Human Fallibility

The Glass Hotel examines the varieties of human fallibility, as well as the ways in which people’s failings can cause far-reaching consequences. Paul ruminates on the nature of fallibility early in the novel, asking, “does a person have to be either admirable or awful? Does life have to be so binary?” Indeed, no character emerges as straightforwardly good or bad. Alkaitis is perhaps the closest thing the novel has to a villain, but even he is humanized as he reflects on his losses and the circumstances that led him to make the choices that he did. On the spectrum of admirable to reprehensible, he undoubtedly lives closer to the latter end, but one of the central premises of the novel is that it is useless to evaluate human beings in simplistic terms.

Everyone is susceptible to different failings. Olivia admits to being a vain and dispassionate person in her youth; Paul succumbs to envy and resentment in his relationship with Vincent; and even Vincent gives into both wrath and apathy following her mother’s death. Everyone, knowingly or unknowingly, has wronged other people, but the consequences of those actions are rarely visible until it is too late. Paul attempts to befriend the members of Baltica by giving them leftover drugs, not realizing that his actions will lead directly to the death of Charlie Wu. That this outcome was an accident does not absolve Paul of guilt, but it does emphasize the unforeseen complexity of any given decision.

One of the most intriguing examples of human fallibility comes when Leon Prevant decides not to report on Geoffrey Bell’s history of violence. The decision haunts Prevant and renders him unable to seek out the rewards for his apparent moral lapse. However, the novel does not hold him accountable for this moral failing, as Bell truly did not have anything to do with Vincent’s death. Instead, Prevant must contend with his own sense of guilt, even while readers know that his decision not to file the report was, in an ultimate moral sense, correct. Human lives are unknowably complex and interconnected, and whether a decision is right or wrong is not always clear until it is too late.

Guilt and Complicity

The Glass Hotel explores the psychology of guilt, often by employing a supernatural motif. Ghosts are an intriguing and somewhat mysterious presence throughout the novel, typically coming to haunt those who have done something for which they feel guilty. Paul is haunted by the ghost of Charlie Wu, the Baltica band member whose death he was inadvertently responsible for. Jonathan Alkaitis develops an entire retinue of ghosts while in prison, all of them representing people who were ruined by his Ponzi scheme. Alkaitis in particular seems to struggle with the notion of guilt, at times attempting to place all of the blame for his actions onto himself and at other times feeling as though his punishment is unfair. He is particularly struck by news of Oskar’s testimony, in which Oskar talks about the state of both “knowing and not knowing” something, suggesting that one can be simultaneously guilty and guiltless.

The “office chorus,” Alkaitis’s main employees, all knew of the fraud they were involved in from a technical standpoint, but none of them were necessarily conscious of the human cost of their actions. It is only upon seeing the crowds of angry investors and being burdened with the knowledge of their imminent arrests that they are forced to reckon with the concept of true wrongdoing. Ill deeds have a cost for both the perpetrator and the victim; however, it is often...