Something Happened Themes

When you think of the perfect mid-century American home, you probably picture the living room from I Love Lucy or the kitchen from Leave It To Beaver, or something like that. But in Something Happe...

Pretty much everyone in Something Happened is about two steps away from the loony bin. Family members, officemates—anyone could crack at any moment. Turns out suburbia is a scarier place than you...

Marriage seems like just another box to check off on a long list of Stuff You're Supposed to Do in Something Happened. Most men like Slocum know it's expected of them, yet marriage only further per...

Let's talk about sex. Better yet, let's let Bob Slocum do the talking about sex, since he sure does have do a lot of that in Something Happened.For teenage Slocum, sex was something of a fantasy. H...

The 1960s may have been big on freedom of speech, but you'd never guess it from the way people communicate in Something Happened. Basically, communication in this novel just doesn't happen.Slocum s...

Nobody in Something Happened can ever get any satisfaction. An unknowing victim of suburban disillusionment, Slocum is never happy. His work doesn't fulfill him, since he knows that what the compan...

Something Happened pretty much convinces you that 1960s suburban American was the set of a horror movie. The atmosphere of the novel is so creepily scary that is makes you consider the uncomfortabl...

In Something Happened, the hands of time just keep on spinning. Everything is cyclical: work is cyclical; unhappiness is cyclical; even death is cyclical. People die, are filed away, forgotten, and...

Bob Slocum constantly questions who he is, and he wonders if parts of his personality are truly his own. One reason for that is that he's always imitating other people. He borrowed his handwriting...

It's hard to tell what is really real in Something Happened. Slocum's dreams, nightmares, and realities all seem to intersect at some point in the novel. What Slocum fears most in life comes true i...