The Intuitionist

Lila Mae, now at a loss as to who sabotaged the Fanny Briggs elevator and why, goes to the scene of the incident herself. After easily bypassing security, she enters the elevator opposite the one that crashed, riding it up the shaft in an effort to approximate what she felt during her previous inspection. She enters a meditative state in which she recreates perfectly the experience of inspecting the doomed elevator. Yet, her mind’s eye shows her no evidence of sabotage nor any design flaws. Thus, she is forced to admit that the Fanny Briggs elevator crash was that rarest of events and one neither Intuitionism nor Empiricism can predict: the “catastrophic accident” (227). It’s “[w]hat happens when too many impossible events occur, when multiple redundancy is not enough” (228). In her tendency to anthropomorphize elevators, Lila Mae wonders if the elevator lied to her, choosing to end its own life.

As Lila Mae drives away from the building in a daze, she begins to question everything—even the revelation that Fulton was Black. She quickly reverses herself, however: “Natchez did not lie about that: she has seen it in the man’s books, made plain by her new literacy” (230). Unable to trust the Arbo-backed Intuitionists, Lila Mae goes to the one person who can provide honest answers: Mrs.