How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
A familiar misery was on me. I was separated from Deborah as much as a week or two at a time, but there would come a moment […] when it was impossible not to call her.
This is a double-edged sword for poor Rojack. On one hand, his feelings of loneliness make it impossible to stay away from Deborah, but on the other, his helplessness in the face of these feelings only make him feel worse. As a result, he's stuck in a sort of no-man's-land between emotions, completely unsure about how to feel.
Quote #2
At moments like that I would feel as if I had committed hari-kari and was walking about with my chest physically separated from my groin. (1.36)
Ouch. In this passage, we see how Rojack's fear of emasculation fuels his feelings of dissatisfaction. Because of these feelings, Rojack tries to use sex to validate his masculinity and gain agency over his own life. It doesn't entirely work as planned, though.
Quote #3
Being step-father to Deirdre was the most agreeable part of our marriage; for that reason I tried to see her as little as possible now. (1.71)
At this point, Rojack is pretty much just wallowing in his own despair. If he were to visit Deirdre, he'd be acknowledging that he has a responsibility to take care of someone besides himself. He doesn't even seem capable of doing that anymore, though.
Quote #4
That instinct sickened suddenly with disgust; the miscarriage, after all, had been my loss as well. (3.120)
In our eyes, this might be the root of Rojack's feelings of dissatisfaction—to an extent, at least. Remember: Rojack fantasizes about impregnating every woman that he sleeps with, as if that will help him gain control of his life.
Quote #5
A leaden anxiety settled in my stomach; just that sort of bottomless pit I used to feel when I had been away from Deborah. (3.288)
Deborah's gone, but Rojack still can't escape his feelings of dissatisfaction. He expected that pain to go away once she was gone, but he was as wrong as wrong could be. Could it be that Deborah wasn't the only cause of his unhappiness, after all?
Quote #6
My burned-up lungs went clear—once again this night I was taking one of those fine new breaths I had not known in twenty years. (4.18)
Rojack feels as fresh and as clean as Outkast—what a far cry from the mopey sad-sack we've been hanging out with this whole time. Now that Rojack has murdered Deborah and met Cherry, he actually seems to be in control of his life.
Quote #7
I had no brain left, no wit, no pride, no itch, no smart, it was as if the membrane of my past had collected like a dead skin to be skimmed away. (5.41)
Despite his absolute exuberance just hours ago, Rojack is right back down in the dumps. For a while, he felt like he was in control of things, like he was in the driver's seat—but now that the cops are closing in, Rojack feels the same sense of paralyzing hopelessness that's crippled him for so long.
Quote #8
Civilisation is the successful if imperfect theft of […] these secrets, and the price we have paid is to accelerate our private sense of some enormous if not quite definable disaster which awaits us. (5.376)
This is some pretty heavy stuff, right? Interestingly, this passage seems to reveal Rojack's—and perhaps Mailer's—understanding of the dissatisfaction at the core of the modern experience. To Rojack, this unhappiness is due to the denial of fundamental truths about oneself. Now if only he could apply that knowledge to his own life…
Quote #9
And the dread I had escaped […] now flew in silent as the shadow of a bat, and my body was like a cavern where deaths are stored. (7.119)
It always happens the same way: First, Rojack does something crazy (either violent or sexual) and feels better, but then, in the next moment, he feels worse out of nowhere. If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then Rojack belongs in the loony bin.