Reading Day — Thursday, August 20, 2026
On D. H. Lawrence’s “The Thorn in the Flesh”
Lawrence must have hated the military. Well, more exactly, the rigid discipline used to tame the naturally untamed. It is against nature, against free will: the controlled mindset that conditions you to believe that if you fail, you are a loser to be put in the pillory. Not a man. Not man enough.
Is that really so? Lawrence asks. No. A man is a man when he witnesses his desire being reciprocated in the body of his lover. Virility is true manhood because it requires no weapon of killing.
The young German soldier in this story recovered his lost confidence through sensual passion, which collapsed the wall between institutional dehumanization and being fully alive. Naked with his lover, the soldier felt no shame in wanting and loving her. The erection of sexual passion restored physical vulnerability.
We know Lawrence for his controversial Lady Chatterley’s Lover. So, it may be convenient to call him a sensationalist whose agenda was to challenge religious doctrine and restrictive social norms. Instead, he was a writer who stood at the heart of humanity and showed us the beauty of being human in the expression of passion, in wanting and being wanted.
The Thorn in the Flesh is Lawrence’s version of Dostoevsky’s “Only beauty can save the world.”
— Stephanie Joori Suh
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
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