Hidden Bodies

“There is nothing more terrifying than realizing that the one who knows you best loves you least, pities you even.”

Joe’s reaction to Amy’s betrayal is intense. Joe’s fears—even though he is not like everyone else—are similar to those of others. Even though he is a killer, the fact that Amy fooled him gives him the same insecurities as it would to most people. He can be afraid, and not simply afraid of being caught.

“I love them; they are like kids, the way they just fucking hope. I hate them; they are like kids, the way they just fucking hope.”

On the flight to Los Angeles, Joe looks at his Facebook friends. Ironically, he loves the fact that people hope so fervently, even though hope leads to aspirations. This mental duality is a good representation of Joe’s ability to whiplash between the poles of various emotions and opinions, depending on the feelings they produce in him.

“They all think this, these girls—Amy—that they can leave your past behind. Don’t they know it’s not that simple? It’s not the past if it’s not finished.”

Joe listens to Delilah and resents the fact that she thinks anyone can truly move on. Because Joe is willing to kill, he has a more macabre—and profound—relationship with the concepts of finality and closure. In the Bible, Delilah tempts Samson into surrendering his strength. Joe kills his version of Delilah before she can compromise him by revealing his guilt.

“This is why people have small dogs, why they trap them in their efficient apartments, because sometimes you need another living thing, you need eyes on you, even if the eyes belong to a fucking Pomeranian.”

Even though Joe requires a degree of isolation and secrecy, he understands that companionship has benefits beyond sexual pleasure and ego boosting. Being observed enforces a level of self-control that keeps Joe’s compulsions in check for the sake of self-preservation.

“Earlier generations, they were more comfortable as listeners and Henderson promoted an idea that we could all be the center of attention all the time. But if everyone is onstage, who’s in the audience?”

At dinner with Ray and Dottie, Joe pontificates on the nature of celebrity and social media culture. He’s doing it to impress and ingratiate Love’s parents, but his remarks reinforce one of the book’s central themes: the pursuit of fame requires an audience, and no one wants to be the audience. Any time spent paying attention to someone else is time not spent building one’s own brand.

“This is why people like writing. You visit old friends without having to go on Facebook and see what they’re up to and deal with what idiots call FOMO. You make them into what you want them to be, the people they could be if only they were braver, smarter.”

Joe equates the popularity of social media with being able to maintain relationships at a distance. That distance also allows people to tell themselves that they are good friends, and that their friends are good people, while ignoring the flaws they might see if they were together in real life. People use social media for, among other things, making the people they know into the people they wish they were.

“Amy and I had sex and heat. Beck dangled a carrot and I bit. But Love and I grow the carrots, peel them, and eat them together.”

Joe contrasts his relationships with Beck, Amy, and Love. Beck was nothing but a temptation. Amy was passion, but in hindsight, there was nothing more to her than the passion and lust. Love and Joe have a relationship that is mutually nurturing, symbiotic, and fulfilling. They share physical pleasures, emotional support, and the relationship nourishes each of them.

“I knew him best because I killed him.”

Joe is annoyed by how wrong everyone is about Henderson. For Joe, the most intimate moments, outside of sex, occur between a killer and a victim. Because Joe sees Henderson’s last moments, he believes he best understands his fears, insecurities, and desires. Because of his desire for connection, this could lead Joe to seek more victims.

“The key is not just to continue believing, after all, but the key to life is to believe in something that matters, something big and beautiful, something more profound than fame, money.”

It is ironic that Joe focuses on the meaning of life, when he is incapable of being concerned with anything but his own life. Joe philosophizes about the human race, but only extends his thoughts about humanity to himself. However, he does embody the truth that money and fame are less important than pursuing beauty and profundity.

“I’m starting to realize, love is not the problem. It’s the people like Forty, like Amy, like Beck, the people who are loveless. And it’s possible to know this right away.”

Joe has a distorted view of what love is. He characterizes love both by what he thinks it is—people giving him what he wants, adoring him, and providing oral sex—and what it is not. He only defines what love is not by its perceived absence in the people who wrong him: Forty, Amy, and Beck. He no longer believes the pursuit of love to be in his greatest interest.

“Give a miserable person an ice cream cone and the miserable person will nosh, digest, and go back to being miserable.”

Joe watching Forty eat ice cream at the diner. Joe lives his life by indulging in his worst appetites. This is why he understands the momentary relief Forty gets from an ice cream cone. It allows him to briefly forget the situation he is in, his past, and the vague uncertainties of his future. The indulgence of an appetite is not abstract: it is instant relief.

“We all get our hearts broken. We get fucked up and we cry and listen to sad songs and say we’re never doing that again. But to be alive is to do it again. To love is to risk everything.”

Joe thinks about Amy as he prepares to go back to the Salinger House for the mug. He does not believe that anyone truly learns their lessons. Humans cannot resist the pull of love, and love cannot exist without risk. This outlook aligns with his disdain for aspirations: Joe believes that whatever he and other people tell themselves, they are destined to relive their cycles of mistakes and loss.

“It’s like the difference between a movie and a book: a book lets you choose how much of the blood you want to see. A book gives you the permission to see the story as you want, as your mind directs. You interpret. Your Alexander Portnoy doesn’t look like mine because we all have our own unique view.”

Joe thinks that literature can be a protective barrier for squeamish people. Books tell stories that invite the readers to participate, although they can choose their level of involvement. Movies are the director’s vision and little else: viewers can either look at the images or not, but they cannot change what appears on the screen.

“Tell me. Who has the right to hate anyone?” (369).

Love’s response after Joe tells her the truth. She does not understand how someone could create a world where someone like Forty would be shunned by everyone—including the puppy—to the point where he lashes out and vanishes. Love reveals that she has a macabre side, but she still doesn’t believe that it is worth her time to hate Joe. This foreshadows the scene of her interrogation when Joe realizes that her inability to hate anyone will let him keep their stories straight.

“I pray to God that he is with me—this is how that happens, how you find God in jail.”

After Love locks Joe in the bathroom, he prays that he will have the strength to fight whoever comes through the door when it unlocks. The irony is lost on Joe: he is a killer who has been locked up by his girlfriend after he confesses the murders to her. And yet, when the moment of confrontation comes, he prays for God to intercede on his behalf.

“It’s true what they say about happiness. If you approach life from a place of gratitude, you’re more apt to enjoy things…It’s enough for me to write and know that I did the best I could.”

Joe reflects on the nature of contentment before he attends the premier where he meets Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux. Love’s acceptance of him has simplified his worldview into a laughably narrow package: Joe now tells himself that all he has ever cared about is doing his best, and that he is determined to approach life with the LA abundance mindset that he has spent the entire novel mocking.

“Childhood fucks you up, no matter what it looks like.”

Before Forty’s funeral, Joe realizes that their affluent childhood was no guarantee of happiness. Childhood is deep training for the adulthood that everyone experiences. Love and Forty had every advantage, but Forty was a miserable, selfish addict who hurt everyone who loved him. Joe cannot blame his childhood for who he is, any more than anyone else can.

“That’s the thing about the charade of love; nobody gets mad when you don’t back up your lofty statements about someone’s triumphant life with tangible facts.”

Joe’s entire life relies on deceptions and lies that keep him free from punishment for his crimes. His life is a charade that allows him to pursue his appetites without detection. However, he sees the irony in the fact that, while most people claim to abhor dishonesty, they will let any grandiose statement go unchecked as long as the lie is about love. People who knew Forty would have known that Joe’s gushing elegy was inaccurate, but they are moved by it nonetheless.

“What a great feeling it is to revisit the puzzle of your life and say, ah. I know what that beach is there for. It’s there for me.”

After the funeral, Joe sees everything with new purpose and meaning. He has gotten away with attempting to kill Forty, Love has accepted him and is pregnant, and Joe’s future looks promising. He interprets these events as the solution to a puzzle—a puzzle whose answer is that everything exists to please him and satisfy his desires, which is exactly the pathology that makes it impossible for Joe to care about other people’s feelings.

“If this is how we are after her brother’s shocking death and our surprise pregnancy, imagine how good we’re going to be when we don’t have any stress in our lives.”

As Joe and Love tease each other in Taco Bell, he is giddy about their future. Joe’s compulsive nature often confines him to the present—subject to whatever impulse or inconvenience is gnawing at him—and his contemplation of the future is naïve. Given their natures, people like Joe and Love could never hope for a stress-free future, particularly when living as a couple.

“It’s so vengeful, so middle school, the way they want to boil my entire life down into these two dead girls.”

Joe is offended that the police want to reduce him to two murders. He views their criminal investigation as an outrageous intrusion, motivated by pettiness, rather than their lawful and moral obligation as the front line of law enforcement. Joe interprets any action that defies him or thwarts his appetites and desire as hostile and personal. He is a stalker who targets his victims and assumes that he is being treated the same way.

“I’m a changed man. I saw Amy on the beach, Amy, the reason I moved here, the person who stole from me and broke my heart, and I didn’t kill her. I’m not that guy anymore and this seems relevant, but then legally, it isn’t.”

Joe lets Amy go because he pities her, and because Love—and their future child—have become more important to him than the potential consequences of vengeance. Joe changed his life to find Amy and end hers, but he is at peace with his decision to let her live. Up until this point, Joe’s resentments have been so overwhelming that they rob him of his ability to reflect in moments of anger. Now, it seems as if he may have more of a choice about when to act, and when to show mercy.

“It’s been three days and life is never how you expect it to be. The food here isn’t bad. It isn’t good, per se, but I’m not starving. In the newspapers they call me Killer Joe, and it’s disappointing, the failure of modern media, the lack of originality.”

In jail, Joe’s concerns shift to the small, daily realities. He isn’t tormented with thoughts of whether he’ll gain his freedom. Rather, he is annoyed by the media’s bland coverage of his story. He daydreams about Love and the baby, but without any apparent longing. He appears to be more inconvenienced by his capture than horrified by the thought that he may never be free again.