Based on the his rather broad definition of ethics when it came to his means of raising money as a child, (soliciting sponsorships for non-existent charity events on the premise that he is providing his neighbours the opportunity to feel good about themselves) it should come as little surprise that he gets into the business of real estate sales and development upon leaving University. Utilizing the contacts he established through his former fraternity he is quickly upon a fast track towards financial success.
Initially everything T. does has the feeling of being carefully evaluated in terms of expenditure and return. From taking his mother to Mass when she comes to visit him at University to the way he conducts himself with his fraternity brothers. Everything about him, and everything he does is calculated. He is always there for his fraternity brothers, which is everything from talking them down from potential suicide to convincing girls not to press date rape charges, ensuring their gratitude; even if they have no reason to like him, they depend on him.
Everything is working to plan for him until a series of seemingly unconnected events occur that will change the course of his life and eventually how he sees himself in relationship to the rest of the world's inhabitants. I know, it seems like every other book you read has somebody's eyes being opened to their "sins" and after their "epiphany" change their lives around and become a saint.
Thankfully Lydia Millet has a firmer grip on reality than that, and T. remains basically the same person. The only difference is that he starts to see there are more pieces at play in the world than what is necessarily in front of his eyes. When a housing project he develops displaces and causes the extinction of a breed of kangaroo rat, he begins to obsess about endangered species. He recognizes that humans have the potential to eventually destroy all life on the planet and he is afraid.
Someone told him that beneath each ant hill resides tens, if not hundreds of thousands of ants. He imagines that under the earth's surface they have excavated huge caverns, and has nightmares of them all of a sudden vanishing and the earth crumbling and his housing developments vanishing. In a desperate search for answers, and he's not even sure of the questions, he takes it into his head that he will understand things better if he breaks into the cages of endangered animals in the zoos.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!