Scene 184: orin tumbler roaches

Summary

Orin wakes inside a cage-sized, custom-made inverted bathroom tumbler of green glass — drugged, his foot possibly broken from kicking the unbreakable wall, CO2 steam fogging the sides — while the faces of his latest Subject (the "dexterous and adoring Swiss hand-model," now revealed as A.F.R., along with the wheelchaired "fan" who shared her accent) watch from outside, looking at his eyes rather than into them. An amplified voice through a louvered vent periodically demands "Where Is The Master Buried," a demand so surreal that Orin gratefully classifies the whole experience as one of his bad dreams. The last paragraph pivots to Mlle. Luria P———, who disdains such theatrics (she'd lobbied simply for rubber gloves and two or three minutes alone with Orin's own testicles) and who has accurately predicted what Orin will do when the vent slides back and the sewer roaches pour blackly in: splay himself against the glass, face gone white, and shriek "Do it to her! Do it to her!" — at which Luria rolls her eyes at the A.F.R. leader, "whom she had long regarded as something of a ham."

What to notice

Two pages of exact contrapasso: the man who suffocated Phoenix sewer roaches under inverted glass tumblers and left them dying on the bathroom tile in gradually steaming glasses wakes inside the same apparatus scaled to himself — the book's annular justice at its most literal, the punishment custom-built ("the sort of thing that would have to be made special"). The surveillance theme closes in a single preposition: the adoring Subject now "looking at his eyes rather than into them" — months of intimacy revealed as technical observation by one changed particle of grammar. Notice Orin's last characterization: he classifies the torture as one of his bad dreams and is grateful for the reading — denial as survival strategy, held to the end. The amplified demand — "Where Is The Master Buried" — speaks the plot's MacGuffin aloud at last, to the one Incandenza who might know where it is; and his answer, when the roaches pour in, is the novel's most damning speech-act: "Do it to her! Do it to her!" — Orwell's Room 101 betrayal, the punter's final words in the book, language used solely to redirect pain onto someone else. Even the horror gets professionally deflated: Luria, who lobbied for three minutes and rubber gloves instead, rolls her eyes at a leader she considers a ham — atrocity as workplace disagreement about style.

Themes in this scene

• Annularity: exact contrapasso — Orin, who suffocated Phoenix's sewer roaches under inverted glass tumblers and left his bathroom floor "a little obstacle course of glasses with huge roaches dying inside" (scene 012), wakes inside the same apparatus scaled to himself; the punishment is his own ritual returned with interest.
• Surveillance and Disguise: the honeytrap consummated — the Subject's months of "adoring" surveillance, the wheelchaired fan, the Swiss accents all stagecraft; even the interrogation is theater Luria finds hammy.
• Nationalism and O.N.A.N.: "Where Is The Master Buried" — the A.F.R.'s entire campaign compressed into one amplified demand; the hunt for the Entertainment's duplicable Master reaches the one Incandenza who might know where it is.
• Communication and Solipsism: the Subject meets his eye but looks at, not into it; nothing Orin shouts is acknowledged; his final utterance is the book's most damning speech-act — language used solely to redirect pain onto another.