Why Red Rising Gives Me Pleasure There is something about pain that accentuates pleasure. Perhaps it is that pain allows for a sense of realism, the realism that draws one into a fantasy simply because it no longer seems to be fantasy. Red Rising is a perfect example of how pain can be pleasurable. In Red Rising, a young man named Darrow has lost his wife due to the inhumane ruling powers that he now seeks to destroy from the inside. Darrow often reflects back on his wife, in this particular scene while holding his wedding band. Reading this, the emotional pain he feels become almost tangible, as if the metaphorical hole is his heart is a physical hole in the heart of the reader. In the same way he weeps for his wife, the reader is saddened
