Miller opens the novel with a burst of philosophy, reflecting on life in general. What will follow, he implies, is a series of loosely linked, ostensibly autobiographical musings or accounts. The story proper, such as there is, begins with a young Miller working a series of dead-end day jobs. He finally manages to secure a long-term stint at what he calls the “Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company of North America” (in all likelihood his bemused term for the Western Union Telegraph Company). He serves as a makeshift employment manager, hiring and firing at a rapid pace. He is swept into the system, and contemplates its crazed and inhumane logic (or lack thereof). He takes his first serious stab at writing around this time, when his boss casually…

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• Tropic of Capricorn Summary
• About Tropic of Capricorn
• Character List
• Glossary of Terms
• Major Themes
• Summary and Analysis of Section I: From beginning to “I walked out by the same door that I had walked in – without as much as a by-your-leave, sir!”
• Summary and Analysis of Section II: “Things take place instantaneously” to “The frozen glass of the window cutting like a jackknife, clean and no remainder.”
• Summary and Analysis of Section III: “Life drifting by the show window” to “It gave me the feeling of the stupidity of the blood tie and of the love which is not spiritually imbued.”
• Summary and Analysis of Section IV: “I look back rapidly and I see myself again in California” to “I was not even a personal hard on.”
• Summary and Analysis of Section V: “It was about this time, adopting the pseudonym Samson Lackawanna, that I began my depradations” to “This is the only world you can inhabit, this tomb of the snake where darkness reigns.”
• Summary and Analysis of Section VI: “And suddenly for no reason at all, when I think of her returning to her nest, I remember Sunday mornings in the little old house near the cemetery” to “It makes you terribly quiet inside, makes you aware that the
• Summary and Analysis of Section VII: From “The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and disasters” to end.
• Tropic of Capricorn as Autobiography
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• Suggested Essay Questions
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 1
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 2
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 3
• Test Yourself! - Quiz 4
• Author of ClassicNote and Sources

• Tropic of Capricorn: Major Themes
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• Henry Miller: Biography