Television

"For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is." Page 66

    So far in the novel, television has been a recurring motif. It's the characters' main source of information and entertainment, and allows for them to feel isolated from what is going on in the world. They reduce real disasters to just something that happened on TV. Television and media has become a universal obsession with all the characters in the novel. Television reflects their rampant consumerism ("Look at the wealth of data concealed in the grid, in the bright packaging, the jingles, the slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling out of darkness, the coded messages and endless repetitions, like chants, like mantras. 'Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it.'" Page 51), their passive isolation ("If [the town's] complaints have a focal point, it would have to be the TV set, where the outer torment lurks, causing fears and secret desires." Page 85), and their apathy ("In the psychic sense a forest fire on TV is on a lower plane than a ten-second spot for Automatic Dishwasher All." Page 67). Watching TV and having a media obsession is one of the only ways the characters can connect with each other.