missionary, Mallinson, a headstrong and fervent English youth, and Conway, th e main character and WWI veteran who is unattached and somewhat passionless. whole of the characters except Mallinson enjoy life in Shangri-la. Conway especially finds himself at shoes there and eventually the High Lama of the lamasery unveils all its mysteries of to him. Conway learns that the inhabitants, thanks to the humor and a special drug, live to an extreme old age. They devote the continuance of their lives to the pursuits of knowledge and do everything in moderation. They believe that their hidden society impart escape the...