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Chapter 11: Winter
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Glass Hotel, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Complicity and Interconnectedness
Guilt and Responsibility
Fraud and Constructed Identity
Greed, Delusion, and Self Interest
Alienation and Self-Knowledge
Regret and Disillusionment
Summary
Analysis
In prison, Alkaitis steps outside one morning and sees Yvette Bertolli, he thinks, though this is impossible, as Yvette is dead. He’d first met her in the 1980s in Paris, where she gave him some “high-net-worth” clients. The morning of his arrest, those clients had $320 million invested in Alkaitis’s fraudulent accounts, and Bertolli died of a heart attack later that day. Bertolli continues to walk around the prison yard, talking with Faisal.
That Alkaitis sees Bertolli’s and Faisal’s ghosts in prison implies that he feels guilty for the role he, his scheme, and his greed played in their deaths.
Themes
During one of Julie Freeman’s visits with Alkaitis, she asks him about his employees. Alkaitis insists that they’re “good” people. Freeman finds this descriptor interesting, given their involvement in such a big crime. She changes the topic to discuss Oskar Novak, who was quoted as saying “it’s possible to both know and not know something” when confronted about his suspicious computer search history, and for whom things didn’t go well. After Freeman leaves, Alkaitis considers Oskar’s statement about knowing and not knowing, relating it to his own life: though he knows he was a “criminal” and a “liar,” and has destroyed lives, he still feels his punishment is unfair.
Interestingly, Alkaitis seems determined not to turn on his “good” employees. Though at first one might interpret this as an act of loyalty, one shouldn’t ignore the fact that Alkaitis also must realize that he has nothing to gain in turning them in—it would be purely out of spite (and therefore the lowest of lows) to do so. It’s possible that if Alkaitis were in a position to negotiate with prosecutors in exchange for a lighter sentence, he’d be willing to throw his employees under the bus, though this is speculation. Still, given Alkaitis’s history as a conman, it’s not outlandish to suggest that he’d use his staff for personal gain—after all, he manipulated and exploited his unsuspecting investors for years. Alkaitis uses Oskar’s observation about knowing and not knowing in the same way Oskar did: to acknowledge and excuse his transgressions simultaneously.
Themes
When Alkaitis is at the commissary one day, he sees Olivia, dressed in the blue dress she wore on the yacht the summer before he was arrested. The next time Julie Freeman visits him, he asks her to look up Olivia Collins. When he sees Freeman on their next visit two weeks later, she informs him that Olivia died a month ago, which Alkaitis already knew. Alkaitis then asks Freeman why she’s writing about him, and she explains that she’s long been interested in “mass delusion.” To Freeman, it should have been obvious to an experienced investor that Alkaitis was a fraud, which means that, for him to succeed, a lot of people had to lie to themselves for a long time.
As with the other ghosts he sees in prison, Alkaitis sees Olivia because he feels guilty about defrauding her and taking advantage of their friendship. The thesis of Freeman’s book about Alkaitis relates to the novel’s major theme of greed, delusion, and self-interest. While it’s true that Alkaitis willfully and knowingly defrauded investors, it’s also true that he wouldn’t have been successful if he didn’t have people open to being conned. After all, Ella Kaspersky saw right through Alkaitis’s scheme, which is proof people could’ve uncovered the truth about his scheme if they’d wanted.
Themes
Next, Freeman asks Alkaitis about Ella Kaspersky, whom Alkaitis admits is not his “favorite person.” They met in 1999 at the Hotel Caiette. Suzanne was sick already and had stayed behind. He hadn’t wanted to leave her but needed investors, and he felt that negotiating a deal at a place he owned lent him an additional layer of credibility.
The additional credibility Alkaitis acquires by meeting potential investors in the Hotel Caiette is as fraudulent as the similar technique he’d later employ by bringing Vincent along to business dinners: both create the superficial illusion of credibility and stability, when in reality, Alkaitis has neither of these things.
Themes
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The narrative flashes back to the onset of the Kaspersky-Alkaitis saga: Alkaitis goes downstairs to the Hotel Caiette bar and finds Ella Kaspersky there, looking elegant and drinking whiskey. They talk a while before Alkaitis mentions his investing, and Ella mentions that her father just died and left a large sum of money to their family’s charity fund, and that she’s in charge of making investment decisions for the fund. Alkaitis goes into greater detail about his investing strategies and, since Ella is a few drinks in at this point, he figures she won’t retain much of what he says.
Meeting Kaspersky (and other clients for that matter) is another deceptive, manipulative technique Alkaitis employs, since inebriated people might be less skeptical of Alkaitis and more willing to go along with whatever he proposes. This scene also reveals the personal, emotional investment Kaspersky has in her family’s charity, since she’s acquired it in the aftermath of her father’s death.
Themes
However, Alkaitis is proven wrong when a letter from Ella arrives a few weeks later. Ella has conducted her own research, consulted with some experts, and ultimately decided that the kind of returns Alkaitis’s funds were seeing would “require an almost psychic knowledge of when the market was going to fall.” In short, Ella believes that Alkaitis’s numbers don’t add up.
Unlike Alkaitis’s other investors, who were willing to turn a blind eye to Alkaitis’s unnaturally good returns, Kaspersky is acutely skeptical of Alkaitis from the very start. Her insusceptibility to mass delusion makes her a unique character in the novel.
Themes
Ella also reveals her discovery that her family’s private foundation, which was founded to fund research for colon cancer, the disease that killed her mother, is already invested in Alkaitis’s company. She brought her concerns to the foundation, which immediately sent out a request to withdraw the investment. She also forwarded a copy of her letter to the SEC. When Alkaitis shows Enrico Ella’s letter, Enrico’s hands shake, but he insists that Ella can’t prove anything she asserts in the letter.
One reason why Kaspersky is so skeptical of Alkaitis when others are not is that she has personal reasons to have a vendetta against him, since Alkaitis’s fund is in control of money she associates with her deceased mother. Had Kaspersky not investigated Alkaitis’s fund and discovered evidence of fraud, her family’s fund for colon cancer research might have been gone forever. This suggests that it’s the personal stakes Ella already has in Alkaitis’s fund that prevent her from falling prey to the scheme that others succumbed to, rather than superior moral standards or a greater level of intelligence.
Themes
Alkaitis’s story continues. Next, his company gets a letter from the SEC informing them that they were opening an investigation. Alkaitis assumes they’ll be caught, but they aren’t. In the present, Freeman asks Alkaitis if he saw Ella again, and Alkaitis lies and says no, because the last night he did see Ella is too horrible to contemplate.
It’s unclear why the SEC didn’t find anything in Alkaitis’s business worth prosecuting, though it’s worth noting that the same thing happened in the Madoff investment scandal, the actual Ponzi scheme on which the novel is loosely based. Though questions about the Madoff investment fund’s legitimacy were raised as early as 1999, Madoff wasn’t arrested until 2009, and the SEC would later be criticized for not investigating Madoff thoroughly enough.
Themes
Alkaitis’s story continues. Alkaitis and Suzanne have been eating dinner at a favorite restaurant of theirs, Le Veau d’Or, though Suzanne can hardly eat. They’ve just visited the oncologist, who’s given them bad news. Suddenly, Alkaitis hears the sound of breaking glass. He turns and sees Ella sitting a few tables away from them. A busboy has dropped her wineglass, which has shattered onto her bread plate. Alkaitis informs Suzanne that the woman is Ella Kaspersky. Suzanne finishes eating and tells Alkaitis to get the check as she continues to study Kaspersky carefully. Alkaitis begs Suzanne to leave, but to do so, the couple are forced to walk directly past Ella’s table. As they walk nearer to the table, Ella finally looks up, her facial expression hardly changing as she registers Alkaitis’s face.
The broken glass in Kaspersky’s breadbasket harks back to the graffiti message that appeared on the Hotel Caiette’s glass wall at the beginning of the novel: “why don’t you swallow broken glass?” Given Paul’s insinuation that the message was intended for Alkaitis, it’s possible that this story and the threatening message are related. This scene is also important because it’s the first glimpse the reader has gotten into Suzanne’s character. Thus far, she’s existed only in minor comments made by other characters.
Themes
Alkaitis only says good evening to Ella; the SEC has just closed their fruitless investigation, and he doesn’t want to brag too overtly. Ella sips her wine, pauses, and tells Alkaitis that he is “beneath [her] contempt.” Alkaitis is stunned into silence. Slowly, Suzanne picks up a shard of broken glass that remains in the breadbasket, places it in Ella’s water glass, and says to her, “why don’t you swallow broken glass?”
Ella’s comment that Alkaitis is “beneath [her] contempt” frames his fraud (and narrow avoidance of facing legal consequences for it) as personally repugnant to her, which underscores the idea that Ella’s legal pursuit of Alkaitis is something of a personal vendetta, motivated by her distaste for him. This scene also confirms that the message that will appear on the glass wall of the Hotel Caiette in 2005 is taken directly from Ella, which implies that Ella is somehow responsible for the graffiti. Paul had insinuated something about being in debt when Walter confronted him, so it’s possible that Ella approached and bribed Paul to write the message to antagonize Alkaitis.
Themes
Alkaitis’s story ends, and the narrative picks up in the present, in prison. The professor who runs the book club sets aside the usual Fitzgerald reading assignments to discuss an allegory of “the swan in the frozen pond,” a story about a swan who loves the lake so much he lacks the foresight to leave it when winter comes, and he freezes to death. In a later discussion with Freeman, Alkaitis admits that he’d thought he could get out, and then he was embarrassed, not wanting to disappoint his investors, whom he calls “greedy,” on account of “the returns they expected.” Freeman accuses Alkaitis of blaming the investors for his fraud, which Alkaitis denies, though, on a certain level, he did feel pushed to deliver what they wanted.
Alkaitis relates to the frozen swan from the allegory. Like the swan, he’d been so wrapped up in the allure of money and success that he’d deceived himself into thinking he could conduct his scheme indefinitely. In his later discussion with Freeman, Alkaitis positions his investors as complicit in his downfall, reasoning that he wouldn’t have continued to commit fraud if his “greedy” investors hadn’t expected such high returns on their investments. Alkaitis’s formulation enacts a vicious cycle of delusion, in which Alkaitis’s investors’ delusion about their high returns deludes Alkaitis into thinking he can get away with his scheme forever.
Themes
Alkaitis continues to see ghosts from his past parading around the prison yard: he sees Yvette Bertolli, Olivia, Faisal, and a middle-aged man he doesn’t know. He is aware of four suicides related to the fraud; Faisal was one of them, and he wonders if this man is another. Alkaitis grows mad, not knowing why these ghosts have to torment him; it’s not as though he made them die or commit suicide, and, further, they could’ve gotten out whenever they wanted.
This scene confirms what the narrative has hinted at on several occasions now, which is that Faisal’s death was the result of a suicide. That there were at least four suicides that happened in response to the Ponzi scheme’s collapse indirectly implicates Alkaitis in more deaths as well, though Alkaitis’s assertion that he didn’t force these people to die is true, too: ultimately, the investors chose to remain oblivious to any red flags that might have appeared over the years, and chose to respond to the Ponzi scheme’s collapse by ending their own lives. Alkaitis’s anger at the ghosts might actually be anger at himself for not being able to rid himself of the guilt he feels for these investors’ deaths.
Themes
In a scene from Alkaitis’s counterlife, he walks through a corridor in the hotel on Palm Jumeirah. When he reaches the lobby, it’s empty except for Vincent, who’s been waiting for him. She’s older now, wearing a gray uniform and chef’s apron. Her hair is shorter, and she wears no makeup. She greets him, explaining that she’s “just visiting.” He looks behind himself and sees Yvette and Faisal. When Alkaitis turns back around, Vincent is gone.
That Alkaitis sees Vincent in his counterlife suggests that Vincent has died (which the reader knows will happen, since the novel’s opening chapter, “Vincent in the Water,” features a woman aboard a ship falling overboard into the stormy sea). This theory is also supported by the fact that Vincent appears as she does when she’s employed as a chef aboard the Neptune Cumberland. It also suggests that Alkaitis feels responsible for the chaos and hurt he inflicted upon Vincent over the course of their relationship and in the aftermath of his conviction.
Themes
Later, back in Alkaitis’s “noncounterlife,” he laments the “unfairness” of the ghosts he’s been forced to see. Why can he not see Suzanne or Lucas? Alkaitis realizes he’s in his counterlife more than he is in reality—that the world has begun to slip away from him. He takes Churchwell’s pen and labels his left hand “L.” He decides that he’ll make a habit of thinking of Lucas every time he sees the L, since “he heard somewhere that habits are the last to go.” Churchwell tells him that the problem with memories, though, is that they become less and less sharp every time you go to them. This worries Alkaitis, who lately has been able to summon forth one memory of Lucas, and he fears that one day even that will be gone.
That Alkaitis now refers to reality as the “noncounterlife,” in terms of how it differs from his counterlife, suggests that the counterlife has replaced reality as the place where Alkaitis spends most of his time. Literally, this might mean that Alkaitis’s dementia is worsening. Symbolically, it speaks to the all-encompassing intensity of the guilt and remorse Alkaitis feels over the lives he destroyed with his Ponzi scheme. That Alkaitis only sees the ghosts of people he's wronged (and not the ghosts of people whose deaths he mourns, like Lucas and Suzanne) underscores the ghosts’ symbolic connection to guilt and responsibility.
Themes
Alkaitis’s memory is from the last summer Lucas was alive, when Alkaitis was 14. Lucas had come home from the city to attend a family picnic. When his family greeted him at the train station, he was very thin and wore dark glasses, and he was late, which had worried their parents. On the drive out to the picnic, Alkaitis asked his brother how his painting was going, proud to be having such an adult conversation with his older brother. Though Alkaitis was young at the time, he could still sense that Lucas’s tone and responses were off, and that their parents were concerned; their father told Lucas he could come back home to have a change of pace, but Lucas refused. What Alkaitis remembers most about this memory is the “sense of calm at the end of the long strange day, a temporary peace” that occurred after the picnic.
Lucas’s lateness and off behavior are the result of his drug addiction. Alkaitis’s memory humanizes him, providing the reader with a glimpse into Alkaitis’s life before he succumbed to the allures of financial excess and greed. It’s possible that the loss of Lucas instilled in Alkaitis a heightened fear of loss more broadly, which might explain the greed that he would succumb to later in life: one way to negate loss, perhaps, is to accumulate as much as one can.
Themes
