Memory and the Past

Throughout the novel, the author uses Marcos’s relationship with the past to humanize his character. As a member of a dystopian society, Marcos appears to be one of the only characters at odds with his gruesome reality following the Transition. In Part I, Chapter 1, the narrator says that Marcos “wishes he could anesthetize himself and live without feeling anything. Act automatically, observe, breathe, and nothing more. See everything, understand, and not talk” (4). Marcos wants to be able to disassociate from his life as a way to quell his emotional unrest. However, “the memories are there, they remain with him,” and thus cause him to feel perpetually at odds with his work and his life (4). Over the course of the chapters that follow, each of the places Marcos is compelled to frequent causes him to reminisce. In Part I, Chapter 2, for example, the...