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Chapter 8: The Counterlife
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
The Boat: The last September that Vincent and Alkaitis are together, they go on a boat with Alkaitis’s old friend, Olivia, and have drinks on the deck. Vincent feels embarrassed for Olivia, who is dressed too formally and trying too hard to please Jonathan. Olivia mentions that her sister has just seen a show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The next month, Vincent looks up BAM to find something to do with Jonathan and finds her brother Paul listed as a performer there.
Unlike Vincent, whose outward appearance masks her inner thoughts, Olivia’s appearance and mannerisms betray hers: she’s infatuated with Jonathan and being obvious about it. The embarrassment Vincent feels on behalf of Olivia’s earnestness shows how accustomed she’s become to playing a part. Vincent’s discovery of Paul on the BAM website is significant because it's the first time she’s heard of him since she left the Hotel Caiette in 2005.
Themes
Melissa in the Water: Paul apparently has become a semi-successful composer and has a series of performances coming up in December called Distant Northern Land: Soundtracks for Experimental Film. Vincent hasn’t seen Paul since she left the Hotel Caiette three years ago. The images from Paul’s performance that are included on the BAM website feature Paul messing with electronic knobs and dials as a screen projects images of Caiette’s shoreline—images that Vincent recognizes from her own video recordings, which she’d left behind in her childhood room. It becomes clear that Paul has been passing off the videos as his own.
Because Paul has stolen a major component of the pieces through which he’s garnered some success in the music world, Paul’s success as a composer is inauthentic. Vincent’s videos are the medium through which she can be most authentically herself. Recording video footage was the way she learned to cope with the trauma of her mother’s death and is integral to her personal development. For these reasons, when Paul steals the videos, he metaphorically steals a part of Vincent’s identity as well.
Themes
Vincent recalls a time in her childhood when Paul visited their father in Caiette and had been horrible to Vincent, making fun of her whenever she talked. On the ride back from dropping off Paul at the airport, noticing how upset Paul’s behavior had made Vincent, Vincent’s mother observed that “the thing with Paul […] is he’s always seemed to think you owe him something.” Vincent’s mother insisted that Vincent owes Paul nothing.
Knowing that Paul has stolen her videos makes it difficult for Vincent to uphold her promise to Jonathan “to maintain an air of lightness,” though he doesn’t seem to detect that anything is off with her, as he’s been working and “distracted” so much of the time. Without telling Jonathan, Vincent goes to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see Paul’s performance.
So far, Vincent has managed to repress the tragic elements of her life enough to perform the role Jonathan expects of her, but the discovery of Paul’s latest attack against her causes Vincent’s protective, self-fashioned shield to crumble.
Themes
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Paul walks on stage. He’s very thin and looks genuinely happy to receive the audience’s applause. A title appears on the screen on stage—“Melissa in the Water”—and one of Vincent’s videos begins to play on the screen. This one features a beach in Caiette with children playing in the water, including Melissa, who would have been 14 at the time. As the video plays, Paul plays music on a keyboard that he then electronically manipulates using a laptop. Vincent recognizes the video as being recorded during the first summer after her mother’s death. Vincent reflects on the years of college, dancing, and addiction that would plague Melissa’s life years later, and how the video shows no evidence of this troubled future.
Paul’s thin stature might suggest that he’s still suffering from substance abuse, though this is speculation. Paul’s response to the audience’s applause shows how desperately he needs others’ approval to feel good about himself. His desire for approval is so strong that it causes him to act in ways that harm others, namely Vincent. In a way, Paul’s actions are similar to Olivia’s: both artists exploit others (Paul exploits Vincent, and Olivia exploits Lucas Alkaitis) to fulfill their need for success and social acceptance.
Themes
Vincent leaves before the performance ends. She entertains the idea of suing Paul, but part of her deal with Jonathan is that she is “a calm harbor” for him, with “no drama” attached. As she rides the train back to Jonathan’s home in Greenwich, she can’t believe how dependent she is on him and realizes, with great disappointment, that she’s become this way “because dependency was easier.”
Paul’s theft of her videos deprives Vincent of the final semblance of self she had left, and it’s for this reason that she finally realizes the extent of her dependency on Jonathan. Vincent’s realization that “dependency [is] easier” than independence reflects the novel’s larger theme of alienation and self-reflection: Vincent chose to become dependent on Jonathan because doing so gave her the order and stability she needed to repress the unresolved inner turmoil she had in the aftermath of her mother’s death and her tumultuous past. When Paul’s theft of her videotapes disrupts this order, Vincent realizes her current life has been nothing but a delusional façade: that her troubles still exist beneath the glossy exterior of wealth.
Themes
A Nightmare: The following week, Jonathan works so much that he’s hardly around, which is nice, since Vincent is having a hard time keeping things light. As she reads news stories about the economic collapse, she entertains the notion of waiting outside the theater doors in Brooklyn and confronting Paul, but she doesn’t want to see him. The next week, she has a nightmare about a “vague impression of falling, a sense of catastrophe.” She gets up to run, dressing in the darkness. When Vincent returns from her run, she leaves a note for Jonathan, who is still sleeping, then she showers, dresses, and goes to catch the train.
Jonathan’s extra hours at work indicate that his company isn’t doing well, which is probably the result of the economic collapse Vincent reads about in the paper. Vincent’s dream seems to foreshadow her fall from the Neptune Cumberland (outlined in the fragmented, opening chapter of the novel) or else the collapse of Alkaitis’s business. That Vincent and Jonathan sink deeper into themselves instead of going to each other for support in moments of crisis illustrates the falsity of their relationship.
Themes
On the train, Vincent thinks about Paul and wonders how he could steal her video recordings. When she arrives in Manhattan, she walks around, popping inside cafes and a bookstore. She momentarily thinks she sees her mother in a crowd of tourists. Vincent is about to go into the Met when Jonathan calls to remind her of the Christmas party tonight, about which she’d completely forgotten. Though she left her dress in Greenwich, she doesn’t feel that it’s an emergency, so she walks into the Met and looks at her current favorite painting, Thomas Eakins’s The Thinker. She thinks her mother would have liked it.
Unlike Jonathan and Paul, whose ghostly visitors symbolize their guilt and moral failings, Vincent’s sighting of her mother seems to stem from her own loneliness and sadness at being betrayed by Paul. It’s as though her desire for comfort and compassion during a moment of personal crisis is so great that she manifests her mother’s spirit. Vincent’s failure to return home to pick up her dress for the Christmas party suggests that she no longer cares about her relationship with Jonathan or keeping up appearances. The facade of wealth and success she’s coasted on for the past three years is beginning to crumble.
Themes
On Vincent’s way out, she runs into Oskar, who works for Jonathan in the asset management unit. They engage in some small talk and for the first time, Vincent feels regretful of her relationship with Jonathan, realizing that it would be nice to be with someone she loved, or at least was attracted to. Vincent and Oskar part ways, and she goes to Saks to buy a dress for the party that night, after which she spends some time in the Russian Café.
Vincent seems to feel attracted to Oskar, which only heightens her feelings of dissatisfaction regarding her artificial existence and phony relationship with Jonathan.
Themes
By 5:00, Vincent grows impatient and travels to Midtown, near Jonathan’s office, so as to arrive at the party perfectly on time. While heading to the subway, though, she is suddenly gripped with a feeling that if she goes down there, she will die, and that her mother is waiting for her down there, so she runs back up the stairs to sit on a bench. Just then, she gets a call from Jonathan’s receptionist, who tells her to come to the office immediately.
Vincent suffers a panic attack the moment she gives in to habit by making plans to arrive at the party right on time. This indicates that, at least on an unconscious level, she’s no longer able or willing to maintain the illusions involved in her life with Jonathan: that the pressure of doing so will literally kill her if she continues down this false, prescribed path. That the panic attack precedes the urgent call from Jonathan’s receptionist evokes an ominous tone—that, perhaps, bad news is waiting for Vincent at Jonathan’s office.
Themes
Vincent rides in a taxi to Jonathan’s office. When she arrives at the Gradia Building, the receptionist, Simone, ushers her into Jonathan’s office. Simone will be a key witness in the trial that will occur in several months. Vincent enters the office to find Jonathan sitting at his desk, looking waxen. Claire is there, too, and a man in his 50s or 60s sits on the sofa. The man introduces himself as Harvey Alexander. Vincent demands to know why everyone is acting so strangely. Jonathan orders her to shut the door. Vincent notices that Claire is crying. Jonathan pauses before asking Vincent if she knows what a Ponzi scheme is.
This confrontation in Jonathan’s office marks the first time Jonathan has explicitly admitted to the fraudulent activities of his business. Claire’s tears imply that she was unaware of her father’s fraud, which makes sense, in light of their impersonal relationship; after all, Claire hadn’t even known that Vincent and Jonathan’s marriage was a sham.
Themes
