Severance

“Of any book, the Bible embodies the purest form of product packaging, the same content repackaged a million times over, in new combinations ad infinitum.”

Candace’s job involves reproducing copies of the Bible, curated to suit hyper-specific consumer markets. It’s an ironic twist on one of the world’s oldest books, satirizing the way that consumerism creeps into every corner of modern life.

“Through the sweeping windows, you could see the sun rising over the shops along Causeway Bay, the Tian Tan Buddha, the Hong Kong Cricket Club, Victoria Park, so named after the colonizing English queen herself, over the mountain and over the sea, rising and rising, an unstoppable force, bringing in a new day of work.”

This quote illustrates how Candace sees capitalism as an inescapable reality. Rather than appreciating the beauty of the city she is reminded of the inevitable dawning of a new workday. Work dominates her thoughts even when she is supposed to be relaxing, a relatable predicament. The way that work culture under capitalism infringes on personal boundaries and centers work even in peoples’ personal lives is highlighted in the narrative.

“I didn’t want anything. I didn’t need anything.”

After losing her parents, Candace is profoundly isolated in America. She copes with her trauma by switching on autopilot and denying her needs for love, connection, and appreciation. This internal disconnection blunts her humanity, making her into the ideal employee for a morally questionable company like Spectra.

“I was enjoying myself, but it was an insulated enjoyment. I was alone inside of it.”

Even in happy moments, Candace remains a perpetual outsider. There is nowhere that she fits in easily. Among her friends, she is the odd one out, keeping herself at a removed distance, because not belonging is the only way she knows how to be.

“When I kissed him, it was like I was kissing all his things, all the signifiers and trappings of adulthood or success coming at me in a rush. Fucking was just seeing that to its end, a white yacht docking.”

Candace buys into consumer culture deeply, projecting values and personalities onto peoples’ belongings. Stephen Reitman’s life, from the outside, is not a happy one: He is recently divorced and abuses substances while engaging in flings with women far his junior. Yet all Candace can see is his possessions, which symbolize success and attract her to him.

“What you do every day matters, she’d say, before hanging up.”

Severance confronts the dangerous sides of routine, but this quote from Ruifang highlights the fact that a routine is nothing more than a series of repeated steps. To alter or break out of a routine, a change must happen on the smallest level first.

“He says, You’ve been gone for so many years, and now we’re supposed to invite you to our homes? More than a decade, the capitalist comes back and he’s welcome like some prodigal son?”

By moving to America, Ruifang and Zhigang sacrifice their relationships to their families back in China. The spotlight shines on the tragedy of severance faced by many first-generation immigrants in real life.

“In my imagining, I return from New York. I do whatever my uncles say. I relearn Mandarin. I relearn Fujianese. I live here, in beautiful, sunny, tropical Fuzhou, Fujian, fenced in by towering mountains and bounded by a boundless sea through which everyone leaves, where the palm trees sway and the nights run so late. I am so happy.”

Candace’s memories rule the narrative. She practices maladaptive daydreaming, projecting happiness onto an inaccessible past while continuing the habits that contribute to her present-day unhappiness. She imagines that she would have been happy returning to Fuzhou, yet she barely visits after her mother’s death. Because of the disconnect caused by her move to America, she feels trapped in her unhappy life, escaping only through memories.

“If you are an individual employed by a corporation or an institution, he said, then the odds are leveraged against you. The larger party always wins. It can’t see you, but it can crush you. And if that’s the working world, then I don’t want to be a part of it.”

Candace and Jonathan’s differing worldviews converge in the acceptance that corporations will always win over the individual worker. Jonathan’s solution is to leave the system entirely, while Candace’s is to become a well-oiled cog and try to buy herself a comfortable life.

“Five years pass working for the same company. I worked the same job, albeit under a new title and with an increased salary. I got up. I went to work in the morning. I went home in the evening. I repeated the routine.”

Candace uses passive language to describe the way she lives her life through her routine. The repetition of meaningless work is so numbing that time passes by her in swathes. Her situation is representative of the way work can suck up most of our lives.

“Once the shipment hit the water, the gemstone supplier folded, due to the workers’ health issues with pneumoconiosis. I was just doing my job.”

The ease of becoming complicit in unethical actions when participating in corporate work culture is emphasized. Corporations outsource labor unethically, but the reality of this labor happens so far away that it feels unreal. It is easier to accept it as an inevitable part of work and consumption than to take any action against it. Candace, like most Americans, follows the path of least resistance.

“Memories beget memories.”

This quote encapsulates the structure of Severance. The narrative is layered with memories which inform and trigger one another. Stories told by Candace’s loved ones all intertwine and tangle into one another, creating a complex web that snares her in its center.

“I just want for you what your father wanted: to make use of yourself, she finally said. No matter what, we just want you to be of use.”

These words, spoken by Ruifang on her deathbed, inform Candace’s entire adult life. It’s not enough to just be a person—she needs to make something of herself, to contribute to the world, and the only way she knows how to do so is through work. Ironically, in her quest to fulfill her parents’ dying wish, she ends up at a job which utilizes exploitive labor in her home country.

“Leisure, the problem with the modern condition was the dearth of leisure. And finally, it took a force of nature to disrupt our routines.”

Candace recognizes that in modern American society, the unequal balance of work and leisure time is a common source of misery, to the point where people look forward to any disruption in their schedules even if it comes in the form of dangerous weather. This quote foreshadows the End, which shakes up everyone’s routines with finality (except Candace’s).

“It meant that I could eventually take some time off to do other things. Take an extended maternity leave. Read more fiction. Take up photography again.”

Candace’s thoughts when accepting the Spectra contract to stay on-site highlights the flaws of a system that requires people to exchange their labor for the mere opportunity to enjoy life. Candace feels like she must work in exchange for the promise of future leisure and enjoyment, a predicament shared by her parents and by workers under capitalism in general.

“She says, Only in America do you have the luxury of being depressed.”

Ruifang categorizes depression as a uniquely American affliction. While this is untrue, there is a particular form of detached melancholy that seems common in young, well-educated Americans like Candace, who face a cornucopia of choices which all lead inevitably to the same outcome: an entire life spent working.

“I have always lived in the myth of New York more than in its reality. It is what enabled me to live there for so long, loving the idea of something more than the thing itself. But toward the end, in those weeks of walking and taking pictures, I came to know and love the thing itself.”

Like a ghost, Candace lives more in dreams, ideas, and memories than in her dull reality. She buys into the idea of New York, but is unable to fit into the city the way she imagined, remaining a perpetual outsider. It’s only after the apocalypse that she dismantles her lofty expectations and enjoy her own version of life in the city.

“Above me, cut into the ceiling, was a skylight. In all the years I’d worked here, I’d never noticed it, and now that the city no longer lit up as brilliantly with electricity, I could see the stars.”

The minor detail of the skylight, overlooked by Candace for years, highlights the danger of an unchanging routine. It’s easy to miss out on moments of beauty and wonder when living life by just going through the motions.

“As she is about to leave, she turns back. If you do manage to escape, then it will be a long time before I see you.”

After appearing to advise Candace on her escape, the vision of Ruifang leaves her with this cryptic pronouncement. Candace has spent most of the novel held back by her memories of the past, which leads her continue her isolation and numb herself through routine. If she wants to move on with her life, she must stop dwelling in these memories.

“You’re young, he repeated. You’re maybe under the impression that everyone gets to do what they want for a living.”

This quote is delivered by Michael after Candace makes her first and only attempt to leave Spectra. His matter-of-fact pronouncement shuts down Candace’s attempt to seek a more meaningful life. It’s a common sentiment, but inspires the question of why this is so, and whose fault it is that such a seemingly unfair dynamic continues unchecked.

“Such beautiful frivolities could only be produced by specialty artisans in Italian foothills, fed a diet of soft, runny cheeses and flowered honey. Maybe nuns. I touched a Victorian-style lavender teddy and glanced at the label sewn in the back: Made in China.”

Jaded by her job, Candace wants to believe that there are still things in the world that are made for the sake of love and passion rather than profit. Instead, she finds that the designer dresses she holds up as the pinnacle of beauty and success are made via the same supply-chain horrors that she deals with every day at Spectra. The idea being sold by the luxury brand doesn’t match up to reality, leaving her even more disillusioned and defeated.

“All I thought about was myself. It got me where I needed to go.”

Candace’s attitude is both a product of her circumstances and the larger conditions of American working culture. She adopted a self-centered attitude to cope with her lonely upbringing only to find that this attitude serves her well in her chosen way of life. It makes her the perfect employee and consumer, willing to disregard ethical dilemmas and supplanting her life’s missing pieces with hard work.

“Right before sleep when the brain is at its most porous and absorbs everything and weeps chemicals indiscriminately, I must have been deep in his reminiscing, his intricate, lacelike memories inlaid in me. I have been here in another lifetime.”

Although a tendency to dwell excessively in memories impedes Candace’s personal growth, memories are also force for good in the novel, a way of showing love and preserving relationships which have run their course. Candace absorbs the stories of the people she loves, and they become part of her, adding to her patchwork history. The narrative demonstrates that memories are vital to our humanity if they don’t tie us to the past.