Order and Control

Throughout the novel, the author uses a range of narrative settings and narrative voices in order to explore the human desire for order and control. The first context in which the author explores this notion is the underground pool setting from the opening chapter, “The Underground Pool.” Although all of the swimmers who frequent the underground pool also occupy the world above ground, they cling to their ritual attendance of the pool for a sense of order, regularity, and equilibrium. While the rules of the aboveground world are more amorphous, the individual’s identity diverging into a range of possible classes and classifications, “down below, at the pool, [the swimmers] are only one of three things: fast-lane people, medium-lane people or slow” (8). At the start of the chapter such classifications grant the swimmers a sense of predictability which alleviates the aboveground world’s less...