Being Henry David

After Danny Henderson loses his memory, he must rediscover who he is without a sense of his past. He wakes up at the novel’s start with no recollection of his name, home, family, or life before the present moment. This absence of memory challenges Danny to rethink who he could be, what he may have done, and what his future might hold for him. However, understanding the world from a proverbial blank slate is frightening, complicates Danny’s ability to make decisions, and is an obstacle in his friendships. Because “nothing in [his] life is familiar,” he feels as if he’s “standing of the edge of a cliff every damn minute, rocks crumbling under [his] feet” (51). This metaphor—which foreshadows Danny’s eventual mastering of the cliff face in the form of Mount Katahdin—captures the uncertainty of Danny’s circumstances and the feeling of danger that this uncertainty brings. The blank space also invites a variety of counterfactuals. At times, Danny delves into thought experiments about his old life, wondering if he has “a rich father” or “a cute girlfriend” (52, 73). At other times, Danny is overcome by terror that he might have hurt someone and therefore might be a bad person.