Kaitlyn is often portrayed in a negative light throughout the novel. She had killed and had watched as the cast of her anecdotes was cut down, her former fellow pledges and debate partners" (p. She had been hunted, and she had escaped. But she had done the same things that all had been forced to do. "No one at Fort Wanton, man or woman, failed to experience an episode of cognitive dissonance on meeting Kaitlyn, being subjected to her buoyant giggle. It is a bleak image, but it is an integral part of Whitehead's critique of contemporary society. Indeed, many of us are tasked with doing boring, repetitive jobs that we do as if on auto-pilot. In this quote–as elsewhere in the novel–Whitehead suggests a continuity between life before and after the plague. Often, they're found doing the jobs they did before the plague converted them to skels. Frequently, the stragglers are found doing rote, mundane activities.
This quote appears in a passage describing the stragglers that the sweepers encounter while cleaning up Zone One. Their lives had been an interminable loop of repeated gestures now their existences were winnowed to the discrete and internal moment" (p. It is a distressing image, one that should make readers happy that vaccines have been created for a great many real-life illnesses. Thus, rather than believing that the world–and the people in it–can be restored to the way they were before the pandemic, people should abandon this hope and think pragmatically about creating the world to come. Yet as this passage makes clear, it is likely that no vaccine is forthcoming. Some people are even so hopeful of this outcome that they chain their zombified family members up, waiting for the arrival of the vaccine.
In the aftermath of the plague, rumors swirl that researchers are studying skels and working on vaccines. The plague so transformed the human body that no one still believed they could be restored. Of course, this does end up being the case as Manhattan is soon overrun with skels, but it nonetheless indicates that the problems of contemporary society–in this case inequality–would not innately be solved by the plague. Worse still, the people who were tasked with the dangerous job of cleaning up Manhattan will not be rewarded for their labor. His frustrated outburst suggests that the forms of inequality that existed before the apocalypse will likely be repeated in whatever society emerges after.
Gary delivers this short rant as he, Mark, and Kaitlyn clean up bodies in an abandoned law office. They're going to put the rich people here. "You think we're going to end up here? We ain't special.
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