comment on theme

Mastai includes conflicting descriptions of grief as a way to assert the difficulty in describing this powerful feeling and the contradictory notions that grief robs one of their identity while also informing their identity.

Throughout the novel, Mastai depicts grief as both something toxic that builds up inside the person experiencing it as well as an absence that sucks up everything around it. This confusion on the part of the reader as to how they are supposed to conceive of grief mirrors the confusing feelings of the characters who experience it. Tom feels like his mother’s death leaves a gaping hole inside of him that takes the place of his happiness and even his understanding of how the world works: the loss of his mother (someone who had always been there for him) feels like an impossibility, and he has to reconsider how he conceives of reality. At the same time though, he also describes his grief as an abundance of something poisonous in his body, filling him up to the point that it might seep through his skin. In this sense, it is both robbing him of his identity and acting as his new identity (all he is left with is grief). At one point, the only thing that keeps Tom feeling like himself when he is in John’s body are his feelings of grief and remorse for destroying his original reality.