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Chapter 7: Seafarer
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 Alkaitis’s counterlife, he “moves through a nameless hotel.” Beyond the hotel lies “a shadowless pale blue sea.” Churchwell interrupts Alkaitis’s daydreams to complain about some white men doing calisthenics on the other end of the recreation yard. Alkaitis mentions the men wanting to find some kind of “code” to live by, but Churchwell argues that a “code of honor” is irrelevant when you’re serving decades for child pornography.
Alkaitis continues to imagine alternate realities in which he avoids imprisonment. The inclusion of “a shadowless pale blue sea” in his daydreaming suggests that he, like Vincent, longs for a world unburdened by the artifice, delusion, and distraction of society. That Vincent and Alkaitis are both preoccupied by thoughts of the sea connects them on a psychological plane, which suggests that the impact people have on each other can be felt even after they’ve exited each other’s lives. That even convicted men desire a “code” to live by illustrates how integral the illusion of a stable identity is for a person. It also presents a complex view of morality, in which the morally corrupt can still be capable of order in their lives and benefit from it.
Themes
In response to the increasing amount of time Alkaitis spends in his “counterlife,” he decides that it’s important to keep this life and reality separate, though he finds the task “increasingly difficult,” often mistaking memory with counterlife. In one memory, he stumbled out of bed to find Vincent at the Hotel Caiette speaking with Walter in the lobby. For an instant, her “mask slipped just a little,” and he saw that “she wasn’t happy to see him.” In his memory, he engaged in a stupid conversation about jet lag, but in his counterlife, he instead looked out the window, the world became Dubai, and the hotel lobby was empty.
Alkaitis’s counterlives have morphed from intentional exercises in escapism into haunting reminders of the people he’s wronged and the lack of authentic relationships he’s had in his life. The memory of Vincent speaking with Walter in the lobby is painful to Alkaitis because it reaffirmed the transactional, fake nature of their relationship. When Vincent’s “mask slipped just a little,” he was forced to confront the fact that she was only pretending to like him—that he would never know or relate to her in a meaningful, vulnerable way.
Themes
Alkaitis wonders if other men in prison have counterlives and scans their faces to find out what they’re thinking. He wasn’t curious about others before he went to prison. In 2015, he asks Churchwell if he “ever think[s] about alternate universes.” He and Churchwell are loose acquaintances, bonded by their shared reality of never being free again. Churchwell, a former double agent, readily admits to considering alternate universes. In one such alternate universe, he reveals, he got away with his crime and lives in a nice place in Moscow. Alkaitis says he’d live in Dubai. He says it again and only realizes from the look on Churchwell’s face that he’s repeated himself.
When Alkaitis unknowingly repeats himself to Churchwell, it becomes apparent that his ventures into the counterlife aren’t completely of his own accord: he’s actually losing touch with reality, perhaps in a more serious way than he originally thought. Alkaitis is likely in his 70s by this point in the novel, and the insinuation here is that he’s experiencing the onset of dementia.
Themes
Sometime later, Alkaitis sees the doctor. He explains that he’s had trouble with his memory, though he doesn’t say anything about the hallucinations, because he doesn’t want to be put on heavy tranquilizers. Anyway, he notes inwardly, hallucination isn’t quite the right word—it’s more a “collapsing [of] borders” between memory and counterlife. The doctor asks him some basic questions to assess the extent of Alkaitis’s memory problems, starting with the date. Alkaitis gets the year right but mistakes the date, as he’s been thinking about a trip he took to Dubai with Vincent that occurred in a different month.
Alkaitis constructs a narrative that minimizes the seriousness of the hallucinations he experiences when he ventures into the counterlife. If he can think of his hallucinations as a mere “collapsing [of] borders,” he can, perhaps, maintain the illusion of control over his increasingly out-of-control existence in prison. Alkaitis’s inability to answer the doctor’s simple question correctly shows that his attempts to rationalize his increasing reliance on the counterlife is beyond his control.
Themes
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As Alkaitis continues to answer the doctor’s questions, his thoughts drift back to the hotel on the island shaped like a palm tree in Dubai. He and Suzanne had gone there and held hands over dinner. It was the year before her diagnosis, so she was likely already sick, though they hadn’t known it yet. Suzanne had been beautiful, and it had been nice to have “a co-conspirator.” Back in the present, the doctor asks Alkaitis to repeat the address he’d given him earlier. Alkaitis answers “Palm Jumeirah,” which is the name of the island in Dubai, but not the address for which the doctor is asking.
Beneath the happy façade of Jonathan and Suzanne’s trip to Dubai, there existed the unknown, dark reality of her failing health. This memory of Suzanne reframes Alkaitis’s recurrent memories of Dubai, rendering them manifestations of his unresolved grief over Suzanne’s early death. In his grief over Suzanne, he mourns not only his wife, but the last person with whom he had an intimate, authentic relationship. When Alkaitis refers to Suzanne as a “co-conspirator,” he insinuates that Suzanne (unlike Vincent) knew about the fraud he was committing.
Themes
Alkaitis leaves the doctor’s office knowing he’s messed up. He reasons that he’s “distracted, not demented,” disoriented by the sameness of his days and forced into the world of memories “or into the counterlife,” the lines between them beginning to blur. He’s wonders if he’ll die in the counterlife, too, if he dies in prison. In his cell sometime later, he asks Hazelton if he believes in ghosts. Hazelton isn’t sure. Alkaitis doesn’t tell him that he sees the ghost of Faisal standing in the corner.
Claiming to be “distracted, not demented” is another attempt by Alkaitis to minimize the extent of his psychological deterioration and exercise control over his life. That Alkaitis sees Faisal’s ghost in prison is further evidence of both Alkaitis’s deteriorating mental state as well as the guilt he feels for the role he played in Faisal’s death. This serves as additional evidence that Faisal killed himself in the aftermath of Alkaitis’s arrest.
Themes
