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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Digital Communication
The novel revolves around the relationship between technology and communication in modern life. From emails and texts to social media marketing, characters use various forms of technology to connect, promote themselves, and navigate their personal and professional lives. When their preferred methods of communication aren’t available to them, they become very distressed. The PowerPoint chapter and the use of social media show these themes, as does the development of an entirely new version of English by the novel’s last story. Thinking about differences between digital connection and physical or verbal communication illustrates how technology can both bridge and widen gaps between people.
Punk Music
Music is a recurring motif that connects all the stories in this novel, and the most prominent musical style is punk. Punk plays either quietly in the background, live in a bar, or raucously through car speakers in most of the stories. Bennie Salazar's career as a record executive is preoccupied with it, as he feels like music from that era was saying something important, and that contemporary music is for hacks. By the end of the novel this isn’t far from true, as babies have begun to use tablets, and music redesigned for children is extremely popular. Music also works as a metaphor for harmony in the characters' lives. When the music described is gentle, the scene it appears in is also usually so. When it’s jarring it usually accompanies an equally unnerving mood, and so on. Punk music is a way for the emotionally repressed men of the novel to release their frustrations, and it reflects the carefully hidden peaks and lows of their happiness and personal development.
