We Are Called to Rise

“We are only pretending to be here together.” 

As Avis’s life unravels, she begins to question the very foundation of her existence: morality, compassion, family. She wonders what really matters and how nothing has a benefit or consequence in the grand scheme of the universe. It’s her way of coping with her stress and family predicament, and her ability to fight past this depressing mindset determines her fortitude as a person and mother, with something to live for.

“The sky is a living thing when one is a desert dweller, stretched out, vast and imposing, with its constant dance of cloud and color, the visual equivalent of a movie soundtrack to one’s life. But, of course, in Vegas, the sky is not just a matter of wind and dust and water and light, but also of planes. The ponderous passenger kind, roaring in and out of town, nine hundred flights a day, forty million people a year, diving into the center of the beast and flashing back out again, but also military jets, whistling in, four high-flying, perfectly matched arrows, bullets set to a ballet score, speeding around the Sheep Range Mountains north of town.” 

Las Vegas is highlighted here as a juxtaposition of movement and emptiness, civilization and desert. It’s a city of contradictions and oppositions. Still, it attracts people from all over the world (for various reasons), making it a melting pot of cultures, lifestyles, and textures.

“For weeks now, I’ve been dwelling on these questions that I somehow missed when everyone else was asking them. Maybe because I never went to college. I was never in a dorm room. You know: the meaning-of-life questions, the why-be-moral questions, the questions about scale. Our eighty years is a fraction of a second in geologic time, and our planet less than an atom against the universe, and our individual lives puny against the seven billion people living right at the same moment we are. How could any of us think that our lives have meaning?” 

While undergoing her family crises, Avis begins to question the meaning of life. She wonders what matters in a world that is microscopic and if her actions have any consequences at all. The issues of human existence and morality are at play, as readers are pushed to question how their lives fit into a greater scheme outside of their control, just as Avis is struggling to find herself in a time of suffering and loneliness.