More Than This

When Seth first sees the machine that he was plugged into before waking up, he calls it a “coffin.” This recurring symbol introduces the ambiguity of Life and Death, as the coffins hold a double role. On the one hand, they traditionally represent death and these coffins enable people to retire from the real world in symbolic death. On the other hand, they are life-support machines designed to ensure the survival of the population. Originally, they were used as portals between the real and online world, which suggests that the transition between life and death, or between reality and fiction, is only a matter of perception.

When Seth sees his coffin, he initially believes that it means he has died and gone to hell. The coffins offer symbolic rebirth and provide Seth, Regine, and Tomasz with a second chance at living. In the end, Seth is “laid back gently into his coffin, the hands of his friends guiding him into place” (402), thus further blurring the line between life and death and challenging The Nature of Reality.

Storytelling appears as a motif throughout the novel to reinforce Seth’s questioning of The Nature of Reality. At first, Seth questions whether he is responsible for the things happening around him, as if they were figments of his imagination. Seth wonders whether the world in which he woke up is simply a story he is telling himself. He perceives coincidences like thinking about ducks and immediately spotting some in a pond as proof that he is making them up. He starts to doubt this explanation when he meets Regine and Tomasz, whom he realizes have no basis in his memories and therefore he could not make up.

Tomasz’s actions stop Seth from completely believing that the world he is in is real. Tomasz regularly saves his friends from danger at the last second in dramatic displays, something that Seth recognizes as a trope in fiction. The Driver also keeps appearing when Seth most expects him to, like when the trio is returning to Seth’s house for the final time: “If this was some kind of story I was telling myself, then [the Driver will] be waiting for us” (377). Seth’s recurring ambivalence about the reality of his surroundings is driven by his desire to make sense of what is happening. Exemplifying this idea, Regine argues that “People see stories everywhere [...]. We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn’t true” (189). This motif complicates the theme of The Nature of Reality and underlines the novel’s philosophy of relativism.