Frequent contact with fatalities, especially those resulting from human brutality, is an element that has a decisive effect on a character. Much of literature and philosophy cannot be properly appreciated if we disregard it. Those who have lived through the horror of a war, for example, see the words acquire a weight that is sometimes difficult to convey, because the seriousness of what is said can only be grasped by those who also grasp the motivating experience, which is partly attainable through imaginative effort, but never as intense as the real thing. There are authors subjected to a dose of bones, blood and misery whose character, if it is strange to us, is a sign that we are not capable of analyzing it.