Odds Against Tomorrow

While Mitchell has always seen Elsa as a symbol of unpredictability, he heads for Camp Ticonderoga believing that the homesteading community might offer answers to the unprecedented situation in which he finds himself. What seemed like a foolish and precarious lifestyle to him in the past now proves potentially more durable than the existence most refugees were formerly leading. The value system set forth by the society has become irrelevant as people lose their jobs, homes, and wealth; Nathaniel Rich describes the survivors as “zombies,” implying they have outlived their own figurative “deaths.” In these circumstances, basic necessities like food and shelter are the only thing that matter, and a self-sufficient community like Camp Ticonderoga is better equipped to provide those things than the people, businesses, and cities that depend on modern technology. 

However, Mitchell’s hope that Elsa (and Camp Ticonderoga generally) might help him learn to navigate his new world proves to be a final vestige of The Illusion of Control. When he arrives at the camp, he finds it in shambles. While Ticonderoga in and of itself might have been poised to endure and even thrive amid natural disaster and general societal collapse, it could not survive the influx of panicking refugees. In a microcosm of the planet generally, the idyllic community is destroyed by self-interested, violent men. Even seeing this, however, Mitchell is still unwilling to let go of his obsession—his sense that Elsa holds the key to a less fearful existence.

The burning cabin marks the end of any illusion that easy answers are possible. Jane saves him from the fire, which mirrors the ways in which their friendship has pulled him out of his deep obsession with security. However, Mitchell is burned by the experience, symbolically suggesting the pain of letting go of certainty (i.e., concerning the reality of Elsa’s fate, which he does not learn until the conclusion of the novel).

Jane’s idea to create Future Days presents Mitchell with a path back to the illusion of control. Mitchell’s immediate response to her proposal is shock: As he makes clear, he wants nothing to do with The Business of Fear going forward, not least because Charnoble’s callous obsession with profit nearly got them killed. Jane insists that their business would genuinely seek to help people. Noting that FutureWorld did help a lot of people during the storm, she says that their combined efforts could benefit people who find themselves in catastrophic situations. Moreover, it’s clear that she is not acting solely or perhaps even primarily out of greed. Her hurt response to Mitchell’s joke about his value shows that she does not view Mitchell simply as an opportunity to gain wealth and power, and when she agrees to go with Mitchell to Maine and saves him from the fire she shows true concern for her friend. However, Jane also makes no secret of her love for the finer things, such as steak and comfortable lodgings. Her desire to return to Manhattan reflects her basic comfort with the capitalist economy’s terms of value and foreshadows growing division between her and Mitchell, who is evidently searching for an alternative.