Code Orange

“Olivia, whom Mitty adored, had chosen typhoid fever and was already so advanced in her research that she was using the library of Columbia University’s medical school because every other library in New York City was too limited.”

Olivia’s studious habits are in clear contrast to Mitty’s slacker-like ways. She is a dedicated and focused student who dives right into her homework as soon as it is assigned, unlike Mitty, who doesn’t see the point of expending that much effort. He instead procrastinates. And yet, despite their differences, Olivia and Mitty are drawn together, enjoying each other’s company.

“Mitty undid the string and peered in, but the opening was narrow and he couldn’t see exactly what was down there. He inverted the envelope over his hand and tapped. The contents slid into his palm. The stuff really was scabs.”

When Mitty finds the scabs, he is unaware of the potential danger that he is in. However, at the end of each chapter, the narrator highlights the danger of breathing in such contaminated material. The suspense builds immediately.

“He had never pulled an all-nighter, since his commitment to study rarely lasted longer than ten minutes, but he liked the idea of an all-nighter.”

Although Mitty does the minimal effort required in school, it’s not from lack of ambition. He often has grand plans to get his work done; the trouble is that he has little follow-through, rarely accomplishing anything he has hoped for. His big dreams stand in contrast to his actions.

“When the lights changed, even on this icy February evening, people poured across the street with their little tots zipped up under the plastic covers of their strollers, with their dogs and shopping carts, their briefcases and their bags and bags and bags of groceries. Mitty admired a bicycle guy narrowly escaping death as he crossed the streets against traffic while balancing pizzas.”

Mitty loves the view of New York from his apartment. Even on a harsh winter evening, he can see the diversity of New Yorkers going about their business, whether for groceries or work or pizza deliveries. He admires the ability of New Yorkers to be resilient no matter the situation.

“New Yorkers wanted total protection against evil and against terrorists, but no New Yorker wanted to admit that either one existed. But every person who had seen the towers collapse and heard the recorded voices of those about to die making their final phone calls to someone they loved knew about evil.”

The events of September 11, 2001, are a constant backdrop in this novel. This is explicitly clear when Mitty, Olivia, and Derek discuss their biology topics. Derek thinks that one evil person was responsible for the death of the anthrax victim Ottilie Lundgren, and this leads to a reflection on evil. New Yorkers are well aware that evil exists, as evidenced by 9/11, and yet at the same time, the desire to be safe makes them want to deny the existence of evil.

“Variola major enters a cell by fusing with its membrane. Once inside the cytoplasm, variola causes the cell to give up its own functions. Now the cell must dedicate itself to making variola. Within eight hours of invasion, the process is fully launched. The host cell creates tens of thousands of viral copies, which ooze back out of the cell membrane. Every one will be infectious.”

Each of these early chapters ends with a brief update on the story of smallpox and how it might be taking over Mitty’s body. Mitty is completely unaware of this subplot lurking underneath his story. He has no idea of the havoc that could potentially break out in his own body as the virus takes over cells in order to launch its own army of infectious copies.

“‘Greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men from their resting places and rushed to his lair, flushed up and inflamed from the raid, blundering back with the butchered corpses.’”

When Mitty reads this alliterative passage about Grendel, the monster in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf(the Seamus Heaney translation), he is riveted by the story. Grendel terrorizes the vulnerable, sleeping men in the middle of the night, just as Mitty will soon be terrorized by the idea of smallpox taking over a vulnerable world, a world that no longer has any natural defense against its terrors.

“Three words circled over and over through Mitty’s mind, like a digital sign on a building in Times Square. YOU HANDLED SMALLPOX, said the sign.”

Although Mitty holds the smallpox scabs in Chapter 1, it is not until Chapter 5 that he understands the possible consequences of his actions. The more he reads about smallpox, the more he realizes that he might be in terrible danger. Contrasting the brief, quiet updates at the end of each chapter, this sign is in all capital letters, showing that Mitty is finally aware of what could happen to him, and the world, as a result of his touching the smallpox scabs.

“Mitty loved people. It was why he loved New York: all those people. He could watch anyone in New York and be satisfied. He loved their expressions and hairstyles and dogs, their tattoos and T-shirt slogans. Mitty’s great skill was making friends. He was friends with doormen, janitors, pretzel vendors and police officers.”

Despite his complacency, this is Mitty’s great strength: his love for the people of New York. He loves them in all of their diversity. He is no snob. It is this love for his fellow neighbors that will transform him from a slacker to a hero.

“But the best-armed guards could not see a virus. And even if they could, they couldn’t shoot it or stomp on it or lock it away.”

Just like the warriors in Beowulf were unable to protect themselves from Grendel within the hall of Herot, Mitty theorizes that people can’t protect themselves against a bioterrorism attack. The terror of bioterrorism comes from its invisibility. No one will see it coming.

“Watching his mother, Mitty was seized by affection so intense that he had to look away. Mitty loved his family, but he didn’t usually notice loving them. This kind of thing had been happening to him all week.”

Mitty is given a reprieve when Olivia tells him how the ancient Chinese used to protect themselves against smallpox. Insufflation, or inhaling ground-up smallpox scabs to gain immunity from the disease, is very similar to what Mitty did inadvertently when he breathed in the crumbled scabs. With this sudden release from a death sentence, Mitty has a renewed appreciation for all the things that he loves in his life, especially his parents.

“But now, a quarter past three on a Monday morning, he was online and he was a person madly shouting out.”

When he learns that insufflation rarely works, Mitty once again feels he is under a death sentence. Unable to tell anyone, he is isolated from the people he loves. Unable to stand isolation, Mitty sends out his questions to the internet, anonymously, desperately, hoping for a response.

“He didn’t feel as if he occupied his flesh in the usual way. His body was a container; he was standing inside it, like a person badly dressed.”

Illness makes Mitty feel at odds with his body. He no longer takes delight in the physical exertion of the body like he does in Chapter 2, carrying the family’s weekend bags up the steep hill of the parking garage. Feeling untethered to his body, he questions his identity. Everything feels wrong.

“Typhoid Mary. Nobody had cared what that poor woman thought of hoped for. Her life didn’t matter. She was a threat. Lock her up.”

Olivia’s biology research is focused on typhoid fever. Typhoid Mary was once just Mary Mallon, a cook in the early 1900s who unwittingly infected forty-seven people with typhoid without realizing she was a carrier. She didn’t show any symptoms, yet she was forced to be isolated from society in quarantine. Mitty can see how history has blamed her for spreading death and disease by serving others food. He fears he might be blamed for an even worse outbreak, perhaps becoming known as Smallpox Mitty to future generations. He fears her fate, one of being separated from society, living alone for the rest of his life, becoming merely a medical specimen to be poked and prodded at.

“But if I do get smallpox, aside from the photographs of me in my coffin, they’ll do that ring vaccination Dr. Henderson perfected. The problem is, Americans don’t stay in their rings like some peasant in a Bangladesh rice field fifty years ago. They get on planes, trains, buses and ferries; they drive SUVs, vans, cars and motorcycles; they leave town, they leave the state, they leave the country….My virus would hit the world. Read that paragraph on how fast the entire population of the world would get smallpox.”

In Mitty’s letter to his parents, in which he tries to explain his situation and his motivations to them, he explains why Dr. Henderson’s methods from the 1960s and 1970s, which were responsible for the eradication of smallpox in 1980, would not work as well in modern-day New York. The mobility of modern life makes people more accessible to one another and, at the same time, more vulnerable to dangers from contagious diseases like smallpox. Before long, the whole world would be at risk.

“I’ve been thinking about that word, society. It means all of us in New York, every age, race, job, weight and religion. Every time we laugh or sing, ride the elevator, buy a coffee, go to the theater, eat in a restaurant, jog in the park—we’re society.”

Mitty has gone through great change since Chapter 1. Although he has always had a deep love for New York, his ordeal has forced him to reflect on the meaning of society. What binds people together? What do they owe one another? What is ethical? How do we treat our neighbor? Mitty sees his New York neighbors, no matter who they are, as part of his family, and he understands that he must put the needs of society, which he feels strongly bonded to, above his own needs.

“Only in extreme circumstances, or faked ones on TV, did the need for courage arise. Nobody in the city had to face the wilderness or a panther. Your problems were a full parking lot or final exams. Even if true danger was coming, like a hurricane, you just bought your extra quart of milk and watched it on television.”

As much as Mitty loves the city, he realizes that the life he has led there has not led to many situations where courage is needed. The amenities of modern life have done a great deal to make life more comfortable. Unfortunately, this has also led to complacency, at least for Mitty, who has never had to face a real challenge before.

“I could break a pipe, he thought. Use that for a weapon.”

Mitty is no longer all talk and no action. He is no longer the big daydreamer. Now is the time for action if he is going to save the world. He scans his limited environment in the basement where the terrorists have imprisoned him, ready to make use of anything in order to be able to fight back.

“If Mitty called, he could use their cell numbers; they didn’t have to stay in the same room with their regular line. But maybe if the Blakes weren’t safely inside this apartment, their fear would spin out of control.”

Once Mitty is captured by terrorists, the chapters switch back and forth between Mitty, trapped in the basement, and his friends and family, who are terrified as they figure out how to help Mitty. Just as Mitty’s fears easily escalate without much provocation, his loved ones, also gripped by fear of the unknown, can also feel how quickly and easily their terror can increase. By staying in their apartment, they are trying to contain the fear that threatens to overwhelm them.

“For the first time in his life, music was a barrier to thought. He put away the iPod.”

Mitty has spent much of his life in a state of distraction. He enjoys watching sports on TV and listening to music on his iPod, hiding his iPod even during class when he is supposed to be listening to the teacher. He never had a reason to turn off the distraction. But now he must focus if he is to defeat the terrorists. He must turn away from distractions.

“He thought of the magnificent passengers on the flight over Pennsylvania on 9/11, men and women calling home, getting the terrible news, grasping the full horror of what was happening; they were to be used to bomb the capital. And the passengers said no. Nobody is using us as a bomb. We’ll take you down first. We’ll die—but you won’t win.”

Mitty is inspired by the example of those passengers on Flight 93. They fought back even though it meant they would die. Mitty sees himself in similar circumstances. He still doesn’t know if he has smallpox or not, but he will do anything he can to stand up to the terrorists and foil their plans.

“Thank you for letting me have a few days when I didn’t shrug.”

In the midst of his suffering, Mitty is grateful for the past couple of days, as tormented as they were. He has spent most of his life just “shrugging” at life and its meaning, not caring in what direction his life went. Learning about smallpox and handling his potential accident exposure to the disease has lead Mitty to abandon his passive attitude where he did only enough to get by and to take action to prevent an outbreak of the disease. H ordeal has also taught him to be grateful for his many blessings and not just take them for granted.

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”

Derek and Olivia recall Mitty’s disagreement with the premise of this World War I poem. The poem, written by Wilfred Owen, is antiwar and emphasizes that young men were tricked into war by the lie, “It is sweet and right to die for one’s country.” Such a lie led to the slaughter of millions of young men in the trenches of World War I. But Mitty is of a different generation, and in the aftermath of 9/11, he wholeheartedly supports the patriotic efforts of fighting and dying for one’s country. Such thoughts give Derek and Olivia some comfort as they think about Mitty’s patriotism and his heroism.