“Haven’t they much in common, after all? Both are bachelors, indoor sorts, who enjoy the comforts of a cozy domesticity; both are secretive; both take pleasure in plots and schemes.”
This quote stuck out to me because it took the magic of the cartoon and brought it into a human plane. These characters are no longer a brilliant mouse and a scheming cat. They are your everyday homebodies. Millhauser stepped away from the magic of a cat being blown up and surviving with nothing more than ash on his face and caused us to look at these beings as something closer to ourselves. Millhauser examines the unsatisfaction of humans through cartoon characters. We will never be able to be satisfied in life because once we have the one thing we want “most” we then realize that we have no purpose left. It won’t be until we find another want or realize our own demise that we can be content.