Amidst the various aspects of development that we see the narrator experience throughout the novel, one very interesting one is his relation to and identification with the entities surrounding him. Due to the fact that we are introduced to the character as a lone, almost disembodied figure, we are provided with the sense that the story is inevitably headed in the direction of some type of climactic future that is vastly different from the character’s past. Beginning with his loyalty and absolute determination to the university and moving to his devotion to the Brotherhood, we see a range of commitment that differs in both strength and underlying motive. I am most interested in this how these stages seem to affect the narrator’s situational behavior, such as his encounter with mistakenly calling two strangers in a bar “Brothers”. After being confronted by the two men, he confusedly thinks, “They didn’t sound drunk and I had said nothing to offend, and I was certain that they knew who I was. What was it?” (424) While this is not the first form of antagonism the narrator has faced, the disjointedness of the situation, in which he had become so far removed from individuals outside of the Brotherhood, demonstrates the skillful degree to which he can adapt to and identify with a group. Moving forward with the story, I would like to explore how this cyclic repetition of identifying with a larger mass and then breaking off with them provides the character’s personality depth and leads to his ultimate lone situation.