K-PAX II: On a Beam of Light

May 16, 2007

Reading:

Read this just before I started this list.

Specs:

Brewer, Gene, K-PAX II: On a Beam of Light, published by Martin Press, 1995. Johnson County Central Resource Library book.

Overview:

This is a sequel to K_PAX, which I have not read (checked out), but I have seen the movie. It seems like more of the same. At the end of K-PAX Robert Porter was catatonic, and Prot had disappeared, presumable going back to K-PAX (or was he?)

In this book Prot returns after five years, so Robert Porter is once more non-catatonic. Prot helps many of the patients at Manhattan Psychiatric Institute, even as Gene Brewer (a Psychiatrist) tries to cure Robert. Robert, once Gene gets through his catatonic state, is suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder, with Prot being one personality (or is he?)

In addition to having his wife and daughter killed, as was discovered at the end of K_PAX he was also sexually abused by his uncle immediately after his father's death at age six.

In the end, Robert is presumably cured, even Prot appears to have been integrated, however Gene has some reservations. He leaves MPI with Giselle (who appeared in the book K-PAX but not in the movie). who he lives with.

Quote:

The Wisdom (or Craziness) of prot

(from his television appearance of Sept 20, 1995)

Don't blame the politicians for your problems. They are merely a reflection of yourselves.

Many humans feel sorry for the dolphins who are trapped in tuna nets. Who weeps for the tuna?

Your recorded "history" and your "literature" and "art" are merely those of your own species; they ignore all the other beings who share your planet. For a long time we thought that Homo sapiens was the only species living on EARTH.

Religion are difficult for a K-PAXian to understand. Either all of them are right or none of them is.

Human society will always have a drug problem unless life without drugs becomes a more attractive prospect for those concerned.

Hunting is no sport, it is cold-blooded murder. If you can out wrestle a bear or chase down a rabbit, then you can consider yourself a true sportsman.

Killing someone because he killed someone else is an oxymoron.

The root of all evil isn't the lust for money, but money itself. Try to think of a problem that doesn't involve money in some way.

Schools are not for teaching anything. They exist solely to pass on society's beliefs and values to its children.

The purpose of governments is to make your WORLD safe for commerce.

Humans love to fool themselves with euphemisms in order to pretend they aren't eating other animals - "beef" for cow, "pork" for pig, etc. This never fails to elicit gales of laughter from our beings.

All wars are holy wars.

Some humans are concerned with the destruction of their environment and the concomitant extinction of other species. If these well-meaning people were more concerned with the individual beings involve, there would be no need to worry about loss of species.

There will come a time when the human beings on EARTH will be devastated by diseases that will make aids look like a runny nose.

This above all: To thine own world be true.


Contact the Author