We’re like sharks; if we don’t keep swimming, we’ll merely sink.

“We’re like sharks; if we don’t keep swimming, we’ll merely sink.” is the expression through which Burke Devore frames endurance under prolonged unemployment. Its force lies in the difference between continuing and hoping: he insists on movement not because he expects a favorable outcome, but because stopping appears to leave no way forward.

Emergence from the Résumé Hoard

The phrase follows Burke’s changing response to the pile of competitors’ résumés he has secretly gathered. At first, possessing them gives him a feeling of power: he imagines that he has learned the competition’s secrets while remaining unseen. That pleasure fades when he wonders what the documents can actually do for him. They may instead discourage him by showing, one résumé at a time, people who seem slightly better suited to the same scarce positions.

The collection thus changes meaning. What began as a private store of advantage becomes a measure of how many capable, willing applicants are competing for how few jobs. Burke moves from exhilaration at having amassed the résumés to a depression he keeps equally private. The shark image arrives after this reversal, when the accumulation of evidence about the competition has made persistence feel less like confidence than necessity.

The Logic of Keeping Moving

Burke uses the comparison to express a condition in which forward motion is compulsory rather than hopeful. He imagines that he might have abandoned the search for work and his grip on his life, but says there was no other choice. The repeated insistence that there was no alternative gives the image its pressure: swimming is not presented as a route to certain success, only as the condition for avoiding the sinking that would follow surrender.

The wording also widens beyond Burke. He wonders how many other résumé-holders are going forward without hope because there is nothing else to do. The plural “we” turns a personal crisis into a shared predicament, while the shark comparison makes that predicament sound relentless and impersonal. The people in the comparison keep moving, but the image offers no assurance that the water leads anywhere.

Despair and Persistence

The surrounding reflection makes clear how severe this endurance is. Burke says he would not consider suicide, while acknowledging that some people in the same situation have considered it and some will do it. He recalls the air traffic controllers who were laid off fifteen years earlier and the suicides among them, linking isolation to the experience of mass job loss. The shark expression therefore sits beside a stark distinction: continuing is Burke’s own choice, but it is not a universal or effortless response to despair.

At this point Burke says he is struggling to summon enough energy to send out his own résumés. The expression does not resolve that difficulty; it names the demand he feels to keep going despite it. The next turn comes when an article in Pulp catches his eye and sets his mind working again. In that sequence, the image marks the low point before renewed activity: survival requires motion, but a new idea, rather than confidence in the job market, gives Burke a reason to resume it.