Severance

“Me, nothing really weighed on me, nothing unique. Me, I held down an office job and fiddled around with some photography when the moon hit the Gowanus right. Or something like that, the usual ways of justifying your life, of passing time.”

Candace is a unique protagonist, uncomfortably self-aware of her passivity and disaffection. She feels the need to justify her existence and thinks of life as passing time, not as a series of experiences to be enjoyed in the moment.

“Of any book, the Bible embodies the purest form of product packaging, the same content repackaged a million times over, in new combinations ad infinitum.”

Candace’s job involves reproducing copies of the Bible, curated to suit hyper-specific consumer markets. It’s an ironic twist on one of the world’s oldest books, satirizing the way that consumerism creeps into every corner of modern life.

“Through the sweeping windows, you could see the sun rising over the shops along Causeway Bay, the Tian Tan Buddha, the Hong Kong Cricket Club, Victoria Park, so named after the colonizing English queen herself, over the mountain and over the sea, rising and rising, an unstoppable force, bringing in a new day of work.”

This quote illustrates how Candace sees capitalism as an inescapable reality. Rather than appreciating the beauty of the city she is reminded of the inevitable dawning of a new workday. Work dominates her thoughts even when she is supposed to be relaxing, a relatable predicament. The way that work culture under capitalism infringes on personal boundaries and centers work even in peoples’ personal lives is highlighted in the narrative.