"I was happy, so happy, because for the first time in years, and forevermore, I had not killed, and never would."
As reading this last sentence of the short story, I felt taken aback by it. As I read it, I read it that Saunders and Jeff saw death as a freeing, new life. I enjoyed reading his thoughts as he was drifting up into the atmosphere. It gave me a different perspective on death and what (if there even is one) the after-life is. Saunders wrote in such a way that death was a new journey and a clean slate to start on. I had never thought of death as something "freeing" or something that could make the dead person happy, but Jeff felt happy because in his "new" life, he had done nothing wrong, and was completely able to start over.
I felt the same way about this quote. I thought his perspective as a ghost was fascinating because usually when a character dies their time in a novel is over. Also, it was nice to read that the sacrifice of his life was not meaningless. I think it set him free.
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