Everyone in This Room Will Someday be Dead

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1 Summary: “Advent”

Content Warning: In general, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead includes alcohol addiction, anti-gay bias and slurs, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, and a death by suicide.

Part 1 begins with Gilda disoriented from a car crash. Her arm is broken, but she is unable to feel it. She pretends to be unconscious or dead in order to avoid interacting with the woman who hit her. While pretending to be unconscious, Gilda thinks of her pet rabbit, Flop, whom she had from ages eight-10. Flop suddenly died when she was 10 and began her lifelong obsession with the fragility of life and her own death.

Gilda drives herself to the hospital in her crumpled car, not wanting to bother emergency paramedics. She’s a regular at her local emergency room. She frequently visits when having panic attacks, believing that her heart is going to give out. Eleanor, Gilda’s girlfriend of a few months, worries about the accident, but Gilda acts as if it didn’t happen.

Gilda soon loses her job at a bookstore due to her worsening depression. She runs out of money, and her apartment becomes dirty. Gilda’s parents are unsupportive, while her brother Eli has his own mental health conditions and can’t support her.

The house across from Gilda burns down and the family’s cat Mittens goes missing in the aftermath. Gilda dreams about the cat dying in a fire. She spends money she doesn’t have to buy a fire extinguisher to ensure her apartment doesn’t burn down. Stressed by the loss of her job and renewed fear of death, Gilda goes to an address listed on a pamphlet she was given for free mental health services.

When Gilda arrives, she discovers the pamphlet’s location is Saint Rigobert’s Catholic church. As a lesbian atheist, Gilda wants nothing to do with the church. Before she can leave, the church’s priest, Jeff, mistakes her for a job applicant. Grace Moppet, the church’s previous secretary, recently passed away. Gilda doesn’t tell Jeff the truth because she desperately needs a job. She impresses Jeff with her technical know-how (such as being able to navigate an email inbox) and gets the job.

Part 1 Analysis

Part 1 establishes the absurdity and disorientation that rule Gilda’s life. Her car accident occurs with little meaning or context. As readers, we don’t know the specifics of who caused it, where it happened, and how it happened. This lack of detail creates a disoriented feeling that continues throughout Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, mirroring Gilda’s confusion at the world around her. Gilda is a passive protagonist for much of the novel, taking a backseat to the absurdity and disorientation that drive her from one situation to the next. The loss of control in Gilda’s life, coupled with the disorientation conveyed to readers through the story’s structure, reinforces the themes of Living Authentically and Mental Health and Financial Precarity. Gilda feels she can’t live authentically, and so has little control over her life—exacerbated by her parents’ lack of support. Likewise, due to her poor mental health, she struggles to control her immediate circumstances and connect with others. Her inability to wash dishes and the dishes’ piling up (symptoms of depression) reinforce the narrative’s emotional piling on. In a way, Gilda can only exercise control over her own person—and even then, her depression makes it difficult to take care of herself. She drives herself to the hospital despite being injured and reassures her girlfriend Eleanor of her good health, so as to not “bother” the parties involved. While coming from a place of concern, these decisions ultimately come at the expense of Gilda herself.

Gilda’s thoughts on Catholic aesthetics of death are prominent in Part 1. The church’s priest Jeff is “mournful” during his interview of Gilda, mentioning previous secretary Grace while he sits in a room full of crosses—which Gilda can only view as instruments of death, like nooses and guillotines (27). The Catholic church reflects Gilda’s preoccupation with death, as nearly every room is adorned with some signifier of the death of Jesus Christ. Catholic aesthetics fill Gilda’s mind every day at work, and are exacerbated by Grace’s death (which is later investigated by police) and Gilda’s occupation of the deceased woman’s role. This connection suggests that the Catholic church is a place for Gilda to confront her fear of death and the anxieties surrounding it. At first, Gilda’s condition is worsened by existing in this space: She can’t cope with her façade as a heterosexual Catholic woman, and the constant reminders of death make her obsess over her eventual fate. However, it is these Catholic aesthetics that help Gilda work through her fears. The novel’s division into Catholic holidays establishes the role of Catholicism in Gilda’s darkest moments, well into her eventual recovery in Part 5 (“Easter”). Catholic imagery directly provokes Gilda’s questions on The Human Condition while simultaneously guiding her toward healing.