Chapters 1–3 Summary and Analysis
Chapter 1
The Glass Hotel opens in 2018, with a woman named Vincent having fallen overboard into the ocean. As she drowns, she recalls specific moments from the past: the time she was suspended for graffitiing the phrase “sweep me up” on the window of her high school; the time she received a brand new video camera when she was thirteen and used it to take short videos of the ocean; the instant recognition she felt when she first encountered the third mate of the Neptune Cumberland, evidently the ship she has just fallen from. She suddenly wishes to see her estranged half-brother, Paul, and her consciousness is then transported to a foreign city. She sees Paul there, looking “terrible,” right before the chapter ends abruptly.
Chapter 2
In 1994, Paul is attending the University of Toronto as a finance major, though he wishes he were majoring in music composition. He has struggled for years with a heroin addiction, and his mother hopes that college and a stable job will help him get his life back on track. However, Paul feels lonely and adrift at school, finding it difficult to connect with his peers due to his distance from them in terms of age and life experience. He asks a classmate for recommendations on where to see live music, and he attends a concert by a band called Baltica. He is attracted to the lead singer, Annika, who seems wary of his attempts at flirting. In hopes of seeing the band again, he asks them which local clubs have the best dancing. They tell him to try the club System Sound on Tuesday nights.
Paul goes to the club on a Tuesday, but the Baltica members are not present. He buys a small packet of ecstasy from a fellow clubgoer and has a bad experience, waking up hours later disoriented and groggy. He goes to the club again over the winter holidays, since his mother has decided not to spend the holidays with him. This time, Baltica is present. Paul approaches them and, in an effort to impress the band, offers them the rest of the ecstasy he bought the last time he was at the club. However, the drugs are poorly made, and Charlie Wu, the keyboardist, dies after taking two of the pills.
Paul flees to the home of his half-sister, Vincent, who has recently dropped out of high school. The last time Paul saw Vincent was when she was thirteen. Vincent’s mother had just disappeared while canoeing; some people claimed it was an accident while others believed it may have been suicide. Paul was meant to help watch over the troubled Vincent, but he was unable to stop her from writing graffiti on her school walls. He was then kicked out after his father caught him smoking pot. Paul has a hard time containing his resentment towards Vincent, who was born after Paul’s father left him and his mother for another woman.
Back in the present, Paul, Vincent, and Vincent’s friend Melissa attend Y2K parties. While dancing at a party, one of Baltica’s songs begins playing, and Paul sees Charlie Wu’s ghost, which shocks and disconcerts him.
Chapter 3
In 2005, Paul, Vincent, and Melissa are all working at the Hotel Caiette. The hotel is located on a remote island in Northern Vancouver, near the town where both Paul and Vincent grew up. Paul is the night houseman, Vincent is the bartender, and Melissa drives the ferry. The night manager, Walter, explains that he came to work at the Hotel Caiette after a traumatic separation from...
(This entire section contains 1120 words.)
Unlock this Study Guide Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
his lover of twelve years. He views the hotel as a “successful escape” and is charmed by the remote tranquility of the setting.
The chapter opens as those present in the lobby at the time react to a graffiti incident. Someone wrote the phrase “why don’t you swallow broken glass?” on the window of the hotel. Walter immediately suspects Paul after Paul walks into the hotel and asks if Jonathan Alkaitis, the hotel’s visiting owner, has seen the graffiti. Alkaitis has actually not yet arrived, and the only guest who sees the graffiti is Leon Prevant, a shipping executive.
Jonathan Alkaitis arrives several hours after the incident, his flight having been delayed. Walter reflects that nothing about Alkaitis would have indicated he would “die in prison.” Over the next few days, Alkaitis has dinner with Leon, whom he convinces to become an investor in Alkaitis’s business. Paul is asked to resign over the graffiti incident, and Vincent also leaves the hotel in order to become Jonathan Alkaitis’s lover.
Analysis
The first three chapters help to establish the novel’s unique approach to both time and narration, in addition to introducing key settings and characters. Vincent’s experience of drowning is fragmented and dream-like, and the entire scene provides a chilling introduction to a story whose narrative has not yet begun to unfold. Regardless of what else happens going forward, readers are made aware that this story ends with the death of a character by drowning.
The sudden transition back to 1994 and to Paul’s experiences at the University of Toronto begins to hint at the ways in which people and places are connected throughout The Glass Hotel. At the end of chapter one, a dying Vincent sees Paul in a foreign city, looking “terrible, gaunt and undone.” The following chapter explains that Paul struggles with heroin addiction, and the interspersed commentary gives the chapter a sense of being told in retrospect. Indeed, Paul is explaining the events of 1994–1999 to a therapist in 2019, suggesting that his visitation from the dying Vincent in chapter one, which is set in late 2018, may have prompted him to seek professional help.
These sections also provide important context about the relationship between Paul and Vincent: Paul’s father left him and his mother in order to start a family with Vincent’s mother. Vincent’s mother then vanished under mysterious circumstances when Vincent was thirteen. Although ideally Paul and Vincent would be able to comfort and support each other through their difficulties, it is made clear that each of them has struggled with anger, resentment, and personal demons, preventing them from connecting in a meaningful way.
Chapter three is important for a different reason, as it sets the groundwork for nearly all of the future chapters. Jonathan Alkaitis is introduced as a successful New York businessman, but readers are also informed upfront that he will die in prison. However, before his criminal activity is revealed, he makes contact with Vincent, Leon Prevant, and Walter, drastically altering all of their lives in different but similarly significant ways.
