Odds Against Tomorrow

“‘Can you imagine?’ he said. One of his hands began to absently pull at his hair. ‘She’s a walking worst case scenario. How does she get out of bed?’”

A young Mitchell grapples with the unpredictability of Elsa Bruner’s life. Elsa’s heart condition means she could die at any moment, which fascinates and obsesses Mitchell throughout the book. Elsa symbolizes a lack of control, so Mitchell’s preoccupation with her suggests his obsession with catastrophe. In attempting to understand her attitude and actions, he seeks to analyze and overcome his own fears.

“The loss of life, though regrettable, they could overcome. It was the loss of capital that brought the chief executives to their knees.”

This quote refers to business professionals’ mentality regarding the Seattle earthquake disaster, which is the inciting incident that sets Mitchell’s story into motion. Throughout the novel, Mitchell struggles to understand business-minded people’s cool, logical approach to catastrophes, as his own perspective on disasters is fueled by emotion and fear.

“Mitchell’s assignment, it soon became clear, was simple: he was to calculate the price of each Fitzsimmons employee’s life, in dollars. […] For the purposes of his assignment, a person’s value meant the value of his life to Fitzsimmons Sherman.”

Mitchell is hired by a major New York corporation to mathematically quantify the value of employees based on their cost/profit ratios for the company. This relates to one of the novel’s major themes: The Value of a Life. Mitchell’s job is to understand the value of a person’s life from the perspective of an emotionless corporation, which will also cause him to grapple with understanding the value of his own life. Ultimately, he will reject this monetized understanding of worth.

“Worst-case scenarios did come to pass, after all, and if FutureWorld didn’t worry about them, who would? He was on the vanguard of a new industry—nightmare analysis—and he was proud of it, too. He was a fear professional now, and he was being paid lucratively for the specialized skills he brought to the job.”

Mitchell rejoices momentarily at his new employment with FutureWorld. Mitchell’s fear of and fervor about disasters are now his livelihood, and the statistics and data he deals in give him The Illusion of Control over some of his worst fears. Mitchell also feels seen and valued by Charnoble, not yet sensing that his corporate mentality parallels that of Sandy Sherman or Ned Nybuster.

“Is it odd that we read each other’s thoughts but never hear each other’s voices?”

Elsa writes this to Mitchell, referencing the fact that their communication is wholly letter-based. Mitchell obsesses over this line, and when he attempts to visit Elsa after Hurricane Tammy, he is offended to learn that Elsa had a phone and could have called him. Elsa’s distance from Mitchell suggests her symbolic function in his life: She is not so much a person as a puzzle to him.

“It was astonishing how much bad news was generated every day. You only had to pay attention—subscribe to the right newsletters and journals, and you could see the information accrete, like matter spiraling around a black hole.”

As Mitchell adjusts to his new position with FutureWorld, he leans into his search for catastrophe statistics. This quote ties into the theme of knowledge and its relationship with fear. It is unclear whether Mitchell finds any solace in his research on catastrophes, or if it only worsens his paranoia about unexpected, disastrous phenomena.

“As he worked his mind opened up and he plowed himself into it. Brain ate heart.”

Mitchell throws himself into his work predicting disasters. The research feeds his fears, and he finds satisfaction in that, testing whether being informed about disasters will give him some type of control over catastrophe.

“He was visiting the place he often went at night, after the cockroaches stopped scurrying up the walls of his stomach and he shuddered into a restless semiconsciousness. It was a nightmare city, a phobopolis.”

Mitchell’s internal monologue during his pitch to clients reveals that he truly believes that a catastrophic incident could happen at any moment. This belief is what sets Mitchell apart from Charnoble and Jane. His efforts at FutureWorld stem from a desire to spread truth and awareness rather than to profit off the fear of clients. This quote ties into the theme of The Business of Fear. The cockroaches are a symbol, like other vermin, of Mitchell’s anxiety.

“He had the subtracted look of an automaton or mannequin. […] Something had been subtracted. FutureWorld was working. Not merely as a business but as a treatment.”

Mitchell feels a sense of validation from his work, but his health is declining, as evidenced by the negative connotations of this passage’s word choice (“automaton,” “subtracted,” etc.). His newfound wealth and notoriety distract him from his obsession with disaster, but they do not cure his anxieties. It becomes increasingly clear that the satisfaction FutureWorld provides is superficial and will ultimately fail.

“It had become a game to him. FutureWorld had transformed him from a neurotic paranoid into something much stronger, more powerful: a businessman.”

Mitchell feels validated by his job at FutureWorld. The quirks that once set him apart now make him a valuable asset. Buoyed by his growing wealth, Mitchell tells himself that he has learned to see disaster as a businessman would: in terms of cash.

“He realized that the more strongly he believed in his prophecies, the more strongly they did. It helped anxiety was in the air.”

As Mitchell devotes his life to the study of catastrophe, the tension of the novel builds. Nathaniel Rich often uses words such as “prophecy” and “prediction” to create a sense of dread, encouraging readers to buy into Mitchell’s words just like his clients (and Mitchell himself). The words suggest that Mitchell’s predictions are not just sales tactics but logically sound warnings.

“He blamed himself for not anticipating this sooner. Then he blamed Elsa. Her mystic optimism had brainwashed him into seeing his work as just, well, work. But it wasn’t just work. It was life and death.”

The drought ends and Mitchell begins to realize that the impending downpour will have disastrous effects on New York City. Mitchell blames Elsa, who acts as a symbol of freedom from anxiety, for the situation. Mitchell’s own fears trap him, and his anger toward Elsa represents the dissatisfaction he has with himself. However, unable to admit that he is wrong, he doubles down on viewing Elsa’s worldview as foolish and her influence on him as pernicious.

“When he opened his eyes his small, safe, ugly apartment had been transformed into a prison. The Psycho Canoe, its paddles stowed safely beneath its seats—the idea of a water escape, an exhilarating flight to safety—that was freedom. For the first time in his life he could laugh at risk. What was risk anyway? Risk was a canceled check, a fever dream that flees from daylight, a stubbed toe.”

Finding himself in the middle of an actual catastrophe, Mitchell abandons his constant worry about risks and outcomes. This begins a portion of the novel where Mitchell takes control of his fears: Mitchell, being well-read on disasters, is finally in his element. The nightmares and fears that constantly plagued him are replaced by action and agency as he navigates his way through the flooded streets of New York City, saving Jane and his own life.

“It occurred to Mitchell that Jane might be right in the short term—New York would come back, certainly Manhattan and perhaps certain swaths of Brooklyn. But what about the long term? […] Over the next year and decades, things would not be as before.”

The setting reflects Mitchell’s emotional state. When he recognizes that New York will not recover from the hurricane, he is also acknowledging that he will not be the same post-disaster. Jane is eager to see New York restored to what it was before the flood. Mitchell, however, accepts the changes that accompany catastrophe.

“That was the one thing unspoken between them. He should have told her to leave the city as soon as the storm came. But he had said no such thing. He did the opposite, in fact: when she asked him to wait for her, he had agreed.”

Mitchell, post-catastrophe, struggles to understand his relationship with Jane. He feels guilt about putting Jane in danger to ease his loneliness, though in reality, all he did was respond to her own decision to stay; he hasn’t fully grappled with how little control he has over other people. 

“Directly below them was the large three-story wooden building that Mitchell knew to be the old infirmary. This is where Elsa and the others had slept. But no one would sleep there again. It was burning down.”

Mitchell insists on visiting Elsa after he and Jane escape Hurricane Tammy, but when they reach Ticonderoga, they find the camp in a state of chaos. The overrun camp and the burning building force Mitchell to look entirely to himself for guidance: He cannot even consult Elsa about the virtues of her lifestyle, which increasingly intrigues him.

“As the bus passed Hartford (Please enjoy the ‘Insurance Capital of the World’!), the vast absurdity of the whole enterprise became a cattle prod and he was the dumb bovine, and the cattle prod was pushing one simple message into his animal brain. The message was: disorder always won in the end. The idea that man could order the world into his own design was the most pitiful fairytale he ever told.”

Mitchell realizes that he has no real control over nature. Although he was prepared in many ways to meet Hurricane Tammy, he did not have any influence over the force or path of the catastrophe. His career begins to seem futile, and he pulls away from Jane and her ideas about their new enterprise, Future Days.

“The future had arrived. It assumed the shape of a long white rectangular box with two windows looking out over the narrowest part of the East River. A coffin with a view.”

Jane and Mitchell are housed in a trailer on an island while New York recovers. This trailer reflects Mitchell’s feelings of being confined despite being safe and out of immediate danger. The pressure of returning to his old life is stifling, and he looks for a way to escape his former life, which now seems little different than death.

“He was doing more of that, he found. Sensing. Less logic, more intuition. He wasn’t confident that it was working.”

Mitchell begins to consider his instincts an asset as he follows Hank Cho to the Flatlands. His intuition saved him after Hurricane Tammy, and Mitchell now relies more on emotion than logic.

“For what was obsession anyway but a kind of intense faith? Yes, a new faith was required, something rigorous, ascetic, all-encompassing. Because if he couldn’t find one, then all he had was order.”

Mitchell decides to begin a new life as a homesteader in the remains of New York. He replaces logic (which, as an “obsession,” was never fully rational for him anyway) with something that isn’t premised on facts and reason: faith. Mitchell feels a sense of control learning to survive independently.

“The cynic in him laughed derisively. The logician in him, however, responded curtly, and not without condescension: It wasn’t a question of idealism; It was survival. In the Canarsie Bank Trust Company building he would create his own self-contained universe. This was a future.”

Mitchell realizes that his desire to homestead is not rooted in idealism but rather in his obsession with survival. He creates the best possible environment to cope with the unpredictability of nature and people. He cuts off socialization, refusing to interact with the other homesteaders who have joined his cause, as he understands that he cannot control anyone but himself. The environment and his choices reflect Mitchell’s new perspective of self-sufficiency.

“This was his land now. If he wanted to lie on it all night long, or even for weeks, until he wasted away and his flesh sloughed free of his bones—well, if he wanted to lie there for eternity, nobody could stop him, certainly not an intangible mass of vapor in the upper atmosphere.”

Until now, insects and vermin have been primarily metaphorical—representations of the creeping anxiety that infested Mitchell’s psyche. In this quote, Mitchell faces an actual “insectopolis” and lets go of those anxieties to seek unity with the environment. Mitchell’s homesteading lifestyle allows him to let go of his fear and embrace the chaos of the universe.

“The glimmer was a shard of glass wedged into the boundary wall at shoulder height. It was attached to a cracked window frame, one of thousands of pieces of debris that formed the wall of Mitchell’s fortress, nearly every component with rough surfaces and jagged edges.”

The wall Mitchell builds around his homesteading property reflects his emotional availability while also touching on the theme of reclamation. The pieces of his former life are gathered together to create something new and useful.