Penpal

Content Warning: This section depicts cursing, graphic violence, and child death.

“Sometimes forgetting is the gift that we give ourselves, and when we do, it’s back to the void, and it’s time for more guesses toward a better life.”

During the narrator’s discourse on the mind’s limited ability to remember the past, he describes forgetting as a “gift.” This is the earliest foreshadowing of the horrifying truth the narrator learns by the end of his quest in the novel. Likewise, the statement thematically introduces The Cost of Knowing the Truth, suggesting that oblivion can spare a person from the consequences of remembering the past.

“As is often the case, remembering one thing helps you remember another, and as you learn new things about your old life, memories that you thought were insignificant (or at the very least irrelevant) parts of your overall story are suddenly its foundation.”

This passage helps illuminate the choices underlying the novel’s narrative structure. Rather than telling the story in chronological order, the narrator relies on the context that each event reveals and its emotional impact. While some events happen later than others (for instance, those of Chapter 2 occur after those of Chapter 3), their relationship doesn’t become clear until the narrator has fully reviewed one memory and is then reminded of something else that happened to him. This is the process by which he arrives at an epiphany at the novel’s end.