The Rest of Us Just Live Here

Ness not only uses Satchel’s sections to narrate plot events that are inaccessible to Mikey, but he also uses the placement of these sections to create dramatic irony. The events described in the brief, summarized chapter introductions often impact the events that Mikey experiences during the chapter itself. So when, at the start of Chapter the Fourteenth, Satchel and the Prince are interrupted by an explosion from the edge of town, it allows the reader to anticipate that this explosion will also affect Mikey’s plotline. This anticipation creates a sense of foreboding as Mikey, Mel, and Meredith attend the concert. The concert is one of the novel’s only wholly joyous moments for these characters (Mikey even finds himself singing along to the music), but for the reader, this sense of optimism is tempered by the expectation of a dramatic and possibly violent interruption.

Over the course of the novel, Mikey is offered very few adult figures on whom he can model his own masculinity. This section continues to develop Mikey’s relationship with his father, once again demonstrating the inverted parent-child power dynamics that characterize their relationship in the scene in which Mr. Mitchell asks Mikey for money. This section further develops Mr. Mitchell, though, as a figure who models what Mikey perceives to be a failed, incompetent masculinity. Before Mikey’s father asks for money, he looks up at the moon and says, “There were going to be cities up there. No poverty, no war. That’s how it was supposed to be” (221-22). This observation underscores the feeling of futile regret for past failures that defines Mr. Mitchell’s masculinity and fatherhood. While most of the novel’s other characters are finding ways to cope with the ways in which their aspirations have fallen short, Mr. Mitchell is only able to observe his shortcomings from afar. Mikey’s father thus offers a masculinity that Mikey models his own masculinity in opposition to as the narrative progresses.

This section of the novel presents one of the narrative’s most formally ambitious chapters—Chapter the Sixteenth, which unfolds entirely in dialogue. In this chapter, Mikey meets with Dr. Luther, and they talk through Mikey’s recurring OCD and suicidal ideation. The dialogue-only approach to this chapter serves several thematic purposes. By focusing only on speech and the way Mikey expresses—or struggles to express—himself, Ness highlights the idea that it is only through honest self-expression that Mikey is able to begin to cope with his mental health issues. This is the logical culmination of the development Mikey has been undergoing throughout the novel: He begins by being unable to discuss his OCD with anyone other than Jared but, by seeing Henna cope with trauma through externalization and beginning to express his own trauma to his mother, he works toward a place where he’s able to fully express himself to Dr. Luther. The dialogue-only approach, though, also has the effect of entirely removing the character’s actions and physicality from the reader’s eye. One possible interpretation of this effect is that this is a function of characterization. Mikey is, for the first time, being fully honest with both Dr. Luther and with the reader about the complexity of his mental health status. The focus only on dialogue is a way of “hiding” himself from view while still being honest in his self-expression; it hints at the vulnerability Mikey feels as he tries to admit to Dr. Luther—and to himself—the difficulty of Coping with an Uncertain Future and how deeply he’s been impacted by the stressors in his life.