When All The World Is Fire

In coming to comment on Lowboy, I really wanted to understand the algorithm of thinking that governs Will Heller: why he believes what he believes and why he carries it to such extreme lengths. Beliefs stem from thoughts which stems from interpreting phenomena, therefore, why in the world(or why in the world of Will)would he believe his interior pyrolysis to be that of the world’s? Do we not all—at times—infer some phenomena incorrectly and disembark from that inference to a plundered habitation, salted and bleached of fertility? Basically, don’t we all screw up at times with interpretation of phenomena? I would need a myriad pair of hands to find the fingers sufficient to enumerate my mistakes. Fact. But why Lowboy surrendering his life for what we perceive as a misperception? Why is he so indebted to this thought that he is the sole device to save the world from irrevocable destruction?
Spelunking the internet for research material, I stumbled upon a paper by Shawn Gallagher where he reproduced two models employed by British neuroscientist Christopher Frith positing how the average person goes about thinking (Copyright University of Central Florida) as opposed to those afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia (Copyright University of Central Florida). Frith asserts that it is imperative for human thought to contain an “efferent” or compressed copy of the variables that are “intention,” “thought generation,” and “actual stream of consciousness,” so that an intended end may be replicated without the stress and strain that actually achieves that thought’s end. This principle allows a person to have a sense of agency and a sense of ownership, thereby, enabling an individual to rationalize whether their track of thinking is the best course of action or whether there is another course which might better achieve the person’s desired end.
In those people dealing with paranoid schizophrenia, the thought process is devoid of an efferent, thus giving rise to instances of auditory hallucinations which are a concomitant of schizophrenia. The Mayo Clinic describes these hallucinations may be simply “the patient’s own voice dissembling in a ‘God-like’ sort of omniscience”(Mayo Clinic) that seems to contain and express the totality of knowledge in a sum that would best be described as illogical and severe by those of average thought processes. A reason for this “illogical summation” of thought may be found in an article written by Sharon Begley detailing a medical study “led by Drs. David Silbersweig and Emily Stern of Cornell Medical School [who]teamed with colleagues in London to scan the brains of schizophrenics in the throes of hallucinations. As soon as an imagined voice spoke, or a vision appeared, a patient pressed a button. That told the scientists when to scrutinize the scans for abnormal activity. They found plenty. When one patient reported seeing dripping colors and severed heads, for instance, the parts of the sensory cortex that process movement, color and objects became active[…]’The visual hallucinations are usually fragmentary,’ says Dr. Richard Wyatt, chief of neuropsychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health, ‘not the elaborate things in the movie. They're an outline, or a figure without features’”(Begley).
What skins this outline for Heller, this “figure without features?”(Begley) For Will, it seems that he has ordained his doctors—specifically Dr. Fleisig—as co-formers of his world, or at least those artists that help him to understand what he experiences. The reason for Will’s body getting hotter? “[Dr Fleisig]put degrees into my body”(Wray 173). Why did Dr. Fleisig put degress into Lowboy’s body? “Hot flashes are a known side effect of Geodon but I could prescribe some Risperidone for you in addition if you’d like”(Wray 174). Dr. Fleisig’s prescription to aid Heller handle his schizophrenia includes the boy’s body temperature to rise noticeably and Lowboy infers—tacitly—that this man—whose first name he remembers as “End of Days”—must hold the answers and key to help Heller unlock what his mind(or the hallucinatory mind, depending on your perspective)tells him.
Was it not Dr. Fleisig who off-the-cuff first made mention that “[t]he whole world’s getting hotter so they say”(Wray 174)? In this one phrase, Lowboy finds the purpose in his life, a life where everything “has to mean something”(Wray 163). If Lowboy is incrementally getting hotter—as is the world—there must be something Lowboy can do to relieve the stress of Earth’s molten core and gaseous strata layers enveloping it. The solution for this dilemma, again, stems from Dr. Fleisig’s treatment and care:
The question of my penis is an ongoing question. My penis seems to be a kind of Answer. I took it out during TV hour & Prekopp & Fleisig & everyone else stared & hummed at it & let it happen. Another sign that things might be improving. My unzipped pants like Direct Cable Service. I’m not dead Violet. I’m not even tired. I’m making myself an airconditioned body(Wray 147).
For Lowboy, it seems the communication between him and End-of-Days Fleisig seems to take on a property that exceeds the realities of the palpable world. The auditory hallucinations—while not that of a devil or god—are effects of Lowboy’s inability to consider himself as agent and owner of actions that he himself created; the logical answers thus given by a cog in the assembly line that forms life and cognition for Heller. Lowboy is not concerned with “whom” it was that sparked resolution out of a problem, but simply that what he is undergoing has kinship with another process alive in the world and in this similitude, therein lies the purpose of his own life: Agreement.
The intended end that is created by Lowboy—his own suicide thus saving the world—is heartbreaking, yet the ingredient of Lowboy’s own altruism is unavoidably heart-mending. Begley continues in her article that people dealing with paranoid schizophrenia have “the inability to tell what is real from what is imaginary”(Begley): the burning bush speaking with the voice of God is the sewer grate where heavy rains cause quasi-runnels to rush through the slats: the miraculous is the mundane. Lowboy’s suicide is kin to a sigh in his mind—there is nothing in this act but a response to phenomena, however illogical this response may be for anyone else. The calm and quietness with which the novel draws to its end is evidence enough, “’Why was I born,’ Lowboy thought. ‘I know why.’ He made a face and took a slow step backward”(Wray 258) that what other end but “ On November 12 the world ended by fire”(Wray 258).
Two weeks ago, I set out to sketch the face of my father: yes, the task was one-part inspiration from Lowboy’s same endeavors as is declared with the device of flashback in Lowboy and one-part embarrassment that I could not remember the shape of my father’s face. Upon putting pencil to paper, my embarrassment deepened and intensified when it was that I could not grasp the shape of my father’s face whatsoever. I returned the pencil to my shirt pocket, balled up the sketch paper, and pitched it into the trash. I can give you my father’s name on cue if questioned about it; ask me to assay the theatrics of his gait and the time of day when he takes his supper, and I’ll be as lost as if recounting the dimensions and properties of thermodynamics.
Such is the father to the son…my mind wanders.

WORKS CITED
Begley, Sharon. http://www.newsweek.com/2002/03/10/the-schizophrenic-mind.html.
Gallagher, Shawn. “Self-Reference and Schizophrenia: A Cognitive Model of Immunity to Error through Misidentification.” Exploring the Self: Philosophical and Psychopathological Perspectives on Self-experience, ed. Dan Zahavi. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 203-239.
The Mayo Clinic. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/paranoidschizophrenia/DS00862/DSECTION=symptoms
Wray, John. Lowboy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Print