Everyone in This Room Will Someday be Dead

Gilda is the protagonist and narrator of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead. She is a 27-year-old lesbian atheist who has anxiety, depression, and related mental health conditions centered on the “meaninglessness” of existence. Gilda’s first experience with death happened at the age of 10, when her pet rabbit Flop died (134). She values others’ lives over her own, despite believing life is inherently meaningless (119, 244). Because of this paradoxical view, death has haunted Gilda since Flop died. She exists in a liminal space between nihilism and naïve optimism about life. This liminal space fuels her anxiety about mortality. As a result, Gilda spends much of the novel dissociated from the world around her, unable to truly live to her heart’s content.

Gilda uses present-tense stream-of-consciousness to narrate the events of the novel. This narrative technique presents Gilda’s thoughts and feelings as they occur to her, immersing readers in her immediate experiences. Her journey to regain control of her life is tempestuous, as her mental health ebbs and flows: Gilda’s condition and home environment steadily worsen in Parts 1-2; in Part 3, Gilda finally manages to wash her dishes (129); and Part 4 represents a sharp decline in her mental health after her tentative improvement in Part 3.