68 pages • 2-hour read
Culpability
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness.
Mythology
Allusions to mythology appear throughout the narrative as a motif that illuminates the characters’ relationships with one another. Eurydice has the most explicit connection to her mythological namesake. Her appearance foreshadows danger, and Alice jokes that Eurydice’s name portends ill for her brother. These fears come to fruition when their relationship’s intensity leads Charlie to follow Eurydice out into a storm, echoing Orpheus’s descent into Hades, and come back without her. Though Eurydice lives, the connection between her actions and the myth amplifies the assumption that she died rather than survived the storm.
Lorelei also employs comparisons to mythology in her descriptions of humanity’s relationship to AI. Lorelei sees people on extreme polarities that she compares to the Venus and Adonis myth: Either they are like Adonis, “confident in [their] invulnerability and oblivious to peril” (87), or they are overanxious about danger, like Venus. This metaphor extends into the Cassidy-Shaw family’s dynamic, as Charlie acts like Adonis with his carelessness, and Noah and Lorelei are like the hovering Venus, constantly worried about protecting their son from danger.
In addition, Noah uses mythological figures to make sense of his relationship with Lorelei. He compares himself to the cupbearer of Olympus and views Lorelei as Zeus, the apex figure within an elite circle of the world’s movers. Noah feels like Lorelei’s invisible supporter, able to enter the gates of Olympus not because he’s also a god but because he serves Lorelei’s genius. Noah’s perception changes by the end of the novel when he comes to see Lorelei as Atlas, tasked with holding up the whole world, and himself as the “scaffolding” that supports the immensity of her burden.
Algorithms
Algorithms are the tools that Lorelei works with in her career, but they also function in the narrative as a symbol representing order and predictability. Lorelei has a personal maxim that “a family is like an algorithm” (3), which means that each member inputs data into their familial system so that they can work together to overcome challenges and mediate chaos. Since Lorelei has OCD and needs rigidity and patterns to feel safe, viewing her family as a flow of data rather than a random assortment of personalities helps her feel secure and offers a sense of control. Noah uses his wife’s philosophy to understand how she perceives the car accident: “And now I see those moments through Lorelei’s eyes, the symbols from her notebook swimming in front of me. Before Charlie jerked the wheel, […] our whole family was operating together like some delicate machine, like an algorithm—until the algorithm failed us” (223). Lorelei tries to use calculations and equations to figure out what glitched in their family algorithm to produce such a tragedy, but she is faced with the reality that humans aren’t so easily reduced to an algorithm.
Through this lens of symbolic cause-and-effect calculations, Noah worries that the algorithm of his own life is catching up with him. He fears that the inputs of his childhood—his family’s money troubles and insecurity—prove that he’s destined for the same fate and that his current security is a farce. He believes that he can ensure Charlie doesn’t face the same destiny by programming his life with schedules, ambition, and opportunity. However, both Noah and Lorelei come to see that “life is not an algorithm” that can be controlled or predicted with data computations (336). As much as they want to ensure the success and safety of their family, the natural disorder of life and human emotion will always cause unpredictable disruptions.
Cellphones
Cellphones are part of the characters’ material reality in the text, but they are also a motif that helps expand the theme of The Complexities of Technological Dependence. Every character owns a cellphone because they are critical tools for modern life. The situation with young Izzy wanting a phone exemplifies how central cellphones are in a person’s social life, both to stay connected with others and to stay up to date on cultural references. Other events in the text demonstrate how intensely the characters view cellphones as a part of their lives. Izzy’s first thought after being removed from the car wreck is to ask Charlie for her phone, and Eurydice literally puts her life in danger to save her cellphone from going overboard on the boat. In both situations, the cellphones are felt to be an extension of the character’s body, a part of themselves that must also be rescued from calamity.
The motif of cellphones is indivisible from the text’s discussion of distracted driving, as people are so consumed by their digital lives that it causes harm in the physical world. Noah explains that the issue crosses identity boundaries, as people from all walks of life overuse their cellphones while driving. Charlie texts behind the wheel of the self-driving minivan, and his momentary distraction creates the conditions for a fatal automobile crash. Morrissey lectures Noah about Charlie’s behavior, but ironically, she drives out of the hospital parking lot with her phone in her hand. This small moment exemplifies just how commonplace texting and driving is, as even its most staunch critics can thoughtlessly and habitually thumb their phones in any situation.
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