Stella Maris

In the penultimate chapter, Alicia discloses her incestuous affection for her brother Bobby, whom she regards as the love of her life. Rooted in her solipsistic philosophy, she remains committed to Love in the Face of Societal Restrictions, insisting that only her perspective on the world is valid. She dismisses the world’s perception of her love for Bobby as misguided and repugnant, telling Dr. Cohen, “It’s futile for you to recount these details to me, attempting to illustrate the horror and absurdity of them. You cannot perceive the world as I do. You cannot view it through these eyes. You never will” (163). Nevertheless, we learn that Bobby rebuffs his sister’s advances, steadfastly denying his own emotions. Privately, he reciprocates her love, regarding her as his soulmate, but he cannot admit this even to her. This refusal incites Alicia’s fury, transforming her desire into resentment and an overwhelming sense of injustice.

In the final therapy session, we return to Alicia’s perception of mathematics, a subject she once romanticized as a path to limitless understanding, comparing the discovery and solving of problems to the sense of relief felt when a lost animal returns: “when things suddenly fall into place after days of labor, it’s like a lost animal coming in out of the rain” (170). Alicia discusses how the Kid has left for good, likely because she is beyond saving now. As she reflects on what he meant to her, she describes him as “small and frail and brave,” once her defender (171). However, she now argues that “the first rule of the world is that everything vanishes forever” (171), expressing her current desire for relinquishing the struggle. In this poignant moment, Alicia reveals that she has given up the fight, embracing Suicide and the Dissolution of the Self.

Alicia is particularly critical of language, which she labels a “parasitic system” infiltrating the brain and reshaping the way people communicate. She describes how the brain, unprepared for this novel system, had to adapt the unconscious as a means of conveying meaning to its host. According to her, language is responsible for the fabrication of the world, generating representations of signs and signifiers to denote things: “in the end, this strange new code must have replaced at least part of the world with what can be said about it. Reality with opinion. Narrative with commentary” (175). She contends that such a transformation led to the substitution of “sanity with madness” and the advent of a “universal war,” holding language accountable for the self-destructive instinct within humanity (175). In Alicia’s critical examination, language emerges as both the architect and saboteur of human understanding, casting a shadow over the once-clear distinctions between reality and interpretation, sanity and madness, ultimately leaving humanity to grapple with the consequences of its self-destructive linguistic evolution.

Alicia acknowledges that her position on The Limits of Mathematics has softened. Even if mathematics cannot produce universal, objective understanding, it comes closer than anything else. Contemplating the end of the universe, she envisions a stark scenario where, with everything deceased, human knowledge and understanding face extinction: “when the last light in the last eye fades to black and takes all speculation with it forever, I think it could even be that these truths will glow for just a moment in the final light. Before the dark and the cold claim everything” (179). Nonetheless, she disagrees with Gödel’s radically Platonist belief that “mathematical objects had the same reality as trees and stones” (180). For her, numbers are ultimately only signifiers—representations of reality rather than reality itself.

In a subsequent monologue, Alicia challenges Gödel’s perspective, contending that there is no such thing as a mathematical object, declaring “the numerical concept of six is totally inert” (180). Rejecting Gödel’s Deist stance, which embraced a belief in a divine, universal being governing all things—an all-encompassing mathematics divorced from humanity—Alicia distances herself from this material view of the universe. Instead, she paints mathematics as an expansive form of knowledge, impervious to absolute truths and metanarrative significance. In Alicia’s evolving worldview, mathematics transcends rigid structures, embodying a limitless and dynamic understanding that defies categorization.

The novel concludes with Alicia describing another fantasy of her own demise, this time in the wilds of Romania. In this scenario, she envisions herself slowly dying of starvation before her body is torn apart by wild animals. The language she uses to describe this experience—”I would be their eucharist” (190)—signals her quasireligious view of Suicide and the Dissolution of the Self. Having lost all hope of finding meaning in her own existence, she longs to relinquish the self and enter into nonexistence. In the final moments, she shares a solemn handhold with Dr. Cohen, who typically closed each session with a “time’s up.” However, this time, it marks not just the end of a session but the conclusion of Alicia’s narrative, leaving the reader with the certainty that there will be no more sessions to follow.