Stories of Your Life and Others

The story is formally divided into 9 segments, each of which begins with theoretical mathematic inference, followed by two subheadings, a and b, which tell the story from the third person omniscient narrative viewpoint. Mathematical segments deal with historical attempts to prove the inconsistency of mathematics, especially with respect to division by zero, which “allows one to prove not only that one and two are equal, but that any two numbers at all—real or imaginary, rational or irrational—are equal” (71).

Renee is a mathematics professor who tried to commit suicide and spent a brief time in a psychiatric ward. Her biologist husband, Carl, feels numb and tired due to her previous erratic behavior: “[H]e felt no more than a sense of duty towards her” (72).

As a child, Renee became infatuated with the precision of mathematics. She was a prodigy, receiving her doctorate at 23, but for her it was all about the sense of rightness that mathematics gave her.

A few weeks before her suicide attempt, Renee asks her colleague, Fabrisi, to look at her newest calculations—the first time she has ever asked anyone for help. The new formalism she developed contradicts itself. Although she knows Fabrisi will be unable to grasp the full meaning of her work, he will be useful in checking its mechanical aspects. Fabrisi soon confirms Renee’s fears about the correctness of her calculations and the essential contradiction in her work. She contacts another mathematician, Callahan, who confirms her findings are “fundamental and disturbing” (81).

At home, Carl witnesses Renee’s frustration with her current work and tries to cheer her up, to no avail. He is unable to understand the source of her frustrations. When he confronts her, she tells him she discovered “a formalism that lets you equate any number with any other number. That page there proves that one and two are equal” (79). The proof employs only allowed axioms and operations. Her conclusion is that “‘arithmetic as a formal system is inconsistent’” (79). Renee’s profound sense of disturbance lies in the fact that she has disproved most mathematical rules, which are rendered meaningless because “now mathematics has absolutely nothing to do with reality” (80).

As Renee feels as if she is losing her mind, she dreams of a formalism equating life with death. Her work, though catastrophic in consequence, feels right and precise. Carl tries to comfort her by mentioning how quantum physics and irrational numbers first made no sense, but she informs him indignantly that her work proves things a priori—meaning, through theoretical deduction. Renee adds, “I can’t maintain the concept of distinct quantities in my mind anymore; they all feel the same to me” (83). A few days later, she attempts suicide, which reminds Carl of his youth, when he tried to kill himself. During his healing, he learned about empathy from his girlfriend Laura who helped him. He realizes there is nothing he can do for Renee because he cannot grasp what led her to such an action.

After her release from a psychiatric ward, Renee wonders if she will ever be able to function normally again. For her, mathematics no longer gives meaning to the universe. It is inconsistent—merely empirical—and therefore of no interest to her. Carl, meanwhile, falls out of love with Renee, whom he can no longer reach. He plans to leave her after she gets better, but Renee causes him to feel like a hypocrite by thanking him for being there for her as support. He understands that they share the same feeling: as Renee feels alienated from mathematics, having proven it unstable, Carl feels alienated from her, having witnessed her instability. However, “this was an empathy that separated rather than united them, and he couldn’t tell her that” (87-88).