Pipeline to Heaven

In Jewish History, for homework we were told to read one short story by Etgar Keret. I read a short story called Pipes. Etgar Keret is a very dark, but wonderful writer. I will attach pictures of this story as well. That way anyone who wants to read it has a chance. 

It was about a guy who doesn’t exactly fit in. He is talking about how he didn’t fit in and got moved elsewhere and didn’t enjoy it when he says, “I didn’t really enjoy anything in particular”. He starts working at a pipe factory and after work he makes odd shaped pipes that he rolls marbles through. One day he makes a special pipe that when he sends the marbles through, they disappear. He gets the idea that if he makes a big enough one he can crawl in, and disappear as well. He says, “When the idea came to me, I was so happy that I started laughing out loud. I think it was the first time in my entire life that I laughed”. So he gets to work on a pipe big enough for himself. Once the pipe is done he talks about how people invent things because they need it. If someone doesn’t need something, no matter how capable they are, they probably won’t be the one to invent it. He goes on to say, “I don’t think there was another human being in the whole world who wanted to disappear more than I did, and that’s why it was me that invented the pipe”. 

In the end you find out he had committed suicide. He talks about how he once though Heaven was a place for good people who lived good lives. But now he believes that Heaven is a place for people who were unable to be happy on Earth. He goes on to talk about how everyone found their own way there. The last paragraph is as follows.

“There are pilots who got here by performing a loop at one precise point in the Bermuda Triangle. There are housewives who went through the back of their kitchen cabinets to get here, and mathematicians who found topological distortions in space and had to squeeze through them to get here. So if you’re really unhappy down there, and if all kinds of people are telling you that you’re suffering from severe perceptual disorders, look for your own way of getting here, and when you find it, could you please bring some cards, ‘cause we’re getting pretty tired of the marbles.”

I thought that this story had a very cute, yet sad ending. But in the end he was happy. He talks about finding a place he fits in, even if he wasn’t able to live to find that place, its still cute. At the same time this shows a harsh truth. It is very hard to realize that so many people are unhappy with their lives.