The Anomaly

Blake leads more than one life. Under the name Blake, he has been a professional assassin since he was 20 years old. As Joe, he attended hospitality school, trained to become a chef, and now runs a successful vegetarian catering company out of Paris with his wife, Flora, and children, Quentin and Mathilde. He owns a different apartment in Paris for each of his identities, and in truth, neither Blake nor Joe is his real name. He named himself Blake after the poet William Blake, and he has many more identities with their own bank accounts and passports. He lacks any moral compass and makes decisions solely using “statistics” (3).

Blake’s role in the narrative is unique in its independence; unlike other characters, Blake’s spy skills allow him to escape McGuire Air Force Base and remove himself from the novel’s surveilled scenarios. Because he pays attention only to facts, he does not experience the same crises of personhood as the other passengers, and quickly dispatches his double simply because it is the logical thing to do for his circumstances. His success in staying off the grid and annihilating his double means that he is also free of the philosophical and societal crises that the other characters must solve.