The Book of Daniel

“It was designed with the idea that madness might be soothed in a setting of architectural beauty.”

The trip to Susan’s mental health facility provides a physical demonstration of the underlying alienation of capitalist society. The facility supposedly provides healthcare, though all efforts to treat Susan fail miserably. Instead, society has invested hope that the physical structure of the institution will soothe the patients. Hope for treatment is invested in the institution itself, rather than in human beings. Simply by existing, the capitalist society hopes, the facility can provide the solutions to the same issues caused by the society itself.

“Why do the facts of Russian national torment make Americans feel smug?”

As American society heaves exhaustedly toward the end of the 1960s, true accomplishments and achievements are beginning to fade. Daniel is in a reflective mood as he scrutinizes his society and finds that Americans are being kept afloat only by schadenfreude rather than their own happiness. With nothing left to work toward and an increasingly pessimistic view of the future, Daniel believes that American society is clinging to a propagandized understanding of Soviet society which makes them feel better about their own alienated lives.

“I’ll play Monopoly with you.”

The comfort that Daniel can offer to a distraught Susan is deeply ironic. To placate his sister, who is suffering because her parents are being tried by a capitalist state for their anti-capitalist views, Daniel offers to play a board game that itself is a microcosm of capitalism.