What Kind of Paradise

Throughout the novel, Jane/Esme must gradually confront and reconcile herself with the complicated personalities and legacies of both her mother and father. While Saul/Adam and Tess seem very different in terms of their values and parenting styles, they each seek to create Jane/Esme in their own image. Through Jane/Esme’s dynamics with both parents, the novel explores the pressures of familial relationships.

Saul/Adam does his best to teach Jane/Esme the lessons he thinks will help her the most: He makes sure that she has survival skills, learns science and mathematics, and is well versed in both analytic and continental philosophy. In his estimation, he is a better father than his own father and a more loving parent than his wife ever would have been. Despite his confidence, he utterly fails his daughter. When he pens the “Luddite Manifesto” and goes on a domestic terrorism spree, Jane/Esme finally breaks from him, and it is only then that she can see the gulf between what kind of father she deserved and the one she has. She fully understands that he was wrong to isolate them when she becomes part of the tech community in San Francisco. She recalls Saul/Adam telling her, “Companionship is a crutch.