The Animal Spirits

This post started as a response to Bethany Knight's post about her frustrations with Jake and others' seeming aimlessness and lack of development-- that there is nowhere to go and no consequences for not getting there.
I think it's patently wrong to say that nobody in this novel wants anything. This novel is so ABOUT want. Not an object, but the very experience of WANTING. Passion. Lust. Power is the point. Nietzsche would say that this drive within a species is the only story:

"... only in limited situations is the drive for conservation precedent over the will to power. The natural condition of life, according to him, is one of profusion.[69] In its later forms Nietzsche's concept of the will to power applies to all living things, suggesting that adaptation and the struggle to survive is a secondary drive in the evolution of animals, less important than the desire to expand one's power... Defending his view, Nietzsche describes instances where people and animals willingly risk their lives to gain power—most notably in instances like competitive fighting and warfare."
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

Bullfighting and Boxing, anyone?

It's obvious that these characters are not supposed to be telling us about the selves we want to be, either by negative or positive example. Like Dr. H said in class-- nobody in this novel, even Brett, really seems happy. I think Brett, Jake, Robert, and Mike are all struggling with those dark, ruthless impulses and desires that none of us want to admit are a defining point of all of our characters as human-animals.