Free will and determinism

Free will and determinism are set against each other through Simon Kefas’s attempt to understand his own past and Sonny Lofthus’s future. Simon imagines people as shaped by biological impulses, information, survival, fear, morality, and social belonging, almost like a complex robot; yet his actions and his appeal to Sonny depend on the possibility that a person can choose differently. The novel leaves that contradiction alive: Simon doubts freedom as a general principle while treating responsibility and change as urgent realities.

The Determinist Account

Simon’s mirror becomes the starting point for a stark account of human behavior. He is no longer able to see himself as either invincible or irredeemably vile; he understands himself as a human being with the potential to do right or to yield to his basest instincts. But that recognition does not settle whether the choice is truly free. He wonders whether people facing the same probabilities would make the same decisions repeatedly, and whether apparent changes in values merely reflect a changed set of circumstances and priorities.

In this account, decisions emerge from the combined pressures of the brain’s chemical composition, available information, survival instinct, sexual urges, mortal fear, learned morality, and herd instinct. Simon extends the argument from individuals to society: morality is not eternal or heaven-sent, but a set of rules that benefits the group. People who cannot conform, he reasons, may be unable to do so because they lack free will. His thought then turns toward the bleak implication that rule-breakers should be eliminated to prevent the spread of behavior the group defines as harmful. The reasoning exposes how easily an account that denies moral agency can become a justification for treating people as threats to be removed.

Simon’s image of himself as a robot gives the theory its most concentrated form. The machine is complex and filled with possibilities, but still, in his formulation, a machine. Possibility appears to multiply the available outcomes without proving that anyone can stand outside the forces producing them. The metaphor therefore holds together two competing impressions: a person has many potential responses, yet may remain governed by causes that the person did not choose.

The Problem of Repeated Choices

Simon’s doubts are not detached speculation. He asks whether he, Ab Lofthus, or Sonny could have chosen differently, and whether some divine inspiration might make a different choice possible next time. His reference to the idea that insanity is repeating the same action while expecting another outcome sharpens the problem: repetition suggests causal regularity, but the hope for a different next decision depends on the possibility of interruption.

Simon’s own recovery supplies evidence on both sides. He had become addicted to gambling, incurred debts, mortgaged the house behind Else’s back, and lost. Else forgave him rather than leaving or imposing an ultimatum. The shame of what he had done extinguished the craving, and Simon stopped gambling altogether. He never placed another bet, not even the value of a beer. He credits Else’s response and their promise to tell each other everything with helping him recognize his capacity for self-control and honesty.

The episode does not prove that Simon possesses freedom independent of circumstance. His change occurs through a relationship, forgiveness, shame, and a new commitment to honesty—all factors that his deterministic account could describe as changing the conditions of the equation. But it also shows why he cannot regard people as fixed beyond change. His own life shifted after an encounter that made a different way of living possible, and he came to offer others second chances despite the hard evidence of his work as a police officer.

Responsibility, Inheritance, and the Next Decision

Simon brings the philosophical dispute directly to Sonny, whose father Ab had been caught in the same corrupt arrangement. Simon tells Sonny that Ab suspected the police mole and tried to act alone because he believed other officers were compromised. That history places Sonny’s choices inside a family legacy of betrayal and danger, but Simon refuses to let inheritance settle the son’s moral identity. He argues that Ab’s good intentions and moral failure do not make Sonny a copy of his father; a son’s responsibility, he tells him, is to become better than his father.

The appeal culminates in a concrete choice. Sonny is preparing to use heroin when Simon tells him that the decision is now his: whether to inject the drug or help capture the Twin and identify the real mole. Simon says the plan depends on Sonny being alive, because he is to serve as bait at a meeting where both targets will be present. The scene turns determinism from an explanatory theory into an immediate ethical test. Simon cannot demonstrate that Sonny is metaphysically free, but he insists that Sonny’s decision matters and frames survival as the condition for action.

That appeal also reflects Simon’s own altered understanding of himself. He once participated in corruption and made choices that devastated Ab; later, after losing what he feared losing, he stopped being the mole and spent the rest of his life trying to make amends and pursuing corrupt officers. The novel does not present repentance as proof that the past can be undone. Instead, Simon’s later conduct shows that a person formed by earlier choices may still act differently afterward, even while carrying responsibility for what came before.

Betrayal, Repentance, and Agency

The account of Simon’s bargain with the Twin makes his conflict over choice personal and costly. During the banking crisis, Ab and Helene were deep in debt, and Simon used Ab’s fear for his son’s future to recruit him into the Twin’s organization. Simon later learned that Ab was willing to kill him to claim the position closest to the Twin. He acted first, telling the Twin that Ab had to be eliminated, and killed his best friend. Simon described the two men as caught in the same nightmare, each trying to kill the other; the comparison suggests a cycle that feels fated without erasing the decisions by which Simon helped create it.

Simon’s guilt did not end with the murder. He regarded his bargain as a form of self-harm through shame and degradation, and he hated himself for drawing Ab into the corruption that consumed him. After Helene died, Simon felt he had reached the end of the road and had nothing left to fear. He then abandoned his role as a mole, spent the remainder of his life doing penance, and pursued corrupt officers without sparing those who resembled his former self. His repentance did not restore Ab or remove Simon’s responsibility; it redirected the life that followed.

Else’s account of Simon’s change resists the idea that another person simply saves him. She says that her love did not save him; Simon saved himself through his love for her. Her distinction gives the novel’s treatment of agency a relational dimension. Other people can alter what matters to someone, offer forgiveness, or make honesty possible, but the consequential action remains the person’s own. In this account, freedom is neither isolated self-creation nor an excuse to deny responsibility: it appears as a capacity exercised within relationships and after harm has already been done.

The Novel’s Unresolved Tension

The novel does not resolve Simon’s philosophical question by proving either complete freedom or complete determination. Simon’s theory that conduct follows an unalterable equation sits beside his lived experience of quitting gambling, repenting, and choosing to oppose the corruption he once served. His own explanation allows that new relationships and values change the inputs; his moral practice insists that such changes still matter.

Sonny’s decision makes that unresolved tension the basis of action rather than a problem that can be settled in advance. Simon asks whether a person can choose differently, but he does not wait for certainty before offering Sonny a way to act. The contrast is central to the concept’s significance: if conduct is determined, accountability may seem unjust; if change is possible, neither a father’s failures nor a person’s worst acts must dictate everything that follows. Simon’s life sustains both propositions at once—causes shape people, and the next choice remains consequential.