The Plant

The TERN book pulping plant is Guylain’s workplace. His hatred for the building causes him actual nausea when he approaches it every morning, a feeling which only somewhat subsides when he leaves every night. It is a cold, forbidding place, which in the early morning has “the chilling atmosphere of an empty ballroom” (17). At its center is the Zerstor 500, the brutal machine which pulps the tons of books brought by the truck-load throughout the day. To Guylain, the plant represents the decay of his society’s moral and artistic values, which are gradually replaced by desire for money, power, and surface-level pleasures. Although Guylain has a few allies at the plant, he feels profoundly alone there, and it is a place which embodies his greatest fears and anxieties.

Guylain’s Apartment

Guylain’s apartment is a sad, lonely set of attic rooms in which he lives...