Mortality, Suicide, and the Affirmation of Life

The characters vary greatly in the extent to which the life force and the desire to live flows through them. Leonard, with his physical fitness, well-defined muscles and constant munching of “energy bars,” has a strong hold on life, as does the aggressive Carla, with her desire to dominate and control her husband. Howard, by contrast—uncertain, diffident, trapped in a bad marriage and an unsatisfying job—has a much weaker grip on life, and Svea Johnson, who appears in the story only as a corpse, has lost her hold on life altogether.

In this story that is saturated with the sense of human mortality, often presented in explicit ways, the characters represent extremes of affirmation and negation of life. As a waverer, a man who seems unsure of his path and his purpose for living, Howard must acquire some of the...