Final Response

The ending of this book was pretty much tragic. Alma finally begins to like Joshua, and then she finds out he isn't even technically Jewish. She then can't figure out why on earth she ever hated the man, and begins to really appreciate how well he treats her. Unfortunately, this happens days before his death. Seigl asked Alma to go for a walk in the cemetery, and despite Alma's worry he wanted to ascend a long, steep staircase. When they were about thirty stairs up, he clutched at his chest and seemed to be having trouble, so Alma rushed to him from her place lower on the staircase, where she was struggling. She tried to hold him, but he pushed her off and ended up falling down all the stairs. He ended up dying of the heart attack, and Alma was distraught. She went to the funeral, even though everyone there hated her, and then had to leave early because she was sobbing.

It turned out that Seigl left his estate and a large some of money to Alma, and he wanted her to continue living there and sorting his stuff, and also to go to college and pursue her education. Alma was touched, and she was so happy to know that he had loved her. Dmitri came by to reclaim Alma and get money, but she turned him down. The ending seemed to be really touching and satisfying so far... but it went all downhill from that point.

Alma felt a great loss over Seigl's death, and spent her time thinking about him and loving his memory. Then the police came to the house and questioned her, because there was suspicion that she had assisted Seigl's death, due to the odd situation in which he died. Alma wasn't guilty, but the cops made her uncomfortable because of her past. When they left her, she was pleasantly surprised that they didn't arrest her. She ended up deciding to go to nursing school, and she was really excited and knew Seigl would have been so proud. She was very happy, but then she walked into Seigl's study and was attacked by Jet.

Jet was waiting there with a big German knife, and she stabbed Alma 32 times. This really kind of ruined the ending for me, because as soon as there was a wholesome and somewhat pleasant part of the book, it was gone soon after. Alma was finally having hope for her future, just for it to be ripped away by a psycho character who was barely even in the book. Once again, Jet Seigl went against Joshua's wishes and abrupty tampered with his life, resulting in a negative impact, as usual. Jet said that justice had been done when she killed Alma, but really she ruined Alma's life, who was innocent, and went against her dead brother's wish. The ending was definitely a disappointment to me, because after such a dismal, crude story full of hatred, I was beginning to enjoy the new found optimism and moral justice.

Themes From American Literature

The first common theme from American Literature that I noticed in the book is prejudice against religion or faith, more specifically anti-semitism. Both Alma Busch and Dmitri hate Jewish people, and therefore hate Joshua Seigl because he is Jewish. Even though they both can see that he is a generous and kind person, they always reveal their disgust about how he's Jewish and classify him with all of the Jewish stereotypes. Seigl lives in a big house and has a lot of money, and Alma classifies all rich people as selfish, lazy, and ungrateful. Seigl also spends his money in ways that are very frivolous to her, and that disgusts her even more. These are characteristics that she classifies all Jewish people by: rich and ungrateful and selfish. Throughout the story, every time she thinks or talks to Dmitri about Seigl, she refers to him in a negative and harsh connotation. At one point, she thought to herself, "I hate him. Hate his whiskers, his fat Jew lips." She hates Josh Seigl to an extent that later on in the book she wants to kill him, literally, and often plots ways she could try to without getting caught.

The other theme that appeared alot throughout the book is love, and also the need to be loved by others. Alma has always felt the desperate need to be loved by men and to feel wanted by them, even if it means being terribly abused. Dmitri, her most recent "lover," abuses Alma sexually and emotionally, yet she still says she loves him and would do anything for his love. In the story, Alma shows that she is willing to change her opinions and actions to prove herself worthy of Dmitri. An example of this is when she slept in his car when he kicked her out of his apartment.
She'd slept in his car in the backseat wrapped in a filthy blanket crying herself to sleep not minding the cold. Proving to him her devotion. Her brain jangled from the crystal meth. Might've been roach poison he gave her. I love you Dmitri don't send me away, see?-I trust you."
She acts differently than her normal self to try to be funny for Dmitri and his friends, even though they only laugh at her because they think she is pathetic. She steals things from Seigl's house to try and please Dmitri, but he usually just was disappointed in them. Because Alma is very self-consious, she needs Dmitri to love her, and she is willing to change herself to be appreciated by him.
I also saw some of this same characteristic in Joshua Seigl. Seigl definitely cares about what people think about him, and usually he doesn't like them to know anything at all. He doesn't talk to anyone about his illness, and even gets uncomfortable talking to his doctor. When he had to tell Alma a vague explanation of his illness, he begged her not to share that information with anybody. Seigl doesn't want people to see weakness in him, because he's afraid it will alter their perceptions of him.

Diction & Syntax

The novel is written in third person, but it switches off between looking into the thoughts of two different characters: Joshua Seigl and Alma Busch. This changes every few chapters, to allow the reader to hear the thoughts and learn more about the personalities of each character. Throughout these changes in perspective, I have noticed something Oates' has done stylistically to the sentence structures of the different viewpoints.
Alma's sections were definitely the most noticeable to me. Because she is uneducated, young, and simple-minded, her thoughts and conversations are much different than Seigl's. Those characteristics, combined with her strong emotions and opinions, cause Oates' to write Alma's thoughts as extremely long, run on sentences with simple grammar, a lot of profanity, and other harsh words. I'd like to share a couple example passages that particularly grabbed my attention.

"And Alma made sure he wasn't creeping up on her like he did sometimes (without him knowing she saw him in the corner of her eye) and she was prowling restless and hot Hate hate hate both of you Jew kike bastards and her heart pounding like she'd sniffed the purest coke straight up into her brain and she watched seeing her hand open a glass-front bookcase in Seigl's study and from a shelf she pulled a book that made her smile almost, small as a children's book, which was what she thought it might be, the title sounded like a children's fairy tale, Anna Livia Plurablelle, but when she opened it and tried to read the tiny print swam in her eyes, fucking words made no sense like they were not English or any kind of English she'd been taught and her heart kicked in resentment and fury and her hands yanked the covers of the little book back until she heard the fragile spine crack and she smiled with childish satisfaction like a boy yanking a frog's legs apart tearing the frog into two pieces. There! Fucker."
This passage is one big run on sentence with a few commas thrown in. There is a lot of bitterness and hatred, shown in her vile description of the frog, her evil satisfaction at destroying the book, and also all the profanity that is found in this passage of her thoughts.

"Seigl was moody a lot. Rude! On his good days he was respectful to her as he'd been in the beginning and often he gave her extra money and spoke of sending her to the local college but on the other days when his legs gave out or he couldn't concentrate on his work he sulked and hid away like a sick dog then called for her and expressed impatience she didn't get to him in ten seconds and he bossed her around as bad as her daddy ever bossed her mother and she heard that edge of exasperation in his Jew-voice familiar to the Tattooed Girl from other sons of bitches and the essential message was Look, he doesn't love you. Doesn't care a fuck about you."
That passage, again, contains a very long run on sentence with obvious lack of punctuation, which makes it more personal for Alma's character. Reading it allowed me to sense the bitter hatred she was feeling towards Seigl. These long, simple sentences with their profane language are prevalent throughout all of Alma's sections of the book, while Seigl's sections are more grammatically and politically correct, along with more intelligent. These distinct differences in the syntax and diction of the two characters allows me to better understand the characters, and also to have a clearer vision of which character is being observed and when.

Character Study

Joshua Seigl
Joshua Seigl is the first character Oates introduces in the novel. As I wrote in my first post, Josh was initially described as a lonely, quiet author who had recently developed an illness, which I later discovered was a dibilitating neurological disorder that caused him great pain and weakness. I originally didn't understand why Seigl chose such a mysterious girl as Alma to depend on and spend so much time with, but now that Oates has developed his character and I am almost finished with the book, I feel I can better understand his character and decisions. Oates' characterization of Seigl is often very direct, because she oftentimes will flat out say what he is like or something about his personality. An example of this is,
"Seigl hated it that people talked of him behind his bac, and dealt with the predicament as he dealt with most predicaments: by banishing the thought from his mind."
This straight-forward information about Seigl explained a weakness in Seigl, and helped me better understand his personality. Seigl avoids confrontation, and seems to fear them. For example, when Jet wanted to visit him but he really didn't want her to, he thought,
"God damn if he'd allow her to interfere with his life when his life, at last, was going so well."
But then, Oates wrote,
"The next day, there was Seigl driving to the airport to meet his sister's flight. Had she said 1:08 P.M.?"
Seigl definitely is seen as always wanting to please others. When he interacts with Alma, he always worries about if he's making her feel uncomfortable or if he said something that upset her. I also think that the way Seigl is compensating with his illness and needyness is by trying to help Alma. It seems to me that Seigl hired Alma to help her help him, and he always offers her to pay for her college education or surgery to remove her tattooes. Also, one of his favorite hobbies is chess, a game he is very good at and even was in the newspaper for his skills as a child. He offered to play with his friend's son, and taught him and really encouraged him that he was doing well and to keep at it. His reclusive personality and fame may make him seem a bit proud, but Siegl is the opposite, and has a very kind heart.

Alma Busch
Alma Busch is the tattooed girl. She came from out of town, mysteriously, and was picked up by a bad guy. Dmitri Meatte is a crude, selfish man who takes Alma home and bathes her and feeds her so that he can get her to have sex with him and be like an item to him. Because of her needy personality, his plan works. Alma falls in love with this horrible, disgusting man who often beats her, rejects her, and sells her body for money. But still, she always runs back to him, offering sex and money for his attention. This has been a theme in Alma's life. As a young girl, she always went really far with older guys so that she could get their attention and feel wanted, even if they didn't care about her at all. Alma is used to taking abuse, and even blames herself for it sometimes. When recalling her experiences with those high school boys she was with, she remembered,
"There was a time in high school when sometimes they left her at the side of the access road by the river three miles from home and she felt the hurt as a child might feel desperate to be forgiven for whatever she must have done, to provoke such hurt."
Probably the most important characteristic about Alma is that she hates, absolutely despises, Joshua Seigl. He doesn't know this, but she always thinks about how she hates everything about him and decides later on in the book that she intends to kill him. Alma is an anti-semite, and so she hates Seigl because he is Jewish. She tries to deny that fact by saying many other things she hates about him, but they are all little, immature reasons that aren't valid reasons for how much she hates him. But the thing about Alma's personality, is that she so easily loves and hates people. When thinking about Dmitri, who she supposedly loved, she thought,
"If he ceased utterly to want her, she would wish him dead."
That doesn't seem to legitimize her feelings, and it really says something about her. She has flighty emotions that change so easily, and her simple mind makes either extremely harsh or extremely flattering judgements about people, no matter their validity. She also has a very shallow opinion on love and relationships, she thought once,
"Why did people care for one another, where there was no sex connection?"

Jet Seigl
Jet is Joshua's sister, and only living relative. Her real name is Mary Beth, but she legally changed it to "Jetimah Steadman-Seigl" at age 18. She is a very strong-willed and opinionated person, who is described as strikingly beautiful for being in her thirties. Compared to her prodigious brother, who was an excellent student and incredibly talented chess player, Jet was the troubled child growing up. Jet has been medicated many times in her life, for disorders such as Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia, due to her emotional issues and temper tantrums. She cares about her brother and wants to help him, but she is too pushy and rude for him and he tries to avoid her because they always end up fighting. She is perceived as very odd, and at one point in the book Oates' said,
"She enunciated the word rationalism as if it were a comical obscenity."
Jet is what some would call "different," and she is very outgoing and will let people know exactly what she thinks. When she visited Seigl and met Alma, she didn't like her and even showed her violence, slapping and fighting her.

Trend of Similes

Throughout the book, Oates has used similes and metaphors very frequently to explain what she is trying to say, or sometimes to provide a better understanding of the characters. Personally I really like her technique of these reoccuring comparisons, because they really help me understand what she's trying to say very clearly, because she gives me something to associate her point with. During my reading, I underlined some of these similes and metaphors and I'd like to share a few of them and discuss why they were helpful or what they helped me realize about the characters or plot.

It's too much trouble to take the sheeting down in the spring so the windows are permanently covered. Like glaucoma-clouded eyes.
I'm familiar with the eye disease glaucoma, so using that comparison of the foggy windows let me picture in my head what Oates was intending the fog to look like.

Like vomit rising in the back of her mouth, her hatred tasted.
Alma has a hatred for Joshua Seigl that is unlike any common hatred. She initially doesn't know why she hates him, it is explained later on. But at this point before her complicated character is really explained, this was one of the first descriptions I had gotten of Alma's feelings toward Josh Seigl. It is very harsh, and very vivid.

...since the sister's departure there was beginning to be a weakness in the man like cracks so fine you can't see them yet but can sense they are there.
Joshua Seigl is a man who does not like to talk about his feelings to others, he prefers to keep his private life to himself. This description of the weakness Alma saw in Seigl tells me that Seigl was not obvious in his weakness, but in fact tried to hide it. Alma could sense the weakness in Seigl, because he doesn't like to show his outer emotions to people.

Slow dull lonely winter days and she was stone cold sober. And the deliruim of the weekend was eclipsed behind her like the soiled clothes she'd stumbled out of, kicked off her feet.
This simile compared Alma's hazy memory of the past weekend like subconsiously kicking off clothes, something you don't remember every detail of but you know it happened.

Yet Seigl seemed to know, his recovery had little to do with medication: no more than the sun easing out of a solar eclipse has anything to do with mere optics.
This passage is when Seigl thought he was cured of his illness, but really he was just in remission. But his explanation of his disease being cured was that he didn't need an explanation- because like the solar eclipse, it was something of a miracle.

Like a shy suitor he approached his bathroom mirror to examine his face for the first time in months without flinching.
When Seigl began having health problems, he stopped paying attention to his appearence. Disheartened from his sickly and aging look, he stopped looking in the mirror and shaving his face. But the day he woke up feeling better, he shaved and smiled at finding himself attractive. This simile describes his attitude when he first went to the mirror to see his reflection for the first time in awhile.

Personal Response

I have read just under half of "The Tattooed Girl" so far, and I have already learned a lot about the main characters and the story's conflicts. One thing about this story I have noticed is that the main characters thus far have very distinct personalities, some that all seem to clash with eachother. There seem to be hidden secrets, and so far Oates has left me with a lot of questions about some of the main characters.

The main mystery to me while reading this story has been Alma Busch, aka "The Tattooed Girl." Alma seemed to come out of nowhere, and there are so many unanswered questions that Oates has introduced about her but hasn't yet answered. On Alma's first night into town she got involved with the wrong guy, the waiter Dmitri. She thought he was nice because he took her home and bathed her and fed her, but really he had terrible motives and a disgusting disrespect for her and other women. Although Alma isn't described as a very intellectual girl, she seems to have often had to fend for herself in the past, and has common sense. After being helped by Dmitri, she basically fell in love with him. I don't understand this because he treats her so horribly. Dmitri beats her and abuses her sexually, and sells her body to other men without her consent. But despite this, she still comes running back to a man who doesn't even like her trying to pay him and beg for his love.

Another mystery about Alma is her tattooes. The tattooes are scattered about her body, and are describes as poorly done and appear to be blemish-like. My first impression of these tattooes was that someone did them to her, because they are described to be unflattering and randomly placed; but I don't know this for a fact. My main question regarding this is: If someone did this to Alma in her recent past, why won't she tell anyone anything about it? That question leads me to wonder if she did something bad, something related to this that she doesn't want anyone to know.

The book started off sort of slow, but now I am finding it to be a pretty easy read for me. I have grown used to Oates' style, which is kind of unlike the books I normally read. Oates' uses a point of view in the novel that is very interesting to me: Oates herself is narrating, and is describing the characters and plot in a 3rd person point of view. She is allowing the reader into the minds of her characters, but she only shows the thoughts of one character at a time. Usually this is done by chapter, showing the story through the eyes of different characters in different chapters. It is convenient to be able to know the characters' thoughts, especially with their complicated and somewhat moody personalities. But at the same time, only having a view into one character's thoughts at a time really makes me have to pay close attention to detailed quotes and thoughts of the characters, because the alternation between points of view could get my knowledge of the characters confused between one another. But besides the interesting perspective used by Oates, the story has smooth transitioning and a vocabulary that isn't too difficult for me to understand. So far I am enjoying watching the characters progress and learning more about their complex lives.

Style Analysis

Throughout the book so far, I have noticed that Oates often uses quotes from writers and theologists to express the thoughts of Joshua Seigl, or just reference things written that relate to a situation that he is in. A majority of these selected passages seem to be by authors whose work Seigl is well read on and is passionate about. Some quotes, however, are undocumented italicized references, which also seem to give a deeper meaning to Seigl's situations and thoughts. These passages always seemed to grab my attention, and reading them made me feel almost a closer connection to Joshua Seigl and his mysterious reclusive personality. I wanted to cite examples of these quotes and the explanations I came up for them.

Easy is the way down to the Underworld: by night and by day dark Hades' door stands open; but to retrace one's steps and to make a way out to the upper air, that's the task, that's the labor. -Virgil

So far in the novel I have seen this quote appear twice, both in the thoughts of Joshua Seigl. This quote seems to be of an inspiration to him. In the beginning, when he is dreading over his new and serious medical condition, Oates says that he smiles at the thought of this quote and it seems to brighten his mood. He goes from being depressed and stressed to a more productive and positive attitude, that it would be perfectly fine to hire himself an assistant. This quote is seen a second time in Chapter 7 when Seigl falls while running in the cemetery. He was calling for help but nobody could hear him, but when he thought of that quote by Virgil, he decided not to panic; he decided that if all else failed he could drag himself out of it. This quote seems to be a motavation for Seigl to be strong and overcome his conflicts thus far in the novel.

I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

This quote is mentioned in the paragraph where Oates introduces Mount Carmel Hill and the cemetary, it is also the line after the quote I mentioned earlier in the Image Study. This quote is not cited, but it seems to be from a religious text. As I mentioned before, there seems to be some significance in the cemetery, as it is a place where Seigl willingly chooses to spend his time alone. The significance of this quote may be in pattern with Seigl's thoughts on the cemetery, it may bring him peace and maybe even be a place where he spends time thinking about religion.

From Tenedos, on the placid sea, twin snakes endlessly coiling, uncoiling, swam abreast to shore. - Virgil

I came across this second reference to Virgil in the novel referenced in the thoughts of Joshua Seigl on the day of the first visit by Alma, his new secretary. Now that he had an assistant sorting through all of the backed up letters and files he had accumulated over so many months, he decided he would spend more of his time reviewing and translating poetry, specifically mentioning Virgil's poetry. Seigl is clearly a devoted fan of Virgil, reading and analyzing much of his work, and also periodically quoting him. Seigl referenced this quote as an opinion of Virgils writing, "Even in the nightmare tale of the deaths of Laocoon and his hapless sons, what beauty of speech." I think that when he said this, Seigl was relating Virgil's life to his. Like Virgil, Seigl wants to be able to write and translate poetry, even in his times of conflict and despair.

Image Study

"Seigl, to whom nostalgia meant little, like a brilliant autumn foilage to the color-blind, tried to think of a consoling reply, but could not."



At this point in the story, Seigl has just picked up his sister, Jet, from the airport, and is having a conversation about their childhood. Jet recalls how happy she had been living in Carmel Heights, where she is visiting Seigl, and Seigl searches for a reply but is not successful. In this quote, Oates uses a distinct visual image of a vibrant fall forest setting that has been transformed into black and white to give the reader a better understanding of Joshua Seigl's situation.


"Dmitri stood over her and saw with interest that the girl's forearms and the backs of her hands were fiercely marked as with calligraphy, or embroidery; where her hair parted to reveal a portion of the milky nape of her neck, there was a filigree of magenta and dull red. The marks on the girl's hands, across her knuckles, looked like the wispy remains of lace gloves. If these were tattoos, they weren't very vivid or emphatic; they looked more like a miniature language. The needle tracks of a junkie mainlining heroin, morphine, Demerol?"



In this scene, the cafe waiter, Dmitri, is studying the appearance of the Tattooed Girl, Alma. She is introduced as very mysterious, he doesn't know where she came from or who she was; but she has these blemish-looking tattoos scattered on her body. In this visual discription, Oates describes the appearance of these mysterious tattoos, and how unusual and poorly done they appeared.


"Mount Carmel Hill above the river was a glacier hill, a drumlin, so steep that paths and roadways zigzagged from side to side like frantic snakes. The landscape was rock ledges, gulches, chasms, and thin trickling streams that in flood time became raging creeks flowing into the Tuscarora Ricer two hundred feet below. The old Catholic cemetary through which Seigl ran-or, in frigid weather, hiked-on an almost daily basis was a place of beauty and neglect; of wind-ravaged oakes and juniper pines amid a necropolis of grave markers, tombstones, rotted-looking crosses and shabby yet fierce-eyed angels, family vaults in neo-classic design with columns, fluted porticos, solemly carved names, dates, exhorations from a simpler era."



Oates went to great detail in describing the location and atmosphere of the cemetary where Seigl frequently ran and hiked in, and when I first read this passage I wasn't sure why. But now I think that by providing detail of a place Seigl often spends solitary time in, Oates was trying to describe something about Seigl's personality. Using the vivid details of the trees, grave markers, and tombs, Oates seems to be hinting at a sense of "beauty and neglect" in Joshua Seigl's life, as well, that draws him to this unusual spot of solitary enjoyment.


"Adulthood was itself a kind of beard, a shield held up before him. And here was his sister plucking and pulling at it, threatening to expose him."



Joshua Seigl is definitely a person who likes to keep to himself. He doesn't enjoy attention, and desperately tries to hide his life from others, by keeping social conversation light, and even going as far as to not tell anyone about his neurological illness. In this quote, Oates is referring to Seigl's adulthood as a beard that he hides behind. His sister is trying to lower this shield, and it is making him defensive and nervous. In the picture above, the man with the beard is hinding his eyes, his identity. I thought the image well suits the sense of hiding that Seigl also shares with his life.

Rhetoric Study

"Family history as a sort of immense spiderweb spanning part of two continents. If you know spiderwebs, you know that they are spun with infinite precision and patience; according to the spider's genus, they conform to a design; yet individual spiders spin variants of this design. If broken in one area, the web is constructed to hold in other areas. Nine-tenths of a cobweb might be broken yet the one-tenth would remain, holding fast, distinctive. Seigl had thought of himself as re-weaving a spiderweb, re-constructing and re-strengthening. A shimmer of fading impressions had been woven into a work of apparently durable prose, secreted by Joshua Seigl, born 1964."

In this quote, Oates is describing Josuha Seigl's book, The Shadows. As I mentioned before, this novel was about the lives of Seigl's relatives during the time of the Halocaust, they were Jewish peoples who suffered the cruel mistreatment of the Nazzis and many lost their lives. However, Seigl himself did not experience these events firsthand. Stories have been told to him by a few relatives who survived, and that is the only witnessed Seigl has to the events.

Seigl's father is often shown as frequently in Seigl's mind throughout the story so far, and it seems to be a sensitive topic for Seigl. His father was sent to live with other relatives at age 7 because of fear of the Naziis, and he lost much of his family. Ever since childhood, he was always more of a melancholy figure, and his son Joshua seemed to really notice it. Although his father died, I think that one of the main motivation's for Joshua Seigl to write his most famous book was as a tribute to his father.

In the quote posted above, Oates uses a metaphor to relate the family heritage of Karl Seigl when talking about his book. Comparing Seigl's knowledge of Halocaust experiences to the structure of a spider web allowed me as a reader to understand Seigl's knowledge of the topic and that in turn helped me learn something about him as a writer. The book was an imagined account of the tragic events, but he did have some idea of what went on, passed down from his family. Using the metaphor, Oates tells us that writing the book for Seigl was like spinning a web for a spider, it was something he could reconstruct and restrengthen.

A bit further into the novel, I noticed another good metaphor used by Oates to again tell me something about the main character, Joshua Seigl. At this point in the novel, Seigl is recalling a visit to the neurologist, and worrying about his illness; more importantly, people not finding out about his illness:

"For Seigl, desperate not to be found out, just yet, by the community, still more by his relatives, had become inordinately secretive. He'd never shared secrets readily, kept his private life private, but now he was becoming parenthetical: he felt like an eclipsed moon. He was still there, but you couldn't see him."

To describe Seigl's feelings about his situation, Oates compared him to an eclipsed moon, and explained why there is a relation. I really like Oates' comparitive style because it really helped me as a reader to get to know and understand the characters better, through logical comparisons to things less abstract and emotional.

The Story Begins...

"'What the hell is wrong with me? I'm hiring only an assistant, not an heir.' He realized then. That was exactly what he was hiring: someone to outlive him. Joshua Seigl was thirty-eight years old."

Joyce Carol Oates began The Tattooed Girl with a glimpse into the life of Joshua Seigl, a relatively young, succesful, but reclusive, author. His most recognized novel, The Shadows, tells the story of his grandparents experiences in Nazi Germany during the Halocaust. Seigl is certainly described as an attractive man who has had many relationships in his past, but is viewed as more of a bachelor. Oates describes him:

"Seigl was sexually susceptible: less so emotionally susceptible. He'd had a number of love affairs since late adolescence, but had never wanted to marry nor had he been weakened, or flattered, by another's wish that he marry."

He lives in a large house on a hill in Carmel Heights, and seems to be relatively content with just keeping to himself. He's described as always having been self-sufficient, and through his life and career he hasn't let himself depend on others to get him by. But out of nowhere, Seigl has begun to show symptoms of a degenerative nerve disease, one that is not initally diagnosed, but clearly affects his motor skills and mobility. The self-sufficient, reclusive writer realizes that he needs an assistant, even if he doesn't want one. He cannot get all his work done alone, and more regretfully, soon may not be able to manuever around alone.

So the interviews began. Many successful, admiring, intelligent, and seemingly qualified young men come to Seigl's house within a few days to interview for the position of his assistant. Many of them share similar writing interests, clearly admire his work, have excellent educational backgrounds and work ethics, and are even fluent in four or so languages. No matter how qualified and promising each candidate seems, Seigl finds some reason to turn every single one of them down. One particularly promising young man who interviewed, Essler, was everything Seigl wanted in his assistant. Oates described Seigl's thoughts during the interview:

"Seigl wanted badly to grip Essler's tremulous hands to still them and assure him, Fine! You're hired. I'm not a great man but it's fine, I will hire you. Yet hinking, no. Impossible. He means to write about me. He'd devour me alive."

Although Essler was an extremely promising applicant who greatly admired Seigl and his work, Seigl came up with a random and unevidenced reason to not hire Essler, even though Seigl himself admitted later that he had no reason not to. Instead of hiring one of the suitable and educated interviewees, Seigl flightingly hires a young, damaged, uneducated, and mysteriously troubled girl named Alma, who he met randomly one day in a library. Not knowing much about this girl, this young, pale girl with the blemish looking tattooes, he invited her to quit her new job and come be his assistant.

After reading the first few chapters, I wasn't quite sure what to make of Joshua Seigl. He seems to be a smart and responsible person, and reading his thoughts confirmed that. Yet, he seems to be making decisions that are completely opposite to his thought processes. I wonder, as the story goes on, if Joshua Seigl will turn out to be more of a tortured soul; not from his neurological condition, but if something in his past is keeping him from making better decisions for himself because he thinks negatively upon himself.