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Chapter 4: A Fairy Tale
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Glass Hotel, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Complicity and Interconnectedness
Guilt and Responsibility
Fraud and Constructed Identity
Greed, Delusion, and Self Interest
Alienation and Self-Knowledge
Regret and Disillusionment
Summary
Analysis
Olivia, a painter, stands on the street in Soho as Vincent and Mirella pass by. Olivia came here because it’s the site of a doorway she once passed through in the late 1950s, when Jonathan’s brother was looking for models. Now, in 2008, Olivia takes shelter from the impending rain under an awning.
The appearance of Olivia introduces a new character whose life will converge with the existing storylines: Olivia becomes connected with Vincent and Mirella as they pass by on their walk through Soho, and she apparently has connections to Alkaitis as well, since she knew of Alkaitis’s brother in the 1950s.
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The narrative flashes back to 1958, when Olivia is a young artist living in Manhattan. Olivia buzzes her way into Lucas’s studio by simply saying “it’s me,” into the buzzer. Lucas Alkaitis is an artist “on the run from the suburbs,” like so many other people his age. Still, Olivia has met lots of “fake painters” and knows Lucas to be the real thing. Currently, Lucas is working on a series of nudes—of men and women sitting on a sofa. Though Olivia finds the paintings to be “ravishing,” she finds Lucas himself to be rather cliched in appearance and mannerisms.
Olivia knows that there’s a lot of pretense and artifice in the art world, but she recognizes Lucas to be legitimately talented. That Olivia observes a distinct difference between Lucas and his paintings suggests that Lucas feels freer to be himself in his work; in contrast, the way he presents himself in person is contrived and stiff. The fraudulent experience of existing versus the liberating honesty of art may be seen in Vincent’s video recordings as well: she’s poised and practiced when she’s in society, but she’s more honest when she’s alone with her camera.
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When Olivia arrives at Lucas’s studio, she tells him she’d like to model for him. Lucas is pleased and offers to pay Olivia, but she offers her own proposition: he can paint her if she can paint him. Olivia is an artist with mild success and gallery representation and is working on a portrait series of her own. Lucas humors the proposition for a moment before declining.
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Sometime later, Olivia is in her studio painting her friend, Renata, who makes up ghost stories to pass the time. Suddenly, Lucas arrives at the studio, apparently having changed his mind about posing. Olivia finishes with Renata as Lucas investigates Olivia’s paintings. Renata leaves to pick up her kid and Lucas reluctantly takes off his clothing to pose. Beneath his clothing, he is “skinny and unpleasantly pale.” Olivia asks Lucas to reposition his arm, but Lucas just smiles and does nothing, and Olivia catches a glimpse of the bruised veins that stretch across his inner elbow. She proceeds to paint the bruises.
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Five months later, at the opening of Olivia’s show, Lucas corners her, irate, and calls her a “liar,” though, in only 10 months, he will overdose behind a restaurant. Olivia remembers going to one of his shows right before he died and telling him she liked one of his paintings. She saw Jonathan Alkaitis at that show, looking very suburban and out of place. Lucas introduces them, and Jonathan calls out Olivia for lying about liking Lucas’s paintings. Inwardly, Olivia admits that the paintings are unoriginal and on the nose. She says she was just trying to be polite.
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Lucas’s funeral was small, in Greenburgh, where his family lived. Olivia hadn’t known about his death until a month after it happened. Her life was chaotic then, and she was often poor, behind on rent, and needing to call her sister, Monica, for help. In the midst of these troubles, 40 years later, one of her paintings, Lucas with Shadows, sold at an auction for $200,000.
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In the aftermath of this good fortune, Olivia rents an old house in Monticello, New York. She sits there with Monica, who suggests that she invest the money. By some strange fateful connection, the man with whom Monica invests her savings is Jonathan Alkaitis, Lucas’s brother. Olivia tells Jonathan who she is when she calls him, and, to her surprise, he remembers that night at the gallery. Olivia invites him to lunch, which he accepts, and they continue to see each other a few times over the following years. Jonathan likes talking about Lucas, whom he didn’t know that well because of their age difference. In another meeting, Jonathan discloses to Olivia that he bought her painting of Lucas, having hunted it down from the first buyer, and that it’s now hanging in his apartment in the city. Olivia is immensely moved.
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Olivia continues to recall memories with Jonathan. In 2003, when they meet for dinner, Jonathan is no longer wearing a wedding ring, and Olivia takes this to mean that Suzanne, whom she’s never met, is dead. It’s a sad moment.
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Three months before his arrest, Jonathan invites Olivia on a yacht trip with him and his second wife, Vincent. Olivia compliments Jonathan on Vincent, calling her lovely and praising her ability to make cocktails. Jonathan says that Vincent would be good at anything she did, and Olivia wonders what it would be like to be good at everything; lately, she’s doubted even her ability to paint.
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Jonathan and Olivia continue to talk about Vincent. Jonathan observes that Vincent’s talent is that “she sees what a given situation requires, and she adapts herself accordingly.” The comment makes Olivia uneasy, as it seems as though Jonathan is describing “a disappearing act,” one in which Vincent and her real personality are dissolved into Jonathan’s life. Olivia pretends to be interested in what Jonathan has to say about Vincent, though she inwardly decides that Vincent is not “a serious person.”
