V.

“Individuals do what they want, but the chain goes on and small forces like me will never prevail against it.”

Schoenmaker describes a form of feigned helplessness, using a real social and philosophical issue to cynically justify his greed and desire for profit. He is not overselling cosmetic surgery to insecure women, he tells Rachel, he is simply performing his role as part of a broken society.

“He will straddle the line aware up to the point of knowing he is getting the worst of both worlds, but never stopping to wonder why there should ever have been line, or even if there is a line at all.”

The characters that inhabit the novel’s confusing world often retreat into a search for identity: If they cannot understand their environment, they can at least attempt to understand themselves. As a result, they are eager to categorize themselves into groups. However, because they are too scared to commit to any one identity, in the end, they commit to nothing.

“Anything that can get drunk, he reasoned, must have some soul.”

If to have a soul one must be able to get drunk, a soul is deeply associated with inhibitions—the ability to transgress, rather than just perform the expected, is a marker of a functional inner life.

“One memory of home among the dark-skinned and tropical. But so German as to be ultimately a parody of home.”

White ex-pats in Cairo are desperately chasing a cruel nostalgic parody of their past. They are unhappy in their present and feel dislocated from the world. The difficulty is that nostalgia and time have corrupted their memories, removing any negative elements so the past seems better than any present could ever be. Looking for this imagined past is a fool’s errand.

“He worked without the usual slacking off, believing himself no more animate than the spanners and screwdrivers he handled.”

Like Profane, Schoenmaker feels the inherent tension between animate and inanimate objects. The pain of seeing Evan lose his good looks in a needless and failed round of cosmetic surgery shocks Schoenmaker into shedding his humanity to protect his psyche.

“Let me know if you feel anything.”

The anesthetic that prevents Schoenmaker’s patient Esther from feeling him cut into her face and remove her nose is symbolic of the alienating effect of the violence and horror of the 20th century, which has now rendered the world numb. Schoenmaker’s question here becomes a desperate plea, an anxious desire for anything that can move his emotional register.

“Now Winsome had been brought up on the white Protestant sentiments of magazines like The Family Circle.”

Roony has bought into the false ideas of commercial culture, believing that happiness looks like the families depicted in the magazines. The difference between his life and the traditional idyll depicted in idealized spreads makes him feel like a failure. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle of nostalgic misery: Consumers revere an imagined, commodified version of the past that never truly existed, while blaming themselves for not achieving this impossible lifestyle.

“Why did she have to behave like he was a human being.”

Profane finds being treated like a human offensive. He resents that other people do not loathe him with the same hatred that he directs at himself. As a result, the affection of others devalues them: If they lack the capacity to recognize his inferiority, how can he value their emotional connection to him?

“A schlemihl is a schlemihl.”

A schlemiel (the more common spelling) is a Yiddish word used to describe an incompetent person, often referring to a foolish figure who is the butt of jokes. Profane has turned the idea of being a schlemiel into his identity—something inescapable.

“He had decided long ago that no Situation had any objective reality.”

Sidney Stencil does not believe in objective reality. In his world of spies, people lie and shift through identities regularly, so each person exists in their own subjective reality. With so many competing versions of reality, no single objective truth can be accepted. Ahead of his time, Sidney is describing the postmodern alienation which will affect his son’s generation and the relativism that will drive Herbert Stencil to his obsessive quest for the truth about V.

“It was as if she saw herself embodying a feminine principle, acting as complement to all this bursting, explosive male energy.”

Stencil describes a painting of a woman who embodies “a feminine principle” (95), but this femininity is only examined through a male perspective. The woman was painted by a man, observed by another man, and this man’s story is being told by a third man (Stencil). The inherent patriarchal framing of this scene illustrates the impossible nature of objective reality—conflicting perspectives alter and shape the presentation of the figure and the idea it symbolizes.

“He was quite purely He Who Looks for V. (and whatever impersonations that might involve), and she was no more his own identity than Eigenvalue the soul-dentist or any other member of the Crew.”

Stencil has no real purpose. To remedy this, he becomes obsessed with the mysterious V. from his father’s journals, and his obsessive search for V. becomes an identity. Making an obsession into identity, however, is a paradox: If the search for V. is ever successful, then Stencil’s life loses direction. Stencil has set himself the task of solving a puzzle that he never truly wants to solve.

“Voila: conspiracy already, without a dozen words having passed between them.”

In the world of V., paranoia and conspiracies are simply part of life. With so many competing versions of reality, nothing can be trusted to be truly real. As a result, conspiracies dominate interactions. Here, a normal meeting is filtered through anxious paranoia, creating a cycle of suspicion and unknowability.

“I keep discovering that damned war has made the world older than I.”

WWII jades and wizens the world the characters inhabit, locating them in a post-history moment where nothing matters. The world is so worn out that its inhabitants feel the creaking, exhausted strains of reality falling apart.

“It happens every month in a succession of encounters between groups of living and a congruent world—which simply doesn’t care.”

The narrative switches to a list of mass deaths excerpted from a real-world almanac. The detached, formulaic way in which these mass deaths are described renders the text callous and inhuman. They are simply “a succession of encounters” (133), devoid of emotional or moral complexity. The world has become inured to mass death, numb to the pain and suffering of individuals, families, and communities.

“How could you kiss an object?”

Throughout the novel, characters struggle to form meaningful relationships with one another. Even physical expressions of love become problematic to narrate, as the novel questions where the line between animate being and inanimate body lies. The physical act of kissing an inanimate object is possible, but the emotional significance of doing so makes being human meaningless.

“Now memory is a traitor: gilding, altering.”

Memory is not accurate. Over time, memories fade, become corrupted, or are forgotten. This means that a person can be betrayed if using memories to form an important part of identity, beholden to a version of their past and of themselves which may never have existed.

“Keep cool but care.”

McClintic’s mantra is a remedy for alienation and detachment. The Whole Sick Crew, the Playboys, and the sailors want to seem “cool” (169) above all else, but this is ultimately an empty goal. McClintic’s phrase is a reminder to maintain balance, even if none of the characters can truly do so.

“Can’t you stop feeling sorry for yourself? You’ve taken your own flabby, clumsy soul and amplified it into a Universal Principle.”

Rachel accuses Profane of turning his anxieties and self-loathing into a diagnosis of society, an issue affecting many people in the novel. With no objective truth, characters cultivate and promote their own subjective interpretation of the world, which becomes their “Universal Principle” (177). Ironically, Profane’s problems are in fact emblematic of society, blighted by aimlessness, self-hatred, and anomie.

“It’s a happy sound.”

Rachel and Profane interpret the sound of champagne bubbles differently. Rachel declares as an objective fact that “it’s a happy sound” (196). Profane, however, disagrees, dismissing what Rachel believes is a universal truth as her subjective reality.

“You sailed a week after I left you. So a week is all we’ve lost. All that’s gone on since then is only a sea-story.”

Paola reshapes reality to suit her emotional needs. After reuniting with her husband, she claims that even time can be subjective. Reality is reframed as a “sea-story” (205)—a fiction that allows readers to pick and choose what to believe. Paola is using the subjective nature of reality to repair her relationship.

“You are as sick.”

Stencil complains to Fausto that Profane’s physical sickness is actually demonic possession: He has been possessed by the spirit of V. Fausto turns this accusation around, calling Stencil’s obsession with V. a debilitating mental illness. Stencil is indeed possessed by V., as he has turned his entire existence into a pursuit of V.’s identity.

“The only change is toward death.”

In a world of competing subjectivities, death is one of a few objective truths. In this sense, death has the power to obliterate subjective reality and impose truth on any character.