Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“I’ve observed that convenient approximations bring you closest to comprehending the true nature of things.” 

This passage introduces the reader to not only the narrator’s characterization as someone who takes a “convenience-sake view” (4) but also the thematic focus on the narrator’s mind. He explains how he thinks about doing math (including data laundering) in separate parts of his mind—the right and left hemispheres. Rather than grasp at an exact explanation, he uses the most convenient approximation and, overall, he finds this a good method for understanding existence.

“I close my eyes and let the gentle tones spread through me. They are like none other. Navigating the darkling streets like a pale transparent fish.”

Here, the narrator describes the sound of the Gatekeeper’s horn that calls the beasts at the end of the world. The sensory details are almost synesthesia, or a crossing of senses. In other words, sound is described using another sense: the imagery of a swimming fish. This imagery also foreshadows the fish god of the INKlings, which is artistically rendered around the underground sanctuary where the Professor is aided by his granddaughter and the narrator. 

“Everyone may be ordinary, but they’re not normal.”

This is a piece of dialogue from the Professor’s granddaughter to the narrator, after he asserts that Calcutecs are “normal ordinary people” (54). This foreshadows the difference between how the narrator views himself and how other people view him.