The Glass Cage

Emile quite literally lives in a glass cage, where he works, content because of his isolation, as a printer’s proofreader. With his protruding eyes, his expressionless face, he knows he is unattractive to women. He chooses a wife as unattractive as himself, who is submissive because of her ugliness. They live humdrum lives, side by side, but there is little intimacy between them, and no true understanding.

Little by little, the reader is gripped with apprehension. Emile’s passivity masks an ominous undercurrent, a subcutaneous rage that has built up since childhood. He is one of those people we read about when it is too late–when they have trapped their unsuspecting victims in a locked room, out of sight and earshot.