Cay-lamity’s Reviews > Vita Nostra > Status Update

much of this novel feels like a metaphor for anxiety about growing up

she is a password, and a password is an act of creation. is the counterpoint to fear/evil.

at the institute, they partake in a process that deconstructs them as a person and reassembles them again in this new form. with a change in perception, they can see the world, sometimes themselves, when later on in the process, as their potential when actualized. they know that they are a word, and what type of word they are.

others, like the people forced into going to the Institute, are more substantive. they are adverbs, verbs, pronouns, nouns, etc. the goal of the institute is to change human beings to literalized words that can “reverberate” in the language of the universe and so potentially change the fabric of reality, depending on what they actually are.

so the universe is defined entirely by language. every single thing, every person, is a piece of language that contextualizes everything. some people are dashes and commas and brackets; the grammar of the universe.