Essay Questions

What are the first indications to the narrator that something strange and unusual is happening?

In the wake of the water-cyclone storm which caused so much damage wrought by the wind, the shore on the far side of the lake has become completely hidden behind a bank of fog featuring a most unusual characteristic: the edge of the mist is straight in an aberrant way that defies the normal geometry of nature. The fog is also unnaturally white and is inexplicably moving in a direction toward the wind. Weather circumstances would typically result in a rainbow and the lack of a rainbow seems especially peculiar.

What is Project Arrowhead, according to the various theories of assorted characters?

The actual purpose of Project Arrowhead is never definitively identified. In fact, according to the narrator, even the origin of the name Project Arrowhead is a mystery as it has never been officially confirmed. Bill Giosti claims it an experiment involved in shooting atoms into the air. The narrator’s insurance agent insists the project is involved in agricultural experiments designed to lengthen the growing season and enlarge vegetable sizes. Project Arrowhead has to do with the geology of shale oil, according to the local post office deliverer. Ollie Weeks assigns blame for black ice on the lake to the project before going on to suggest that other people have forwarded the possibilities on everything from lasers to cold fusion to ripping through the very fabric of time and space. The point being that those believing Project Arrowhead is responsible are going just as much on blind faith without logical or rationality as those who attribute the horror to the wrath of God.

What does the narrator mean when he describes Jim and Myron as waxlike figures “staring with a drugged, thanatotic avidity.”

The narrator is among the group of men trying to get the generator restarted after it has stopped. While doing so, a hideous, multi-tentacled creature with hundreds of writing suckers begins to attack Norm, prompting the narrator to fight desperately to save not just Norm, but himself as well. It is a vision of hell sprung fully into the world of mortals who must battle against monsters never imagined and who existence is incomprehensible. As the narrator makes for his escape, he is confronted with the sight of Jim and Myron standing there frozen, offering no assistance despite his cries for help just moments before.

His description moves beyond their merely being frozen with fright, however. “Avidity” means to do something with great eagerness, in fact, so he is really suggesting that their being immobilized to the point of being both helpless and unhelpful is action, not the lack of action. “Thanatotic” is closely identified with Freudian psychology and the urge toward self-destruction known as the death drive. It is a physical state comparable to shock conjoined with an emotional state of hopelessness to create a mental state of ultimate surrender. Jim and Myron have essentially borne witness to something so beyond their ability to rationally comprehend that on level buried beneath conscious will they have given up fighting and eagerly submitting to the immediate inevitability of their death. The reference their resembling a “tableau of waxworks in Madame Tussaud's” is indicative of how far they have already progressed to losing their humanity.