Everyone in This Room Will Someday be Dead

While every human eventually dies, compared to other animals, we spend a great deal of energy and time planning around death: Many religions address death in unique ways, and people write wills to dictate material goods and organize funerary rites. Death often reframes our actions in life, considering the enduring nature of the universe as a whole. Gilda finds herself unable to engage in life or connect to others because of death. She feels “simultaneously insignificant and hyperaware of how important everyone is” (224). Gilda is caught in the double bind of the human condition: She wants everything to matter but is well aware of how temporary everything is. The human condition and how we cope with it, especially when struggling with mental health, is the core theme of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead.

Gilda spends most of her time dissociated and detached from her surroundings. She makes observations of the world around her as if she’s a biologist observing animals. When Ingrid takes Gilda out for her 28th birthday, Gilda can only think about how odd attending a concert would be if other animals did it (170). She compares concertgoers to birds gathering to watch another bird sing for them and concludes that the activity is a strange one. Every time someone gives Gilda a meaningful present, the act makes her heart break. When Eleanor gives her a box of Thin Mint cookies (128), the act reminds her that she’s falling “through space” next to Eleanor, and this knowledge makes her “intensely aware of how strange and sad it is to know someone” (128). Other people act as if their actions and relationships carry meaning and permanency, which Gilda knows isn’t objectively true. The contradiction between the meaning we invest in our lives as humans and our mortality makes Gilda feel like an outside observer. Gilda wants meaning, happiness, and authenticity, for herself and others, but sees these traits as something she can’t have due to her mental health.

Gilda doesn’t consider the idea that other people want meaning for her too. When Gilda explains to Rosemary that she pretended to be Grace to “spare [her] some sadness,” Rosemary explicitly asks if she’s ever considered other people’s concerns for her (225). The novel transitions to a new scene after this question, implying Gilda has never considered it before. This lingering of Rosemary’s question suggests that it has a profound impact on Gilda, as she soon repairs her relationship with Eleanor as well as her apartment. Gilda even begins taking care of herself because she realizes her loved ones “just want [her] to smile” (225). Her solution to the existential dread caused by the paradoxical human condition isn’t to find a way out of it, but to embrace being a part of it.