How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Nearly every night, I jerked awake, sweating. Almost always, the dream was the same:
I walk along a dark city street; tall buildings without doors or windows loom at me through a dark swirling mist.
A towering shape cloaked in black strides toward me. I feel rather than see a chilling specter, a gleaming white skull with black eye sockets that stare at me in deathly silence. A finger of white bone points at me; the white knucklebones curl into a beckoning claw. I freeze. (P.9-11)
Dan's recurring nightmare sets up the antagonist of the story: Death. Basically, the Grim Reaper is the final boss of this book. Dan's fear of dying is the ultimate enemy he must overcome.
Quote #2
Suddenly I felt a terrible, nagging fear, the worst of my life. Was it possible that I had missed something very important—something that would have made a real difference? No, impossible, I assured myself. I cited all my achievements aloud. The fear persisted. (1.140)
This passage is from one of the visions Socrates gives Dan, the one where Dan sees himself aging. At this point in the vision, he's elderly and very close to death. He tries to list his achievements, but they don't stop his fear that he's lived life mistakenly. What do you think? Do achievements bring confidence in the face of death, or are they ultimately not a defense?
Quote #3
"You want Forever, you desire Eternity. In your deluded belief that you are this "mind" or "spirit" or "soul," you find the escape clause in your contract with mortality. Perhaps as "mind" you can wing free of the body when it dies, hmm?"
"It's a thought," I said with a grin.
"That's exactly what it is, Dan—a thought—no more real than the shadow of a shadow." (3.101-103)
As it is throughout this book, the mind is at fault for Dan's hope that his unique personality can persist after death. That hope, Socrates says, is a mere thought—and thoughts are unreal, mere illusions. All this talk of mortality is pretty grim—so here, have an emergency kitten.