America

America appears both in a memory of a marriage and in the narrator’s later attempt to live apart from it. First the country marks a shared departure from Cambridge; later, it becomes the setting for a deliberately restrained academic life.

A Destination in Shared Memory

At a restaurant, Isobel Martin recalls the couple’s earlier life in Cambridge: punting on the Cam, falling into the water, and having fun before the Princeton offer led them to move to America. The recollection gives the move a personal history, linking the country not only to a change of place but to a period of closeness that Isobel can still remember fondly. The narrator acknowledges the memory, but feels uncomfortable and is concerned about leaving Gulliver alone any longer; he asks for the bill.

A Later Life in California

After deciding to remain as Andrew Martin, the narrator moves out, rents a small flat in Cambridge for a while, and applies for jobs elsewhere. He eventually takes a teaching job at Stanford University in California. America is thus the destination of a second departure, this time from Isobel and the family life he had occupied, and the site of a new life lived on his own terms.

Deliberate Restraint

In California, the narrator does enough in his academic work while taking care not to advance mathematical understanding in ways that might accelerate technological progress. A poster of Albert Einstein in his office carries a warning about technological progress as a dangerous tool. The narrator never discusses a proof of the Riemann hypothesis, instead persuading his peers that such a proof is inherently impossible. He hopes this will prevent the Vonnadorian hosts from having reason to visit Earth, and also reflects his concern that humans handle progress poorly and that further destruction should be avoided.

He lives alone in a pleasant apartment in Palo Alto, which he fills with plants. Against the earlier memory of America as a place reached through a shared decision, this later setting is quiet and solitary, shaped by his effort to make a life while keeping his own influence on scientific progress in check.