How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I get the willies when I see closed doors. Even at work, where I am doing so well now, the sight of a closed door is sometimes enough to make me dread that something horrible is happening behind it, something that is going to affect me adversely; if I am tired and dejected from a night of lies or booze or sex or just plain nerves and insomnia, I can almost smell the disaster mounting invisibly and flooding out toward me through the frosted glass panes. My hands may perspire, and my voice may come out strange. I wonder why. Something must have happened to me sometime. (1.1)
Slocum's fear of closed doors comes from accidentally catching his father in bed with his mother one time. Or maybe it comes from the knowledge that he was poor, or that his father died unexpectedly. Or maybe it comes from the sad, discouraging realization that no matter what in life he tries to do, somebody close by will always be able to do it much better. Well, whatever it was that caused Slocum to get the willies each time he sees closed doors, it must have been pretty tremendous.
Quote #2
When friends, relatives, and business acquaintances are stricken with heart attacks now, I never call the hospital or hospital room to find out how they are, because there's always the danger I might find out they are dead. I try not to talk to their wives and children until I've first checked with somebody else who has talked to them and can give me the assurance I want that everything is no worse than before. (1.10)
There are many things Slocum never wants to find out, and one is them is that anybody he knows is dead. His aversion to hospitals stems from his fear of opening a door of a private room and coming upon some awful sight for which he could not have prepared himself (such as the time he saw a rubber tube running down from inside someone's nostril).
Quote #3
Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur. I dislike anything unexpected. (1.15)
Slocum dislikes anything sudden, from death to rearranging office furniture to surprises that are organized to bring him pleasure. They always end with an aftertaste of sorrow and self-pity, a feeling that he has been exploited for someone else's delight.
Quote #4
The possibility of finding a live mouse behind every door I opened each morning filled me with nausea and made me tremble. It was not that I was afraid of the mouse itself (I'm not that silly), but if I ever did find one, I knew I would have to do something about it. (1.19)
Before Slocum earned enough money to live in his Connecticut suburb, he lived with his family in a New York apartment. There was a mouse problem, and it made him uncomfortable that his wife wanted him to do something about all the critters.
Quote #5
In the office in which I work there are five people of whom I am afraid. Each of these five people is afraid of four people (excluding overlaps), for a total of twenty, and each of these twenty people is afraid of six people, making a total of one hundred and twenty people who are feared by at least one person. Each of these one hundred and twenty people is afraid of the other one hundred and nineteen, and all of these one hundred and forty-five people are afraid of the twelve men at the top who helped found and build the company and now own and direct it. (2.1)
Just about everyone in the company is afraid of somebody else in the company. A lot of this stems from a lack of communication, but it also probably stems from the fact that when you get right down to it, the office is a dog-eat-dog kind of place. There's all kinds of competition going on behind those smiles, and nobody is that concerned about wrecking another person.
Quote #6
But this feeling of failure, this depressing sense of imminent catastrophe and public shame, persists even here, where I do good work steadily and try to make no enemies. It's just that I find it impossible to know exactly what is going on behind the closed doors of all the offices on all the floors occupied by all the people in this and all the other companies in the whole world who might say or do something, intentionally or circumstantially, that could bring me to ruin. (2.5)
Slocum tortures himself with the thought that what lies behind closed doors is out to get him. Perhaps there are people conspiring to find out something about him that will mean the end of him, though he can't imagine what that something is.
Quote #7
Why would I want to admit to anyone that I hate and fear the man I work for, yet continue to work for him? Why do I let myself agonize over what even at best would have been no more than an amusing three-minute speech? The sky is falling, tumbling down on all our heads, and I sit shedding tears over an unhealing scratch on a very tender vanity. At least my boy's problems are real. They occupy space. (5.10)
Though Slocum is fearful of Green and Kagle and Baron and just about everyone else in the company, he feels his worries are still rather petty and insignificant compared to those of his son—who, like Slocum, is pretty much afraid of everyone and everything.
Quote #8
And then I understood why he did not move: he could not move. He was paralyzed. He was devoid of all power and ability to act or think. He could not even panic. He did not move because he could not move. He did not speak because he could not speak. He did not hit back because he could not hit back. He did not cry out or cast his gaze about for help because he couldn't: the thought was not there. He had no voice. (5.144)
Much to his own horror, Slocum witnesses his son become paralyzed by fear after he is slammed down by another boy in a summer camp relay race. It's Slocum's worst nightmare come true, an apparent onrush of death bearing down on him through the senseless, stupid action of another little boy.
Quote #9
I have this constant fear something is going to happen to him. (5.197)
Slocum reveals that his son is the kind of kid who is susceptible to freak accidents, like getting stabbed to death in the park or getting blastoma of the eyeballs. This—spoiler alert—is an eerie foreshadowing of what ultimately happens to his son.
Quote #10
There is so much inner fright. I was born, I was told, with a mashed face and red and blue forcep bruises on my shoulders and arms but felt not one message of pain because I had no nervous system yet that could register any. But I knew what loneliness was. I was already afraid of the dark. Or the light. If I knew what cold and sleet were I would have been afraid of those too. (8.29)
Sometimes, ignorance truly is bliss. Slocum learned early on to fear loneliness, dark, light, and coldness. So what does that leave him with? Is he pretty much afraid of life itself? Does he have reason to be?