The Topeka School

“What Darren could not make them understand was that he would never have thrown [the cue ball] except he always had. Long before the freshman called him the customary names, before he’d taken it from the corner pocket […] the cue ball was hanging in the air, rotating slowly. Like the moon, it had been there all his life.” 

When Darren throws a cue ball at freshman Mandy Owens at a party after she calls him a homophobic slur, Darren imagines that the cue ball has been floating in air for his entire life—as if his act of throwing the ball at Mandy’s face was preordained. This fantasy absolves Darren of responsibility for his violent act, and shows how Darren’s anger and violence is the outcome of exterior, social forces.

“Along with the sheer terror of finding himself in the wrong house, with his recognition of its difference, was a sense, because of the houses’ sameness, that he was in all the houses around the lake at once; the sublime of identical layouts.” 

When Adam is searching for his girlfriend Amber at night, he accidentally enters the wrong house, due to the fact that all of the houses in the neighborhood have nearly the same style and layout. This amplifies the sameness underlying American life, in which White suburban Americans recapitulate identical social cycles. Adam finds an element of sublimity in this “sameness”—there is something both fearful and awe-inspiring to America’s sprawling, identical suburbs.

“[Adam] wondered if these patterns [...] were unique to him, evidence of some specialness or damage, or if they were universal, if everyone saw them. But they were so faint and difficult to describe that he was never able to figure out if his parents or friends shared this experience just above the threshold of perception; the patterns dissipated under the weight of language, remained irreducibly private.” 

When Adam closes his eyes, he sees colorful shapes and other “little illuminated patterns” on the inside of his eyelids (15)—a phenomenon known as phosphenes. These images frustrate Adam—he is unable to properly describe them so he cannot share this experience with his friends or family, or discover whether they have experienced similar phenomena.