56 pages • 1 hour read
Blake CrouchDark Matter
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Road Not Taken
The dedication at the end of the novel reads: “For anyone who has wondered what their life might look like at the end of the road not taken” (340). Jason fixated on a single moment in which his life could have taken a different direction. Reminded of this long-past choice, he looks back, sees the road he traveled (marrying Daniela and raising Charlie) and wishes he could have taken the other (staying single and having a brilliant career). Unbeknownst to him, Jason2 is obsessed with the exact opposite scenario. The novel explores what happens when both Jasons get their wish and enter the life they’ve always wanted.
This dedication is an allusion to the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken” (1916), and the first stanza of the poem encapsulates the novel’s premise:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
In building the box, Jason2 removes the restriction that a single traveler cannot travel both paths. Even more so than Jason, Jason2 regrets what he believes was his life’s pivotal decision. In Chapter 15, he says to Daniela: “I got everything I ever wanted, except you. And you haunted me. What we could’ve been” (326). He built the box to live in a world where he’d made a different decision while skipping the difficult parts that led to Jason sacrificing his career. Jason2 does not want to go back in time and stay with Daniela, raise Charlie, and give up his research: He wants the best of both worlds. Jason2 built the box as a cheat code: “Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of perpetual regret […]. I built something that could actually eradicate regret. Let you find worlds where you made the right choice” (326). Jason2’s downfall is that he thinks he can live his life and take Jason’s without making any sacrifices.
Jason regrets losing his scientific career when he was poised to make a breakthrough. But when he finds himself in Jason2’s life where that breakthrough has come to fruition, he learns that the moral cost of inventing the box was too high: Jason2 could only invent it because anger and regret were driving him, rather than pure scientific curiosity.
Jason finds Jason2’s work impressive, but he learns that Jason2 does not have any close relationships, nor does he know what it means to make sacrifices or compromises for another person. Daniela2 is excited to see Jason when he turns up at her art opening; the short time she and Jason2 dated was clearly meaningful to her. Jason2 and Daniela2 have lived in the same city for 15 years, but despite his regrets, Jason2 never called her or tried to rekindle their relationship. Relationships are complicated, and Jason2 is too self-centered and self-reliant to risk putting his regrets in Daniela2’s hands. He wants a ready-made life, in which he risks and loses nothing. His success in his own reality is the only reason he can tolerate the mediocrity of Jason’s life: “I could wake up in your brownstone every morning and look myself in the mirror because I achieved everything I ever wanted” (327).
Throughout his journey, Jason sees many worlds where he did not stay with Daniela, but he did not invent the box either. Only Jason2 invented the box. This changes Jason’s perception of his life: He learns to see, not a single path with a fork leading to two separate outcomes, but an infinite number of choices affected by a wide variety of factors. His choice of family over career was not actually a pivotal life decision—and even if it had been, the “other path” does not automatically equate to a better life. In the end, Jason learns to be content with the road he has taken.
Identity Crisis and The Essence of Self
One of the main points of exploration in Dark Matter is the nature of identity and what truly makes a person unique. In Chapter 15, Jason says: “My understanding of identity has been shattered—I am one facet of an infinitely faceted being called Jason Dessen who has made every possible choice and lived every life imaginable” (334). After the abduction, Jason wakes up scared and confused. These feelings intensify as everyone he meets tries to convince Jason that he is someone whom he is not, whether that’s the chief scientist at Velocity Laboratories or a man with a psychiatric disorder.
Each moment that challenges Jason’s sense of self forces him to investigate and reaffirm his identity; as time goes on and his situation becomes more urgent, this becomes more and more difficult, until his insecurity threatens to break him. This moment comes at the end of Chapter 12. After Amanda leaves Jason, he loses his sense of purpose. As his ampoules and resources dwindle, he becomes increasingly desperate. After being mugged in one reality, he lives out of a cardboard box. He watches the Dessens of this world go about their lives, resigned to living as a stranger in their world. His lowest point comes when he has been on the streets in Logan Square for eight days: “Jason Dessen himself drops a $5 bill into my collection box. There’s no danger. I’m unrecognizable” (240). This world’s Jason cannot recognize his doppelganger; metaphorically, Jason cannot recognize himself. It is only when he finds himself in Jason2’s shoes—contemplating stealing another Jason’s life—that he realizes he has lost sight of his own reality. This leads to a reaffirmation which then helps Jason understand what makes him who he is: his family.
Jason’s identity crisis is a midlife crisis. When the novel opens, Jason is 42 and has just heard about his friend’s success, which rouses his insecurities about his life choices. At the bar, Ryan rubs salt into Jason’s wound by telling him that he could have been great if he hadn’t given up. Jason is clearly a failure in his friend’s eyes, and this knowledge intensifies Jason’s self-doubt. Everything that follows is a psychodrama in which Jason plays out numerous iterations of his life until he finds security in the knowledge that he chose the right path. The ordinary man vanquishes the extraordinary man and lives happily ever after with the family who wants him to be nothing more than he already is. He’s freed from the worry that one choice was the defining moment of his life’s trajectory, allowing him to move past the regret that consumed Jason2.
The theme of identity crisis is personal to the author. In “The Story Behind Dark Matter,” Crouch notes that the “hardest thing writers have to do is figure out for themselves who they are” (342). Crouch wrote Dark Matter during what he calls a 10-year “writerly identity crisis” (342) as he struggled with how to tell the story. In the interview “A Conversation with Blake Crouch,” Crouch admits that his novels are “therapy and reflective of what I’m dealing with personally during the writing” (342). While writing the book, Crouch felt pulled between his career and his roles as a husband and father. Like Jason, Crouch was inspired by “what ifs”: “The idea of different versions of myself living different lives, with different careers, spouses, children, etc., was actually my main inspiration for writing this book” (342).
We Determine Our Own Reality
According to the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, every choice a person makes and every event that affects them causes reality to branch into alternate timelines. The concept foregrounds the importance of choice to imply that people create their realities, both intentionally and unintentionally.
The quantum superpositioning box literalizes the importance not only of choice, but also of perspective. A person’s thoughts, beliefs, outlook, and actions help co-create the events of their daily lives. This is why some Jasons made the same choice—say, to leave Daniela—but their lives turned out differently. Each individual’s reality is tinged by optimism or pessimism, logic or emotion, and any other perspective-altering factors that can make two people react to or understand the same situation differently. Jason2 is the only Jason Dessen who invented the box because he was the only one who both believed it was possible and had the resources to bring the project to fruition. Intensely personal reasons drove his research; in contrast, another Jason who left Daniela but did not feel such strong regret would not have invented the box.
The worlds Jason and Amanda enter reflect their fears, desires, and personalities. When Amanda chooses their destination in Chapter 10, she writes: “I want to go to a good place, to a good time to be alive. A world I’d want to live in. It isn’t the future, but it feels like it…” (187). Amanda is intelligent and compassionate and works in a high-tech field. The clean, elegant Chicago they enter reflects those aspects of her personality. When Jason chooses the next world, he writes “I want to go home” (193), but because he has just witnessed the terrifying flayed specter of himself trudging endlessly through the corridor, his thoughts of home are tinged with fear and disaster. When he finds Daniela in that world, his worst fears have come true.
Jason learns that reality is what we make of it. If he were to see himself through Ryan’s eyes—someone who believes Jason gave up and wasted his brilliance—Jason would be miserable. With his failure predetermined, he would never return to his family, nor would he achieve a happy ending with them. Instead, he finally chooses to see himself through the eyes of his wife and son, who do not measure his worth by his career success. By the end of the novel, Jason has shifted his perspective and can move forward into a fulfilling future.
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