Fetal / supine / horizontal

The regression-postures — curled, entombed, on one's back — are how the novel positions its addicts and its heroes of non-action. Erdedy sets the tone, "splayed, entombed between the two sounds, without a thought in his head" (p. 27), and the horizontal proliferates: "fetally curled" and "entombed" figures, "vegetablish, fetal-positioned mental patients," the "uprightly fetal" posture after a hit, supine Hal "photosynthesizing." Being flat has its own metaphysics here — "When you're on your back you don't have a shadow" (p. 782) — and the posture is finally ennobling as much as abject: across the section's last pages "horizontal" takes over, framing Hal and Gately as "twin horizontal heroes of non-action" (pp. 896-902), and the whole final chapter is read as "the stillness — the horizontality — of Gately and Hal." The motif runs from the addict entombed in his own morning to the hero whose heroism is precisely that he lies still and endures.