Why? To provide a metaphor for the random luck, and cruelty of what ever this is. Love, poverty, suffering, and reward happening while we struggle to get to the next place; the good place; the other place.
I'm talking ,of course, about Steinbeck's turtle in the beginning of The Grapes Of Wrath. A sobering lesson for anyone who has ever taken up the challenge of writing. It is a meticulous, deliberately slow-paced, high definition rendering of a child's favorite pre-historic creature being tried by the trappings of modern humanity. Comical, cynical, noble, wise, but above all, determined to get to a better place.
