Delirium

“Sometimes I feel as though there are two me’s, one coasting directly on top of the other: the superficial me, who nods when she’s supposed to nod and says what she’s supposed to say, and some other, deeper part, the part that worries and dreams and says “Gray.” Most of the time they move along in sync and I hardly notice the split, but sometimes it feels as though I’m two whole different people and I could rip apart at any second. Once I confessed this to Rachel. She just smiled and told me it would all be better after the procedure. After the procedure, she said, it would be all coasting, all glide, every day as easy as one, two, three.”

In this dystopian world, common existential concerns like these are made to seem abhorrent, unusual, and necessary to eradicate. Lena condemns her own natural feelings and doubts as being out of place and unusual: something that marks her as less than normal. Faced with the unanswered questions raised by the wordless yearnings within, she seeks help from those around her but receives only the unsatisfying answer that all such questions will cease to matter for her after the cure. These dual, competing sides of her personality set the stage for her eventual rebellion during the course of the novel.

“We’ll be adults—cured, tagged and labeled and paired and identified and placed neatly on our life path, perfectly round marbles set to roll down even, well-defined slopes.”

The image of perfectly engineered marbles is used to imply the dehumanization of Portland’s citizens, for they, just like these inanimate objects, are only set into motion by an outside force, The contrast between childhood and adulthood is also made evident here, for while children in this society are emotionally free, adults must exist within the shackles of good behavior.

“Sometimes I feel like [Hana] deserves a best friend who is just a little more special. Once Hana told me that she likes me because I’m for real—because I really feel things. But that’s the whole problem: how much I feel things.”

Lena doesn’t feel special enough to merit a fun, outgoing, loyal friend like Hana, and this quote highlights the depths of her insecurity and introduces the ways in which she views Hana as an idealized version of a girl: a version that Lena wishes she could emulate. Ironically, Hana serves to emphasize the aspects of Lena that become vital to the story’s progression, for only Hana appreciates Lena’s heightened emotions, a character trait that Lena will come to appreciate about herself by the end of the novel.

“That’s what Hana doesn’t understand, has never understood. For some of us, it’s about more than the deliria. Some of us, the lucky ones, will get the chance to be reborn: newer, fresher, better. Healed and whole and perfect again, like a misshapen slab of iron that comes out of the fire glowing, glittering, razor sharp.”

Lena initially welcomes the idea of the cure as a way to escape from her childish insecurities. Lauren Oliver creates this dynamic deliberately, for adolescent readers may relate to Lena’s feelings of inadequacy and her desire to “fix” what she feels is wrong with her. Additionally, it becomes clear that the government preys upon these desires, and with her fervent desire to alter her own inclinations to fit within society’s expectations, Lena proves at first to be the perfect subject for government manipulation.

“I think, This is stupid, I’ll never find Hana, there are too many people—and then a new song starts, this one just as wild and beautiful, and it’s like the music reaches across all that black space and pulls at something at the very heart and root of me, plucking me like a string. I head down the hill toward the barn. The weird thing is I don’t choose to do it. My feet just go on their own, as though they’ve happened on some invisible track and it’s all just slide, slide, slide. For a moment I forget that I’m supposed to be looking for Hana. I feel as though I’m in a dream, where strange things are happening but they don’t feel strange. Everything is cloudy—everything is wrapped in a fog—and I’m filled from head to toe with the single, burning desire to get closer to the music, to hear the music better, for the music to go on and on and on.”

The first time Lena hears live music at an illegal party, she is mesmerized, an emotion aptly reflected by the eager, flowing, almost breathless quality in her descriptions of its effect upon her. In this oppressive world, the presence of music represents temptation and the expression of basic human emotions and experiences. This is a place where secret yearnings are made incarnate and celebrated, and Lena’s instinctual desire to approach of stage shows her burgeoning potential for resistance in this totalitarian environment.

“I’ve always been careful not to let myself give in to feelings of anger or irritation. I can’t afford to at Carol’s house. I owe her too much—and besides, after the few tantrums I threw as a child, I hated the way she looked at me sideways for days, as though analyzing me, measuring me. I knew she was thinking, Just like her mother. But now I give in, let the anger surge. I’m sick of people acting like this world, this other world, is the normal one, while I’m the freak. It’s not fair: like all the rules have suddenly been changed and somebody forgot to tell me.”

In this quote, Lena expresses her frustration with a style of upbringing that taught her to suppress any displays of emotion because all emotions have been deemed childish and inappropriate. Although she has learned to mask her behavior to avoid censure and criticism, her newfound glimpses into the underworld of resistance unleash her anger at the sterile nature of such a world devoid of love. In embracing her emotions anew, she once again feels like an outsider, and resents it.

“I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of. But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone. Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do—the only thing—is run.”

Here Lena addresses the reader directly, speaking as if in confidence. With this technique, Oliver creates a tone of intimacy, as though Lena is whispering to her unseen audience and letting them in on some of her secrets as she tells her story. Haunted by her family’s “diseased” past, the only solution she knows at this point in the narrative is to embrace the idea of the cure and accept that every aspect of her future will be chosen for her. It will be a while yet before she understands that by running from her past, she sacrifices any hope of choosing her own future.

“Best friends for more than ten years and in the end it all comes down to the edge of a scalpel, to the motion of a laser beam through the brain and a flashing surgical knife. All that history and its importance gets detached, floats away like a severed balloon. In two years—in two months—Hana and I will pass each other on the streets with nothing more than a nod—different people, different worlds, two stars revolving silently, separated by thousands of miles of dark space. Segregation has it all wrong. We should be protected from the people who will leave us behind in the end, from all the people who will disappear or forget us.”

Lena’s friendship with Hana is central to her awakening and resistance. The fear of losing Hana and their closeness is too much. It reminds her of her mother’s apparent abandonment by suicide. Lena starts questioning the government’s rules of segregation, and this train of thought will ultimately open the door for her to question other rules and dare to become a revolutionary figure within the narrative.

“I am not like these people on the other side of the door. I’m not them. But then I think of Riley shuddering, going limp. I am not those people either, the ones who did that, the ones who watched. Even the Richardsons didn’t bother trying to save him, their own dog. They didn’t even cover him up as he was dying. I would never do that. Never ever ever. Not even if I had a million procedures. He was alive. He had a heartbeat and blood and breath, and they left him there like trash. They. Me. Us. Them. The words ricochet in my head.”

When regulators murder her neighbor’s dog, Lena must confront doubt about who she is and where she stands. She knows instinctively that killing an animal is wrong, and by witnessing the dog’s death with horror, she begins a long, arduous process of radicalization that shifts her ideology away from the propaganda of her society and toward everything that the government strives to eradicate and suppress.

“For the first time in my life I’ve done something for me and by choice and not because somebody told me it was good or bad. As Alex walks through the store, I think that there’s an invisible thread tethering us together, and somehow it makes me feel more powerful than ever before.”

The power of choice is crucial here. Lena has chosen Alex instead of her old, safe life of segregation and oppressive rules, and although at the moment her rebellion is expressed only in silent, inner reflection, she is nonetheless exercising her right to free will: a deeply empowering act that will lead to more overt declarations of personal independence from the constricting “values” that have held her back all her life. Thus, her budding relationship with Alex demonstrates the transformational power of love both within and beyond the self.

“That night, for the first time in my life, I stand in front of the bathroom mirror and don’t see an in-between girl. For the first time, with my hair swept back and my nightgown slipping off one shoulder and my eyes glowing, I believe what Alex said. I am beautiful.”

This quote demonstrates that Lena’s views of herself as a person are changing for the better. Whereas she initially believes herself to be plain and average and despairs of ever being “normal,” she now recognizes beauty in her own features and celebrates herself as Alex does—a beautiful person worth loving. This realization is an act of resistance in and of itself, for in this moment, Lena rebels against complacency and a world that tells her not to feel.

“It still blows my mind that everything I’ve been taught is so wrong, and it’s still hard for me to think of the sympathizers and resisters as allies and not enemies. But sneaking over the border will make me one of them beyond a shadow of a doubt. At the same time, I can’t seriously consider backing out now. I want to go; and if I’m honest with myself, I became a sympathizer a long time ago, when Alex asked me whether I wanted to meet him at Back Cove and I said yes. I seem to have only hazy memories of the girl I was before then—the girl who always did what she was told and never lied and counted the days until her procedure with feelings of excitement, not horror and dread. The girl who was afraid of everyone and everything. The girl who was afraid of herself.”

This quotation shows the intensity of Lena’s cognitive dissonance and inner conflict as she struggles to act against every lesson of her childhood and venture beyond the cloistered gates of Portland. Going over the border and into the Wilds, even just for a visit, is literally and figuratively crossing the line into outright rebellion for Lena. In this moment, she is making a clear choice between her past and her future, between fear and action, and although she has the courage to see it through, adjusting her view of the world to fit her new reality requires monumental psychological and emotional effort.

“They’ve lied about everything—about the fence, and the existence of the Invalids, about a million other things besides. They told us the raids were carried out for our own protection. They told us the regulators were only interested in keeping the peace. They told us that love was a disease. They told us it would kill us in the end. For the very first time I realize that this, too, might be a lie.”

The repeated use of the word “they” here is significant, because it shows that Lena no longer aligns herself with the society in which she was raised and has completely renounced the ideology perpetuated by the government. Her outrage at realizing the depth of injustice in her world awakens her to the powerful act of dissent and foreshadows her resolution to rebel in even more overt ways.

“Even though the settlement isn’t that big—maybe an eighth of a mile long—I feel as though the world has suddenly split open, revealing layers and depths I could never have imagined. No walls. No walls anywhere. Portland, by comparison, seems tiny, a blip.”

The city of Portland is bigger and more centralized than the Wilds, but it seems smaller than the Wilds to Lena because the people who live in the Wilds settlement have much more freedom in their lives. Both her mind and her sense of self undergo a drastic expansion as she explores this new terrain—and indeed, this new reality—with Alex as her companion and her guide.

“I close my eyes and listen. The feeling I had before of being surrounded by warmth swells and crests inside of me like a wave. Poetry isn’t like any writing I’ve ever heard of before. I don’t understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind. It reminds me, I realize, of the music that struck me dumb nearly two months ago at the farmhouse. It has the same effect, and makes me feel exhilarated and sad at the same time.”

The first time she hears poetry, she is reminded of the temptation of live music, and once again, the lushness of Oliver’s descriptions is designed to mirror the intensity of her delight at immersing herself in this bewildering and bewitching artistic medium. Just as the music drew her feet toward the stage, she is drawn to the words as Alex reads them, for although they were written by a hand other than his, he professes his love for her in the very act of speaking the aloud for her. Thus poetry itself is mesmerizing, but the act of experiencing the performance of it provides the true excitement… just as all things forbidden excite those who dare to experience them.

“Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That’s what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side. Before and after—and during, a moment no bigger or longer than an edge.”

Comparing love to a razor gives the emotion the power it deserves. It illustrates how love can be deadly, which Lena has been taught her whole life, albeit in a one-sided fashion. Yet through her explorations, Lena has allowed love in all its forms to burst into her life, and as she realizes that it can sometimes be accompanied by violence, she is at first a reluctant student of the complexities of this forbidden emotion.

“It frightens me, how violent I’m feeling—crazy, almost, and capable of anything. I want to climb up the walls, burn down the house, something. Several times I have the fantasy of taking one of Carol’s stupid dish towels and strangling her with it. This is what all the textbooks and The Book of Shhh and parents and teachers have always warned me about. I don’t know whether they’re right or whether Alex is. I don’t know whether these feelings—this thing growing inside of me—is horrible and sick or the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Either way, I can’t stop it. I’ve lost control. And the truly sick thing is that despite everything, I’m glad.”

Lena’s volatile emotions mirror her mother’s notorious mood swings, but rather than being a sign of disability, Lena’s loss of emotional control and decision to release her anger are actually empowering, especially in the context of a world where citizens are expected to weaken themselves by ceding all control of their future to the government. In this light, Lena’s unbridled rant shows not the erratic outburst of an emotional child, but the logical reaction of a reasonable human being to the intolerable world that holds her mind and soul hostage to its iron-fisted dictates. In this quote, she has not lost control of herself. Instead, she has rid herself of external controls.

“I fight a murky feeling. I don’t know what I am. I want Alex and I want my old life and I want peace and happiness and I know that I can’t live without him all at the same time.”

Again, Lena becomes confused by her own conflicting and half-articulated emotions. This “murky” feeling is similar to the onset of depression that she calls the “Coldness,” and it is clear from the uneasy tone of this quote that she is struggling to find her way through an identity crisis brought on by the extreme shift in her perceptions about the society in which she was raised. In struggling to redefine what is good and right, she must also sift through the nuances of herself to rediscover what she wants from life.

“So many hours, so many days, looping those same four letters over and over: that strange and terrifying word, the word that confined her here for over ten years. And, ultimately, the word that helped her escape. In the lower half of one wall, she has traced the word so many times in such enormous script—LOVE, each letter the size of a child—and gouged so deeply into the stone that the O has formed a tunnel, and she has gotten out.”

Her mother’s inscription on the walls of her prison cell reveals the one emotion that has defined her life: love. The painstakingly carved word in the stone of her prison serves as both a reminder to herself and a message to her captors, for just as love is the reason they persecuted her, it is also the reason she is able to gain freedom. This also foreshadows the way in which Lena is able to escape into the Wilds later because of Alex’s loving sacrifice for her.

“Standing there in-between two disgusting Dumpsters in some crappy alley with the whole world crumbling down around me, and hearing Alex say those words, all the fear I have carried with me since I learned to sit, stand, breathe—since I was told that at the very heart of me was something wrong, something rotten and diseased, something to be suppressed—since I was told that I was always just a heartbeat away from being damaged—all of it vanishes at once. That thing—the heart of hearts of me, the core of my core—stretches and unfurls even further, soaring like a flag: making me feel stronger than I ever have before. I open my mouth and say, ‘I love you too.’”

Until this moment, Lena has only been able to say the word “love” in reference to things she enjoys or finds appealing. This is the first time she is able to verbally express to Alex that she loves him, and thus words themselves become an open declaration—an act of resistance against a society that has forbidden her to love and threatened her with the loss of freedom and future if she dares to disobey.

“It occurs to me that this numbness, this feeling of separation, must be what [Carol] and every cured experiences all the time: as though there is a thick, muffling pane of glass between you and everybody else. Hardly anything penetrates. Hardly anything matters. They say the cure is about happiness, but I understand now that it isn’t, and it never was. It’s about fear: fear of pain, fear of hurt, fear, fear, fear—a blind animal existence, bumping between walls, shuffling between ever-narrowing hallways, terrified and dull and stupid. For the first time in my life I actually feel sorry for Carol. I’m only seventeen years old, and I already know something she doesn’t know: I know that life isn’t life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point—the only point—is to find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.”

Lena has become enlightened to the truth about the cure, and Oliver uses the animal motif once again in order to highlight the ways in which the cure isolates people from each other and makes them into mere shadows of who they used to be: mindless organisms robbed of the passion and the will to truly live rather than simply going through the motions of staying alive from day to day.

“Love, the deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t. But that isn’t it, exactly. The condemner and the condemned. The executioner; the blade; the last-minute reprieve; the gasping breath and the rolling sky above you and the thank you, thank you, thank you, God. Love: It will kill you and save you, both.”

The first phrase here is taken directly from The Book of Shhh and from the first chapter of the novel, yet by the end of the quotation, the significance of the very same sentence is literally being rewritten and turned upon its head, just as Lena’s own personal ideology has been reversed and rewritten. The violent metaphor that follows is appropriate: Love is deadly because the government has decided that it is. However, like it has for Lena, it can also rescue people from the bleak existence of conformity.

“And now I know why they invented words for love, why they had to: It’s the only thing that can come close to describing what I feel in that moment, the baffling mixture of pain and pleasure and fear and joy, all running sharply through me at once.”

In her long, gradual path toward open rebellion and freedom, Lena has learned that love is inherently bound to pain and fear, but she has decided that experiencing this sublime emotion is worth risking everything, for she understands that love is made to be felt and expressed in words, like the romance poetry that Alex read to her so passionately.