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Another postmodern sunset, rich in romantic imagery. Why try to describe it? It’s enough to say that everything in our field of vision seemed to exist in order to gather the light of this event.

In Chapter 30, Jack chases Winnie Richards to the top of a hill where they both pause to stare at one of the magnificent sunsets looming on the horizon. In the wake of the airborne toxic event, all the sunsets have become beautiful and spectacular. They are yet another part of a postmodern world that, in its never-ending repetition, makes the pleasure of any individual experience impossible to convey. The sunset is spectacular and beautiful, but those qualities are diminished if all sunsets are spectacular and beautiful. The experience still matters, but the words that are left to describe it have been flattened out and emptied of any meaning by repetition. An almost passive resignation inflects Jack’s rhetorical question, “Why try to describe it?” In the modern world, words can’t capture the sublime beauty, though romantic images can be invoked.

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