Nothing!

I so wanted that word, perhaps repeated a few times, to be my whole review--the word that torture enlightens us to because when faced with it we just want everything to go away. Still, consciousness is the problem and nothingness the solution and a sympathizer, especially one who is educated and intelligent has way too much consciousness, suffering not only for himself but for others, the objects of his sympathy. Instead he is repeatedly forced to choose sides and sometimes kill those he sympathizes with, or at the very least doing nothing to stop those on his side from doing so.

The secret of fighting a war is to be unsympathetic. Ideology needs to replace sympathy; the ideology of people who are like you. Unfortunately, no one is like the Captain, the confessor, the bastard, the unnamed narrator. He fits in nowhere, he is accepted by no one. This time of identity politics when it's all about being part of some group, is also a time of polarization and dividedness. The ultimate aim of belonging is to wage war against those who do not belong.

There are no good guys in this novel, the closest to one being Sonny, whom he is ordered to kill, but that's part of the point. There is always some crime to confess.

In the end, our sympathizer remains a revolutionary, but one in search of a revolution. If it's not too paradoxical, perhaps that will be an uprising of sympathizers who will defeat the ideologues.