The Heart Goes Last

“There’s no safe place, there are no instructions. It’s like he’s being blown by a vicious but mindless wind, aimlessly round and round in circles. No way out.”

While this quote refers to how Stan feels in the apocalyptic wasteland before he signs up for Consilience, it succinctly captures how little agency he feels throughout the entire text. He is constantly pushed and pulled by forces outside of his control, has no idea where he is going, and always feels trapped by circumstances. This introduces the theme The Illusion of Free Will.

“‘Those things like losing the house, and, and...those things have happened to a lot of people. To most people.’

‘But not to everyone,’ Stan would say. ‘Not to fucking everyone.’

Not to rich people.”

A central tenet of the novel’s critique of The Pitfalls of Capitalism and wealth inequality is that they lead to a segregated society, where the same rules and consequences do not apply to people with large amounts of money. Stan’s contempt for the rich stems from the fact that he lost everything in a financial crash he had nothing to do with, despite the fact that he worked hard and lived a modest life.

“Oh no, Charmaine said. Oh no, I couldn’t! Though she’d had a tiny flash of excitement, like peering in through a window and seeing another version of herself inside, leading a second life; a more raucous and rewarding second life.”

This passage is the first suggestion that Charmaine is less innocent and prudish than she projects, and that she is less-than-satisfied with the current state of her sex life. She has to reject Sandi and Veronica’s offer to become a sex worker to maintain her image, but the fact she is momentarily excited by the idea of sex work reveals she has a desire to be somebody else and live a different life.