The Glass Hotel

“Begin at the end: plummeting down the side of the ship in the storm’s wild darkness, breath gone with the shock of falling, my camera flying away through the rain—” 

This opening sentence sets up the cyclical nature of both human life and the economies that direct that life. This opening is mirrored at the end of the novel, as Vincent plummets over the side of a ship, just as her mother had when she was young.

“The century was ending and he had some complaints.” 

Paul is disillusioned with the state of his life. He dedicates his collegiate studies to finance, but he finds the subject utterly devoid of meaning. It is 1999, and he feels toward his studies as he does toward the century’s finale—that it "should have felt like triumph but everything was wrong” (5). Paul’s discontent with pecuniary focus expresses one of the novel’s themes: The pursuit of wealth, at the exclusion of all else, entails a paradoxical, spiritual destitution.

“Sweep me up. Words scrawled in acid paste on one of the school’s north windows, the acid marker trembling a little in Vincent’s gloved hand.” 

Though Vincent must rely upon her reserves of self-determination, this phrase keeps coming up in association with her youthful heart’s desire. She is swept up by Alkaitis for a time, absolved of responsibility. She also “sweeps” herself off the deck of a ship in an act of self-annihilation. While never openly acknowledged in the novel, “Sweep me up” are the famously reputed last words of the Danish existential philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard.