Everyone in This Room Will Someday be Dead

While every human eventually dies, compared to other animals, we spend a great deal of energy and time planning around death: Many religions address death in unique ways, and people write wills to dictate material goods and organize funerary rites. Death often reframes our actions in life, considering the enduring nature of the universe as a whole. Gilda finds herself unable to engage in life or connect to others because of death. She feels “simultaneously insignificant and hyperaware of how important everyone is” (224). Gilda is caught in the double bind of the human condition: She wants everything to matter but is well aware of how temporary everything is. The human condition and how we cope with it, especially when struggling with mental health, is the core theme of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead.

Gilda spends most of her time dissociated and detached from her surroundings. She makes observations of the world around her as if she’s a biologist observing animals. When Ingrid takes Gilda out for her 28th birthday, Gilda can only think about how odd attending a concert would be if other animals did it (170). She compares concertgoers to birds gathering to watch another bird sing for them and concludes that the activity is a strange one.