Re: Part II (Chapters 18 through 22)
Following up on the line of thought I started in the last section, it occurred to me that the hostage situation in this part could be read as a kind of metaphor for domestic abuse. The idea I got while reading chapter 18, for example, was that some instances of domestic abuse could be boiled down to a frustrated male lashing out at a society he perceives as having forced him into a humdrum, workaday existence. But society itself is out of reach, so he directs his violence against his "cellmate," so to speak.
The other thing I'm wondering about is the protagonist's brush with venereal disease, which is becoming a more and more prominant theme in his stream of consciousness. I'm just not sure how it fits in with the rest of the novel.
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