Katabasis

“‘Hell is lonely,’ said Peter. You’ll want company.’

‘Hell is other people, I’ve heard.’”

“Hell is other people” is a quotation from Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit. Within the context of this existential play, which questions and explores how people create meaning, the quote implies that “hell” is a state in which one is subjected to the view other people have of them. Throughout Katabasis, both Alice and Peter are trapped within the limited frame in which the other perceives them. Since “people” in this novel are almost entirely academic, this quotation also relates to the theme of Academia as an Infernal Structure.

“Loss of identity was a terrifying prospect. Who were you without your memories, your background, your relationships, your station? What if your lot in the next life was far worse than the life you’d just lived? It didn’t matter that in theory souls enjoyed infinite lives, and infinite chances to experience things good and bad. From the subjective perspective of the soul, reincarnation was no different from death.”

The novel explores what constitutes identity and personhood and what makes life worth living. Alice’s identity—and those of the undergraduate magicians she is talking to here—is wrapped up in her intellectualism. A person like Alice, who believes their worth is contingent on their intellectual identity, puts an entity like “your station” alongside one like “your relationships.” Through her journey, she will begin to value relationships and material joys more than accolades.

“Alice, for much of her graduate career, considered Professor Grimes a necessary trial. What didn’t kill you made you stronger—or at least gave you a thicker skin. For most of her life she had been first in her class, and she saw no reason why the PhD should be any different. She only had three more years to go—and then two, then one—she only had to rub the sleep from her eyes and take a deep breath and survive every day and ignore every inconvenient truth until she had her diploma, until she was free.”

This quotation characterizes Academia as an Infernal Structure in a literal sense: Alice believes she has to suffer through the punishment of Grimes’s abuse before graduating with her PhD and getting a job, which she thinks will make her happy.