Moses or Atlas?

I would love to write a book in which every character except the protagonist is silently suffering from some dark secret yet to be discovered, and every personal encounter between them and the protagonist is rife with an almost restrained punishment, as if they feel they are slowly putting a puppy to sleep. And of course the protagonist is absolutely oblivious or simply doesn't understand what part of what they're saying is the "bad part".

It seems like everyone wants to play Moses these days. Everyone wants to make sure their kids and others live in a world free from the suffering they are going through, and they have resigned themselves to the fate of not entering that world. And it becomes so poetic, so easily archetyped, perhaps because that's what we all want to be. Either the stoic hero who never asks for help, yet everyone is waiting and gathered lovingly for the moment they do (because everyone loves to live vicariously), or the hero who is just looking for the right moment to express themselves, hoping for that same warm reception. Or perhaps we're all just looking for that reception, waiting for the right moment, and some are more adept at knowing when to release. Mmm, catharsis.

And what a range this silent, sufferable knowledge can encompass. And obviously, one's threshold or appreciation of such is entirely subjective, which leads to i) feelings of judgment and submission when one reveals what torments them to ridicule, and ii) creation of idols, people who represent or seem to have that which we are looking for: an answer to all of our suffering.

Oh, there's so much poetry in the world, so much archetypal thought and expression, is it any surprise we can be made to relate so strongly, to feel akin to the ideals of someone so much instead of the person themself? I've had trouble actually expressing this when pressed in conversation, and I don't know now is much different, but I feel like I encounter people whose identity they model after some archetypal character, such as:

Atlas, devoting his life and all his strength to holding up the world - by that I mean, putting all of their energy into being something that we can understand and making sure its something we are experienced therein. The Hemingway. The mountaineer. The underdog rapper...

And as one tries to get to know them, probes them about their lives, one finds they are actually shaking, and if you look at Atlas out of the corner of your eye you might catch a glimpse, a dart of the eye on his part, asking himself: "Can I open myself up? Can I come out of my self-imposed prison?" And then, they do...and get rejected, perhaps, because they're 'actually really nutty and I don't want to spend my time forming a relationship with them', or they get so scared they retreat back into it and shut you out completely before you even get a chance to express negativity. My point is, all of these people are, upon close examination, a little bit shaky. Part of human nature, I suppose, a strong, socially-accepted defense mechanism because it's really the least troublesome to the protagonist, be you who you may...be.

To coax one out of his or her shell, is it really worth the effort?