Main character and husband

The main character and her husband seem to have a complex relationship that leaves them

both longing for more communication and closeness. The yearning for closeness comes mostly

from the husband, who can’t seem to easily dissect his wife’s psyche. He makes jokes to prod at

her, like calling her “ghost bird”, although later in the book when we read his journal entries it

seems that the nickname holds more sentimental value than just a subtle diss at the things his

wife lacks. They seemed to have already had silent and subtle discrepancies before he went to

Area X. The kind of problems that don’t call enough attention to themselves to start a fight but

more than enough to slowly push them apart. The main character’s feelings of self pity and self

loathing bleed into her feelings towards her husband, and she begins to resent him for her own

subtle and uncommunicated shortcomings. Only once they are apart from each other do they

seem to gain more understanding and perspective on their relationship. The husband seemed

to write in a way that spoke directly to the main character in his journal entries. When she reads

this she is finally able to really hear him speak, without anything between them that had gotten

in the way of them speaking before. He longs for her to be with him, he thinks that she would

have loved Area X and he would have loved to watch her enjoy it. I got the impression that

when she read the journal entries that she felt pity towards him, she felt evil for not “letting him

in”. I think that the main character is selfish, not in an evil way and by no means on purpose, but

she is very self-absorbed. It seems to be that she is selfish only because she doesn’t

understand herself and it torments her. Her husband was her tether, and once he left she was

just left floating with confusion directed at herself and resentment at her husband for leaving her

alone. Once her husband came back, clearly changed in some way, the roles reversed to some

extent. She became his tether to the life they had shared before he left. She grounded him to

the best of her ability, while trying to get information out of him to satisfy her own curiosity. He

ended up being taken away, and the short time they spent together was useless in fixing any
aspect of their relationship. It was too late for him to comprehend it, he hardly understood his

own self after leaving Area X, and her attempts to help him regain full understanding were futile.

The main character is left to suffer knowing that the window for him to have fully loved her and

known her is closed, and the only evidence of their affection is in his journal. Her resentment

towards him seems to disappear, and she’s left longing for a different past, one that served them

more and got them closer.

Okay….wow. Finally. This was completely worth waiting for. Your brain is awesome.