“Seated on the edge of the fountain, hearing these sounds (my task suspended, entering a dangerous, purpose-free state of lull), I began to experience familiar symptoms of an affliction that, when upon me, always caused me to become less powerful and effective than was desirable.”

In this passage, Saunders sets up the dichotomy that drives Jill’s personal arc: the pull she feels to her former human self despite her mandate as an elevated being. The concrete detail of sound, later revealed to be the noise of a neighboring wedding party, triggers her longing to leave elevation and reclaim her human state. It also introduces the wedding as a symbol for human life and celebration.

“Rather than comforting him, he said, I advise you to lead him, as quickly as possible, to contrition, shame, and self-loathing.”

In this passage, the Frenchman provides Jill with an alternate choice for confronting Boone on his deathbed, setting up the novel’s thematic Tension Between Compassion and Justice. Faced with the allegation that Boone has done more harm than good in his life, the Frenchman challenges Jill to reflect on whether a person like Boone deserves the comfort she came to offer him or if it is more just to give him judgment in death.

“Dying in the back of a horse cart stuck in the mud? Or zinging toward help, air-con blasting?

Anyone with a lick of sense would choose the latter.

We had.

The world had.

That was what was so damn stupid about it. People forgot the empty larder. Forgot drought, forgot famine. Forgot what it was like to be at the mercy of the world.”

In this passage, Boone begins to defend himself by citing the positive impact that his work, and by extension the Industrial Revolution, has had on the world. This defense drives the idea that positive impact should outweigh or nullify any negative impact. At the same time, this method of argument exposes Boone’s tendency to redirect attention away from the issue: he doesn’t want to admit any fault, so he argues that none exists.

“But (joy, joy!) that hideous figure was not me, not anymore; nor was I the woman that figure had been when vital, i.e., before her demise, odiously burdened with her stunted diction, her limited view, her nominal ability to comprehend, her constrained love, which she could direct only toward those precious few with whom she had been randomly placed into proximity, i.e., friends, family, husband.

No: this, this now, was me: vast, unlimited in the range and delicacy of my voice, unrestrained in love, rapid in apprehension, skillful in motion, capable, equally, of traversing, within a few seconds’ time, a mile or ten thousand miles.”

This passage sees Jill exposing what makes elevation so appealing to her. The negative language she uses in her rejection of humanity— “hideous,” “burdened,” “constrained”—underscores the limitations of the human condition. By contrast, elevation enables her to transcend that state, so that she is no longer held down by her human limitations. She wants to stay elevated so that she no longer has to face the constraints she believes made her life so unsatisfying.

“To comfort one who remains willfully ignorant of what he has done is to provide no comfort at all, he said. If you truly wish to comfort him, bring him to admit his sin, then repent of it.”

The Frenchman's argument for urging Boone towards repentance positions compassion as nullified by the context. The nuance of his argument is that the search for justice can be a comfort in its own way, as it drives the guilty parties to acknowledge the suffering that they have caused other people to experience.

“And, well, yes, guilty as charged: even after Landon or Lerner or London from Legal had pulled him aside and pointed out the alarming prevalence of spurious signatures in the thing (Thomas Edison? Elvis Presley? Come on, it was actually kind of funny), they’d (he’d) continued, occasionally, to use it. To tout it. To, uh, unfurl it. As needed. The whole thing was a kind of white lie, okay? Like, in an opera, when, to indicate HOUSE, you put up a huge brightly colored cutout of a HOUSE.

Everyone knew it wasn’t a real house.

But it sufficed. Did the trick.

Served the cause.”

This passage reveals Boone’s duplicitous nature as he is exposed for inserting fake names into his petition decrying studies on climate change. Boone’s focus on the humor surrounding his actions emphasizes how little he cares about the issue at hand. He ends his argument by stating that the means justified the end result, “[serving] the cause,” suggesting that he doesn’t care about the truth as much as he cares about his objective of dominance in the industrial sphere.

“Above Mother’s dresser: a taped-up inspirational quote from a ladies’ magazine, yellowing with age. On the dresser itself: two wristwatches rubber-banded together, a mirrored tray holding a modest array of cosmetics, an owl feather, a ring made of bits of string (a gift from the spirited, unmanageable Willamina). Did the room smell of his mother? It did, it did.

For all the difficulties of his childhood, he cherished the old place still.”

In this passage, Saunders humanizes Boone’s character by making him nostalgic for the house he inhabited during his childhood, focusing on vivid details like the objects on his mother’s dresser. Although Boone thrives in his prosperity later in life, the idea that he “cherishes” the past suggests that he values the comfort it offers him more than the comfort his privilege gives him. This tension resonates with a later moment in the novel, where Boone finds comfort in the presence his mother’s spirit offers him, rather than in the vindication of his choices.

“That’s what powerful men did. Stayed quiet. Held secrets. Ran things from inside a tight protective circle, making perilous decisions only they were savvy enough to make, leaving normal morality to the mere earthlings, who lived and ate and died dully down below, never knowing the extent to which they were being shielded by a beneficent distant pulling of strings.”

This passage subtly demonstrates the principle of “inevitable occurrences” that dictates Jill’s worldview by applying it to Boone’s circumstances. Growing up admiring the rich and powerful, Boone develops the misconception that becoming like them requires him to be as discreet and protective as they are. This view informs his character as an adult while also explaining how he came to be as belligerent as he is towards his subordinates.

“You, like us, were never proven wrong or publicly disgraced or forced to apologize, said R. And, like us, lived well even until the end, king of your domain, eating regally, traveling widely, praised by many, and never did you recant, cower, waffle, or feel a need to reposition and/or prostrate yourself. 

K.J., pal, dear boy: salud! said G. You really helped us promulgate. 

Our views, said R. 

[…]

All these years later, and nothing much has been done, said R.”

In this passage, Saunders cements the idea that the Mels represent an extreme version of Boone, one who is beyond redemption. The Mels thrive on the knowledge that they have escaped accountability for their actions in life, which gave rise to the world that Boone lives in. In this way, Saunders suggests that the true legacy of people like the Mels is the continued degradation of the world, highlighting The Environmental Cost of Industrial Development as a central theme in the narrative.

“Wondering: Had the deed really been done? 

If so, with me not going back to jail and all, I could go ahead and have that family I’d always wanted, one that would admire the shit out of me, as in: Thanks, God, for giving us this dude who’s so frigging responsible because, even though he could still be out there getting all kinds of tail, instead he scores us this tight little rental, with a garage for all his tools and a ping-pong table out back on which he and the son he’d soon have, off his foxy wife, once he met her, would play a nightly game after dinner, although, however, if I, Paul Bowman, a.k.a. ‘the Bow,’ started losing and said it was time for bed? Kid best jump.”

This monologue offers Jill a glimpse into Bowman’s interiority, which makes her more sympathetic to him and prompts her transformation into her elevated self. She realizes that Bowman’s desire to kill Lloyd was not born out of malice, but out of a desire to transcend his difficult circumstances.

“Comfort. 

Comfort, for all else is futility.”

This passage marks the underlying thesis of Jill’s character. In her elevated state, Jill understands that it is useless to defy the predispositions that define a person while also limiting their choices. The “futility” then is in judging people based on their actions, which are, in Jill’s view, inevitable. This leaves “comfort” as her only recourse since she can only extend compassion to her charges in the light of their flawed nature.

“We sinned, brother, Dell said. Against the world, against God. 

In the face of this hollow sanctimony, my charge felt an urge to twist the knife. 

Well, I never could’ve done it without you, Ed, he said. Truly. That speech was more yours than mine. For sure. One hundred percent.”

In this passage, Boone reveals his greatest flaws as he responds to Dell’s crisis of conscience with mockery. Rather than be moved or inspired by Dell’s example, Boone is so committed to his legacy of profit and success that he would rather tear down a close collaborator like Dell than admit his own mistakes. Boone attributes Dell’s “sin” entirely to Dell himself, hammering on his guilt because Boone himself feels none.

“One must do one’s best, yes? he said. Having watched one’s loved ones suffer so, then being brought face-to-face with the individual alleged to have been a principal cause of that suffering, one must exert oneself to the utmost, I think.”

This passage underscores the environmental cost of industrial development by showing how underprivileged people like Mr. Bhuti must pay the price for Boone’s irresponsible actions. Bhuti acknowledges that because Boone cannot be persuaded to take accountability for climate change, Bhuti himself must try to adjust to the new reality of his world, taking tragedy as a given, rather than as something that can be prevented.

“He knew about it, about all of it. Knew the extent of it, was aware of many examples of it, knew he was often called out for some imagined part he’d supposedly played in it, but he—now, hang on a minute—he just had a bit of a quarrel with the damn logic. There’d always been droughts, yes? Were heat waves a new thing in the world? Some other fellow (ghost, ghoul, whatever) might just as easily have shown up here with a headful of grass-covered hillsides, serene mountain lakes, forests not on fire, unflooded towns, completely dry libraries, meadows teeming with life…”

In this passage, Boone doubles down on his argument by distancing himself further from the effects of climate change. Boone’s rhetoric depends on the absence of any concrete proof that he directly caused Bhuti and his family’s death. On the other hand, this argument willfully ignores the earlier points that would have addressed his concern, such as Boone’s forged petition decrying the science around climate change.

“Were the people here aware at all of the horrible truth Mr. Bhuti had just communicated?

Yes, they were. Many of them knew about it, believed in it. But were carrying on. 

It was, after all, a wedding.”

In this passage, Saunders drives one of the novel’s bigger ironies, which is that the world continues despite overwhelming tragedy. The wedding is a prominent symbol for this irony as it proceeds regardless of the main action occurring in Boone’s house. The interjection “after all” emphasizes this irony by making its reality feel matter-of-fact.

“Oh, I felt just sick. I did not want to be THIS THING anymore, this stiff elevated THING, but wanted, instead, to be me, sweet ME again, all the way, and for this whole awful dream (of having been blown up/killed/sent all over the place three hundred and forty-three times in all, so far, to a bunch of dying dopes who didn’t appreciate me at all) to be DONE, so I could be ME again back in that beautiful living body I knew and loved so well and had always so much enjoyed having. 

ME, ME again. 

With father, mother, friends. 

Husband.”

This passage marks a turning point in Jill’s character arc as she becomes actively revolted by the mission that her elevated nature compels her to fulfill. Saunders emphasizes Jill’s revulsion through linguistic techniques, capitalizing certain words for emphasis, interjecting thoughts with others in parentheses, and including the fragmentary speech at the end of the passage, where Jill declares her longing for the people who made her life feel more worthwhile than her death.

“Where was ‘duplex’? The entire length of ‘Crowne Street,’ including ‘laundromat,’ was now an ugly, block-long ‘Regional Data Center.’ 

Whatever that was!”

The irony of Jill’s longing to return to her humanity is the discovery that the concrete markers of her life have all been erased. The fact that the street where she used to live has been wholesale replaced by a data center extends the novel’s social critique of the environmental cost of industrial development beyond the oil industry and applies it to emerging technologies and markets like artificial intelligence and data systems. Jill cannot fathom what her home has become because the world has already moved on without her.

“What was I doing here, in this crappo graveyard, in this ugly little town that could never mean anything to me again? 

I’d received the gift of elevation from our great God in Heaven himself. 

And this was how I behaved? 

Elevation was true. It was. For sure. 

Me, elevated? Was real. Realer by a mile, at this point, than ‘Jill “Doll” Blaine.’”

Despite her longing to become her human self again, Jill quickly realizes that her nostalgia is futile and that the reality worth pursuing is that which exists in the present. This moment marks another turning point in her character arc as she understands that elevation is the only way she can find fulfillment, even if its pleasures are more abstract than those of her human life.

“I couldn’t seem to shake Jill ‘Doll’ Blaine (all she’d seen, been, and done) and didn’t want to. But neither could Jill ‘Doll’ Blaine shake me, the elevated part, and didn’t want to, for to be in touch even briefly with elevation is to know the bliss of being one with God.

In any event, I had to get back to it.”

In this scene, Saunders introduces a third possible outcome in the dichotomy between Jill’s human nature and her elevated nature. Jill’s hybrid nature enjoys the insight of being elevated while also being motivated by the same thoughts and feelings that drove Jill when she was still alive. Unable to shed either nature to embrace the other, Jill proceeds back to Boone’s deathbed with the capacity for both radical judgment and radical sympathy.

“If so, if you did know, and did it anyway? Which, if I’m being frank, I feel was probably, yes, the case? It breaks my heart, and I have to say, because I want, if we are really parting, for us to do so from a place of total honesty: 

It disappoints me, Daddy. 

Disappoints me greatly. 

I just feel really let down by you.”

In this passage, Julia expresses her doubt in Boone’s integrity, which is one of the factors that drives his moral conversion. Julia is a living extension of Boone’s legacy, and her initial praise of her father aligns with his self-congratulatory behavior at the start of the novel. Because she bears the seed of doubt in her mind, however, she cannot help confronting him with it before his death, which forces him to examine his own conscience.

“I got swept up, he said. 

In? I said. 

Me, he said. Myself. 

Goodness. 

But what else could I have done, he said. 

He was speaking, in his crude way, of elevation itself.”

In this moment, Boone’s admission of vulnerability mirrors the monologue that granted Jill insight into her murderer’s inner life. Though he is still in the process of admitting his mistakes, Boone’s acknowledgment that he became preoccupied with himself suggests the kind of self-examination that the Frenchman was urging him to conduct before death.

“There are so many possibilities once the mind allows them. I shall command the mighty levers. As is natural to me. I did no wrong. Yet wrong was done. By me. And yet: no blame. Blame dissipates the energy of the doing. We must fix, only fix. Fix, fix, fix.”

This passage marks the resolution of Jill’s conflict with Boone as Boone commits himself to working against the impact of his actions on global warming and climate change. Boone’s assertion that he is both faultless and has faults is a paradox that resonates with Jill’s philosophy of inevitable occurrences. Boone admits that mistakes were made, but that it is more useful to work towards their repair than to spend time litigating those mistakes with the objective of eliciting shame.

“No matter how many of the dying these two might convert, the effect on the world would be, I knew, negligible, since the dying were over, their potential for doing anything at all essentially nil. 

And yet, what else was there for them to do, but whatever they felt they still might?”

As Boone and the Frenchman exit the narrative, Jill reflects on their shared mission to convert others and prevent the continued destruction of the world. In this moment, Saunders plants a message of hope that the effort to reverse damage is more important than the outcome itself. The flawed nature of the world and the human condition make the latter impossible to guarantee. On the other hand, the expression of effort suggests a willingness to work towards one’s better nature.