Cooper takes on the continually accumulating and confusing corridors of life by using the image of a labyrinth. By giving the first-person experience, he manages to explain the impossibility of actively navigating life’s labyrinth once one becomes aware of its existence. Unfortunately, however, human beings have to put up with the existence of the labyrinth. According to Cooper, as one continues to grow, newer and confusing corridors of life emerge while the old ones start appearing familiar: “soon, the mazes in coloring comic books…became easy” (Cooper, 109). In simple terms, Cooper tries to give meaning to human life by showing that that one can best understand the nature of life through experience.
Cooper perfectly describes life by pronunciation of a single lone word. “Labyrinthine.” His experience with mazes, caused by trivial infatuation, starts at the age of seven making such a powerful observation at a tender age gives an indication that mazes meant a lot to him. Based on his description, it is clear that mazes fascinated him that he could spend a significant amount of time trying to solve them and even creating them. Such an observation only proves that a single, powerful infatuation can come in handy in teaching one a great deal.
Although Copper had an infatuation with something so unique, the idea behind it was that he wanted to feel a stronger emotional connection with his parents. They were his goal, and the maze was an opportune moment to engage them. On their side, however, Cooper was “a big surprise” (Cooper, 111). They were older than most parents with children of Cooper’s age hence had grown more tired and forgetful as compared to younger parents. When he requested his mother to solve one of the mazes, for example, she replied with “you’ve got to be kidding me...I`m lost enough as it is” (111). With more experience on earth, her life seemed to be in a mess of confusion. She was not willing to handle anything of a similar sort. Although Cooper had hoped that his parents would come in handy to help him solve the mazes, the experience helped him realize that daze of the old life that they lived in; “When you`ve lived as long as we have,” they`d say, as though they had lived forever (Cooper, 111). To be able to help them, he needed to understand them. As this happened, however, he became more infatuated with mazes.
When Copper started aging, however, all the discrepancies and misunderstandings started becoming clear. His days were becoming “loopy and confusing” hence he could easily understand the reason his parents had refused to solve the mazes (Cooper, 11). Unlike in early days where could follow a wrong path through the labyrinth and consider it a learning opportunity in finding the correct path, his memory started fading. He could neither have fresh memories nor recollect his past memories; “remembered events merge together or fade away.” At that age in life, “places and dates grew dubious, a jumble of guesswork and speculations” (111). Time has made him realize that his parents were not just ignoring him; age was just not on their side.
Finally, Cooper acknowledges that age comes with many experiences which are interconnected just like the mazes. As one ages, new experiences are gained while the old ones start fading away. Trying to remember all these experiences is more than the challenging levels of a maze. In his trip to Texas (which he can barely remember the exact year), he recalled a childhood face but realized that he could have never recalled the friend if a certain synapse hadn’t fired. The experience gave him an understanding that his memory had already changed. It was flooding with adventures, some of which he is unsure whether they belong to him or somebody else “whose adventures, besides my own, are wedged in my memory?”… There are the things I have dreamt of and mistaken as fact” (111). Here he finally acknowledges that age comes with confusion, a confusion that makes “uncertainty virtually indistinguishable from the truth” (112).
By the end of the text, Cooper can easily relate the parent`s refusal to solve the maze and the labyrinth that his life has got into. He his “middle-aged …lost in the folds of the body” and can hardly recall the days when his parents were present (Cooper, 111). Unlike in the early days when he felt that his parents behaved as if they had lived forever, he now considers their refusal as “inevitable.” Having understood the changes that come with age, he concludes by questioning how things have been like since his parents left. He then gives a thought of his findings of life: “Labyrinthine….The Very sounds of the word sums it up-as slippery as thought, as perplexing as the truth, as long as convoluted life” (Cooper, 112). His parents had helped him not to develop the infatuation to obsession and hence provided him with an opportunity to learn. Just like a labyrinth, life had made him see a reality that is hard to understand.
