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“Archimboldi (about whom so little was known that it might as well be nothing at all), which in turn drew more readers, most captivated not by the German's work but by the life or nonlife of such a singular figure.”

To the critics, the nonlife of Archimboldi is even more fascinating than the prospect of truly knowing his story. To them, his mysterious existence is a blank canvas. Their efforts to piece together whatever they can about his life become a professional exercise in discerning meaning from a text, projecting their own biases and sympathies onto their imagined character of Archimboldi to distinguish them from their peers. The true Archimboldi does not matter; what matters is the meaning they create from trying to know the unknowable. This quote speaks to the Hunger for Meaning in Life.

“Medusa is one of the three daughters of Phorcys and Ceto, the so-called Gorgons, three sea monsters. According to Hesiod, the other two sisters, Stheno and Euryale, were immortal. But not Medusa.”

Pelletier and Espinoza meet Pritchard. He warns them about their shared interest in Liz, yet they do not know how to react. Since they are literary academics, they react in the only way they know how: by analyzing Pritchard’s words for literary merit and trying to read a mythological subtext into his comments. In doing so, they avoid the actual content of what was said and allow themselves to settle into their comfort zone of Literary Criticism as a Mode of Understanding Interpersonal Relationships rather than genuinely entertain the possibility of uncomfortable truths.

“When they stopped kicking him they were sunk for a few seconds in the strangest calm of their lives.”

Pelletier, Espinoza, and Liz attack a taxi driver after he makes insulting comments about their characters. Their lives as critics are inherently passive, with days spent quietly analyzing the works of other, more active people in a search for meaning. The brutality of the attack is so enthralling and so strangely calming for them because, for the first time, they are thrust into an active life. Their lives move from passive to active; the immediacy of the switch strikes them and enraptures them, entirely separately from the morality of what they have just done. For the first time, they are shocked to have done something.

“Statistically speaking, there isn’t a single German born in 1920 who hasn't changed addresses at least once in his life.”

Pelletier comments on how most Germans of a certain era have been forced to move house at least once. His comment illustrates how something as seemingly banal and as bureaucratic as an address can belie great violence. These Germans have changed addresses due to the violence of war, both directed by and against Germany. Their changing addresses gesture toward the way in which the entire state has been torn apart during the time in question. This quote alludes to the Hidden Evil Within Society.

“Rosa went through customs by the gate for EU citizens and Amalfitano went by the gate for non-EU citizens.”

Amalfitano is a Chilean national, but his daughter, Rosa, is Spanish. When they queue at an airport, they are divided into two separate lines because he is not a European citizen. Father is separated from daughter according to a bureaucratic demand that differentiates between them. The bureaucracy creates divisions in unseeable, abstract ways, illustrating how the modern administrative state exacerbates alienation by creating arbitrary divisions between related peoples.

“Then my biography will be of interest and I'll be able to publish it.”

The doctor has written a biography of the poet which will only become valuable or notable once the poet is dead. Death creates market demand, rather than any literary merit or biographical interest. The doctor, a healer entrusted with the poet’s mental health, stands to financially benefit from the death of the poet. As such, the doctor’s biography of the poet illustrates the inherent tensions of late 20th-century capitalism, in which society itself financially discourages doctors from making their patients better. This quote alludes to the Hidden Evil Within Society.

“I hung it there just because, to see how it survives the assault of nature, to see how it survives this desert climate.”

Amalfitano hangs the geometry book on the clothesline so that it can be read by nature. The sun, rain, and wind will “read” the book and, in turn, Amalfitano will read the disintegration of the book in the hope that he will gain some greater insight into the nature of the world around him. Amalfitano is devising new and radical forms of literary criticism, in which the critic does not necessarily need to even read a text. Instead, they read the reading of the text.

“Professor Pérez’s hand was on his face, a gesture that might have been a caress or not.”

Amalfitano’s alienation has reached a nadir, to the point that he cannot interpret simple human gestures any longer. When Professor Pérez touches his face, he cannot determine any level of sincere affection. He is cut off, adrift from human interaction, to the point where even a caress could be interpreted as an empty gesture.

“In Chile military men behaved like writers, and writers, so as not to be outdone, behaved like military men.”

Chile, the country of Amalfitano’s origin, creates a dichotomy between writers and generals and then immediately inverts it. Amalfitano reflects on his homeland and its postmodern rejection of traditional structures. The postcolonial Chile, the version of Chile under a military dictatorship, the Chile that he left behind, is a country where paradigms are created, inverted, and abolished with such regularity that nothing can be known for sure.

“He washed his face and neck and when he dried himself he realized that the towel, hanging on the towel rack, was almost certainly the last towel his mother had used.”

Oscar Fate feels his mother’s presence after her death. He tries not to think about her, he tries to cleanse himself of her memory, but even something as mundane as a towel hints at her presence. He cannot clean himself without being forced to think about her, wondering whether—by drying his face with this towel—he is reapplying her memory to his body. To truly escape her, he must escape from the items of her life, to go somewhere that he can be sure that she was not. He goes to Mexico, crossing a border of his mother’s memory as much as a border between nations.

“He knew without being told that for a black man to sleep in a rental car parked on the shoulder wasn't the best idea in Arizona.”

Oscar Fate is a Black American man. In the United States in the 1990s, he does not have the privilege of being able to forget this. Even something as simple as parking a rental car is infused with the awareness that, if he were to be found by the police, he could find himself in trouble due to the color of his skin. Fate cannot escape his racial identity in America, but he begins to lose this sense of himself in Mexico, where the American aspect of Black American is much more important.

“They disappear. They vanish into thin air, here one minute, gone the next. And after a while their bodies turn up in the desert.”

In Santa Teresa, men murder women on a regular basis. Women are murdered at a far higher rate than the national average, but their disappearances are not counted. The rate of murder is measured by the appearance of corpses in the desert. The absence of a living woman is, statistically, not as relevant as the presence of a dead woman. For the patriarchal administrative state, women are only significant when they are dead. This quote highlights the Hidden Evil Within Society.

“The fans began to empty out of the arena.”

In the days building up to the fight, Fate has talked to many people. The experts he speaks to assure him that the fight is a foregone conclusion in favor of the American. The local Mexican people, however, are swept up in the excitement of seeing their countryman possibly triumph over a rival from across the border. When the fight proceeds exactly according to expert opinion, however, the nationalistic fervor evaporates instantly, and the fans filter quietly out of the arena. The collective delusion is shattered, and the momentary flash of excitement vanishes back into the expected order of the world.

“Every single thing in this country is an homage to everything in the world, even the things that haven't happened yet.”

Fate is a stranger in a strange land. He came to Mexico as a man out of place, assigned to the fight even though he has no experience in sports journalism. To him, nothing in Mexico feels quite real. This sense is emphasized in his discussion with the motel staff, who suggest that everything in Mexico is a reflection of something else, even those things that have not yet happened. Fate himself is a reflection of some idealized American, playing the role of a tough Black man to save Rosa from a dangerous situation. In Mexico, even Fate begins to enter into the feeling of unreal homage to everything else.

“Where are the Indians now?”

Santa Teresa is built on older, forgotten settlements. The Indigenous people who once lived in this place have been forgotten, replaced by the Mexican people of the present. The Mexicans are aware of what came before, however, and the question of “where are the Indians now” serves as a reminder of the impermanence of life. Women are being murdered every week, but more than people can die. The society itself is on the brink of disintegration, with the present city in danger of fading into the same obscurity as what came before.

“The dump didn’t have a formal name, because it wasn’t supposed to be there, but it had an informal name: it was called El Chile.”

The dump named El Chile is a resource and a home to some of the city’s most destitute and desperate people. Such a place does not have a formal name, but it must be given one. The need to name the dump reflects the need to comprehend something. By naming the dump, there is some semblance of control and agency surrounding this symbol of human desperation. By naming the dump, the people try to address the Hidden Evil Within Society. They can name it, even if they cannot overcome it.

“Epifanio told him to leave because the boss and some other important people were coming soon and they didn’t want the questioning to turn into a spectacle.”

The interrogation of Klaus Haas is violent. Rather than actually questioning the suspect, the police are unleashing their pent-up frustrations regarding their inability to stop the killings. Klaus’s beating is a spectacle, a ritualized expression of frustration and failure against a sanctioned target. Epifanio is not only aware that the prisoner will be abused in custody, but that many police officers will want to witness the beating. He is less afraid for the prisoner than he is that the interrogation will turn into a spectacle.

“On August 16, the heat broke, and a slightly cooler wind began to blow from the mountains.”

The novel draws a connection between the heat of the summer and the murders. The passage of time, both seasons and months, is used to describe the rate and frequency of the killings. In this way, the novel presents the people’s view that the murders are almost a force of nature. Like the changing of the seasons or the passing of the months, they cannot be stopped. The heat changes, the weather changes, and the murders change with them, rather than in accordance with anything changeable or human.

“Everything that happens from now on falls under the category of ordinary crimes, what you'd naturally find in a city in a constant state of growth and development. This is the end of the psychopaths.”

In this passage, the narrative subtly changes to address the audience in the second person. This is not a character speaking or thinking, but the narrator directly addressing the reader. These are ordinary crimes, from this point on, illustrating the extent to which violence against women has been normalized. In such a society, the narrative asks, psychopaths cannot exist. The entire society itself has become psychopathic in its apathy. The change in narrative address signifies a social change depicted in the novel. This quote highlights the Hidden Evil Within Society.

“A father, he said, is a passageway immersed in the deepest darkness, where we stumble blindly seeking a way out.”

Hugo suggests to Hans that fathers should be understood as a maze from which children are trying to escape. Throughout the novel, however, children are often left without parental figures in their lives. They leave home early, their parents run away, or their parents die. The stumbling children such as Hugo are not cast into darkness by their father’s presence but by their father’s absence.

“Hans imagined that under his Wehrmacht uniform he was wearing the suit or garb of a madman.”

Dressed in a Nazi uniform, Hans begins to lose his sense of self. Hidden beneath the Wehrmacht clothing is something even stranger: Hans himself. The uniform is a symbol of Hans’s place in the social order: He is a soldier, following instructions. He is more scared of what happens when he loses this understanding of his status and what might be unleashed when the uniform is cast aside. Hans does not know himself, and he fears this unknown.

“He flung himself into the conquest of an enemy position, taking no precautions at all, which gave him a reputation for daring and bravery, though all he sought was a bullet to bring peace to his heart.”

Hans’s experiences in the war represent the senseless death wish of the fascist bureaucracy. The administrators of the war, the people who hand out medals, institutionally perceive attempts at death by suicide as bravery. They praise and reward this, even though Hans only acts in this way because he wishes that he were dead while in war. This creates a culture within Nazi Germany, fueling the fascist drive toward self-annihilation with thundering applause.

“These orders are never issued in writing.”

Zeller describes the order, spoken to him down the telephone, to execute 500 Jews who were mistakenly sent to him instead of Auschwitz. The man on the other end of the line instructs Zeller to kill these people yet refuses to put the order in writing. Everything in the Nazi state is highly bureaucratic to the point of absurdity, but the participants in the Holocaust do not want to put their guilt to paper. This hesitancy suggests that they are aware of the evil nature of their actions. They want their evil to remain hidden rather than be documented forever.