36 pages • 1-hour read
No One is Talking About This
A 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
Social and Technological Tyranny
The theme of social and technological tyranny drives much of the plot and character development of the novel. The portal represents the majority culture at work. An increasingly homogenized global culture is policed by the expectations, norms, and social roles of the portal’s users. This form of social tyranny is enhanced by the addictive qualities of the portal so that complete dependence on technology becomes a form of tyranny created by the portal’s users.
The protagonist discusses the idea that cultural, gender, and political norms are just the way things are, saying, “But didn’t tyranny always feel like the hand of the way things were?” (7). The users of the portal go along with traditional or new habits because it is “what you do.” This impulse to follow the majority’s expectations in order to be accepted as a “good” person symbolizes the protagonist’s struggle with the social tyranny of the portal. As Part 1 of the novel progresses, the protagonist increasingly loses her sense of individuality, falling to the totalitarian social expectations the portal imposes on her. “The mind we were in was obsessive, perseverant” (71) and addictive. The protagonist becomes aware that she is no longer an individual but part of a collective “we” that acts as a single mind.
The protagonist escapes the social and technological tyranny of the portal by devoting her time and attention to her niece. However, the tyranny continues even after she puts distance between herself and the portal. Her husband continues to keep current with political and social movements in the portal, and the protagonist finds herself feeling distaste about the way topics are discussed in the portal. By the conclusion of the novel, the protagonist has been able to extricate herself from the social and technological tyranny of the portal yet must still acknowledge that she lives in a society in which this form of tyranny controls most people.
Dissociation, the Body, and a Life Online
The protagonist struggles to understand the dissociation from her body that she feels while devoting so much of her energy to the portal. Because of the nature of her interaction with the portal, the protagonist describes how little movement and exercise she gets, and how easy it is for her to feel removed from her body. This dissociation causes her anxiety and an increased interest in the way that bodies are used, which is reflected by her concern with the baby’s health.
At the beginning of the novel, the protagonist desires to use the portal to escape her body and all the demands it makes upon her. Watching movies is soothing to her as the “frictionless” bodies they depict aren’t shown to suffer the small annoyances and indignities of real human bodies: “The comforting thing about movies was that she could watch bodies that were not feeling they were bodies” (34). When reading a popular short story in the portal, the protagonist wonders how ghosts feel when they regain a body for one night a year. To the protagonist, everyone on the portal, including herself, is a ghost and exists there without a real body.
The protagonist’s dissociation from her body becomes a source of anxiety. She begins taking part in self-care rituals popular in the portal, including a bath full of stimulating salts. The bath succeeds in bringing the protagonist back to her sense of bodily self: “she was unaware of anything except the specific address of her own body, which meant […] that the hot bath had worked to restore her to herself” (100). When the baby is born, the protagonist falls in love with her exuberance and vitality, marveling at how the baby’s body grows even though her neurons are not expected to form reliable synapses.
Through her interaction with the baby, the protagonist closes the distance she feels between her body and mind. The dissociation created by the portal subsides as she focuses on the baby. After the baby’s passing, the protagonist returns nominally to the portal but does not feel invested in it. She has found a sense of her body and individuality that allows her to live more fully outside the portal.
Disappearances from the Portal
Due to the portal’s social and technological tyranny, absence from the portal is regarded as a “disappearance,” and the person in question is considered lost. The protagonist discusses several people who disappear in this sense. The theme of disappearance speaks to the pervasiveness of the portal in daily life. The absence of a person from the portal is thought of as a complete loss as it is unimaginable that they simply do not want to contribute to the portal any longer. The portal is a substitute for real life for many people, including the protagonist at the beginning of the novel.
When walking through Washington Square Park with a friend, the protagonist notices how the friend keeps track of real people she sees in the park and “watches over” them. When this friend later disappears from the portal, the protagonist takes this absence to mean that the friend is completely lost. Because the friend is unable to be found in the portal, the protagonist calls her “disappeared” and does not mention her again.
After the baby’s birth, the protagonist changes her perspective on what presence in the portal means. Since neither she nor anyone in the family posts about the baby, the baby can never “disappear” from the portal. They keep the memory of the baby alive after her passing by sending photos and videos of her to each other through text message. They hesitate to post about her as the sister fears the baby's appearance would scare people. However, the protagonist wonders if it would have been better to post about the baby during her life to spread the positivity and hope the baby taught her to other people in the portal.
When the protagonist's phone is taken in the final scene of the novel, the protagonist does not try to stop the theft. Her photos of the baby are lost, but she imagines the baby’s beauty will spread throughout the portal or among other people. The protagonist hopes to introduce the baby into the portal rather than wait for the baby to disappear from her memory.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence