Except for Peter Roche, who represses his own self-knowledge, the major characters in Guerrillas are selfdeceived and ignorant of their own natures. Jane is not even in harmony with her body, mistaking, as she does, rape for love; she is careless of the feelings of others and ignorant of her own. Her awkwardness is a sign of her splintered self, which has lost contact with its extremities. For her, pain and rape are welcome because at least they allow feeling to exist.

Jimmy Ahmed, the supposed revolutionary, is actually a creation of his own lies and the propaganda of others.

His radical commune raises nothing and houses a group with no relation to him or to each other. Politics, posters, and slogans are part of Jimmy's fantasies of power. While these fantasies are sometimes political, more often they are thinly disguised sexual fantasies of raping grateful white women...