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52 pages 1 hour read

Noah Hawley

Before the Fall

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016

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Important Quotes

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“Everyone has their path. The choices they've made. How any two people end up in the same place at the same time is a mystery.”


(Chapter 1, Page 1)

At the very start, Hawley introduces an idea he explores throughout the narrative: how fate dictates our lives. Scott nearly misses the flight which lands him in the Atlantic, swimming for his life. Life, Hawley suggests, is a branching tree of possibilities and outcomes, each one dependent on a single, previous choice. For Scott, contemplating the what-ifs too deeply is counterproductive. Rather, he chooses to accept his role and his choices and embrace the place where life has left him.

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“It is the ocean he is painting tonight, stroke by stroke, like Harold and his purple crayon, drawing a balloon as he falls.”


(Part 1, Chapter 2, Page 30)

Hawley draws a parallel between Scott’s art and his current circumstances, alluding to a famous children’s book in which a boy uses art to create his life, moment-by-moment. Similarly, Scott must use the physical act of brushstrokes/swimming strokes to create a reality in which he saves both his life and JJ’s. Later, he uses his literal art to save himself emotionally and psychologically.

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“What happens when your life can't be translated into a linear narrative?”


(Part 1, Chapter 3, Page 48)

As Scott tries to answer Gus’s questions, he is unable to construct a linear timeline of events. Instead, his memory is a series of scattered images in no particular order, “fireflies firing at random” (48). The memory lapses are unsettling since we measure time in a linear fashion and assume our memories are simply mental recordings of events as they happen.

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