The Voices

The Quiet Room has a number of themes, some of which run deep into a number of general, abstract issues. But there is a theme closer to the surface of the book and that is the theme of the Voices. The Voices are characters in the book and the constant auditory hallucination caused by Lori's schizophrenia. They often tell her to kill herself and sometimes take over her life and cause violent outbursts and lead Lori to attempt suicide and use cocaine.

But more generally, the Voices are symbolic. On the one hand, they are entities entirely separate from Lori's identity. The Voices are an Other in this way, threatening Lori's life, portraying themselves as her enemy. At other times, she allies herself with them and uses them to protect her from people and features of the outside world that anger or frighten her.

However, the Voices...