Content Warning: This section of the guide describes alcohol misuse and mental health conditions, specifically connected to war trauma.

“Your job is plenty good enough. We’ve got three nice kids, and lots of people would be glad to have a house like this. We shouldn't be so discontented all the time.”

Betsy and Tom struggle to explain their dissatisfaction. They have a happy young family and a home of their own, but they continue to feel unsatisfied. This inability to define the boundaries of their dissatisfaction stems from their unwillingness to criticize American materialism. Since they have all the material things they have been told they should want, they expect themselves to be happy. They can’t imagine that the sources of their dissatisfaction might be emotional rather than material. To criticize their lives would be to criticize the American Dream, and as sincere believers in American cultural values, they are unwilling to acknowledge the hollowness at the heart of this social ambition.

“Anybody’s life can be summed up in a paragraph.”

Tom’s attempt at an autobiography is both honest and deceptive. While the statistical, objective facts of his life can be contained in this paragraph, these facts say nothing about the profound depths of his character. The true biography is the negative space, the details which Tom does not want to include. Social etiquette and shame dictate the true contours of Tom’s identity; his desire to hide this truth from the world and obfuscate it with blunt facts is more telling of his personality than any biography he could write.