Chapter 4 “I” Summary: The Self, Isolation, and the First Person

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

Chapter 4 opens with an explanation of amateur radio’s CQ call—a series of punctuated, monotone beeps broadcast across low frequencies that bend around the curvature of the earth, allowing contact across thousands of miles. The term “CQ” derives from the French pronunciation of “securite,” meaning “pay attention,” though English speakers came to read it as “seek you.” A CQ call is a reaching outward, an invitation for anyone listening to answer, essentially asking “is there anyone out there?”

When contact is made, operators exchange QSL cards—postcard-sized written confirmations of the interaction. These cards are records of contact, not invitations to continue conversation, functioning as evidence that a connection between two people has taken place. They are, in a way, evidence that you exist, because others have verified it.

The narrative shifts to a memory from the author’s early twenties. Visiting her uncle late one night with a bottle of bourbon between them, the uncle tells her about her father. He reveals that her father was obsessed with ham radio, staying up every night making CQ calls. He would crawl onto the roof to fix an antenna salvaged from a nearby dump, scavenging for replacements after winter storms snapped the aluminum. His first receiver was a secondhand model from the 1950s, built with metal vacuum tubes in a pre-transistor era, weighing 100 pounds. The uncle explains their family background: five boys raised in an economically decrepit part of rural Wisconsin, where their father drank, their parents divorced, and they spoke of their late mother with reverence.

The author then describes her own childhood with this father. He had the demeanor of fathers from historical novels she hoarded in her room: stoic, religious, extraordinarily strict. She was terrified to leave food on her plate or hear his footsteps slow on the carpeted hallway outside her bedroom door. There was no bigger crime to him than waste or not respecting the things they had. The uncle’s story was the first time the author had access to her father’s need for anything other than order. She had never thought he would have looked for, of all things, connection.

The uncle pours another glass of bourbon and replicates the beeps exactly, his finger pulsing to accentuate each one. He says he heard it constantly, every night, over and over. He explains that operating ham radio required a license and passing a morse code test, after which you were assigned a handle. The author asks for her father’s handle: WD9JHQ.

The chapter then moves to the author’s own upbringing. Her father started his family a few towns over from where he was raised, in a still-rural, slowly developing subdivision, where she was filled with a basic sense of unbelonging. Beyond geographic remoteness and the impassable expanse between herself and everyone else, she was raised with the tenets of midwestern politeness: be quiet, don’t touch. When grown, she moved to New York, where she met her childhood’s opposite: the inescapability of other people.

Living in a city becomes a practice in containing hostility toward strangers—annoyance when a man’s leg presses against yours in a packed subway car, tempering rage-filled glances at someone vocal-frying to a friend or playing tinny music from a cellphone. On exhausted evenings, the simple existence of others feels like an inconvenience. Strangers invade the monasteries of our minds. Congestion puts strangers on brief and shifting stages, like department store windows about to be redressed: a girl slumped asleep on the subway on her way back from school; a man’s face illuminated by his laptop’s glow through a ground-floor window as he sits alone; a woman leaning into a post, holding her cellphone tightly to her ear in an empty parking lot.

The author didn’t expect the ease with which she’d come to project loneliness onto these moments, applying an Edward Hopper glaze over the crystalline banality of a stranger’s routine. Walking down a street at night and catching the corner of a bedroom beyond a curtain, or seeing a woman fumbling for her keys on a front stoop, she’s surprised by the longing she feels for the people she passes and the homes she’ll never be invited into—or, perhaps more accurately, for the lives she’ll never live. Her annoyance at the proximity of other people quickly turns into tenderness. The grating of a subway car coming down the tracks, its sharp staccato screeching, becomes not the sound of aging infrastructure but a chorus of solitary voices, like searching CQ calls.

The chapter concludes with the author’s central observation: the more she’s watched companionless strangers, the more she’s come to think that these moments are only lonely for those who are observing them. Perhaps we see loneliness in others simply to feel less lonely ourselves.

Key Events

The chapter explains CQ calls and QSL cards as a framework for seeking connection
The uncle reveals the father’s ham radio obsession and his handle, WD9JHQ
The author recounts her childhood unbelonging and the tenets of midwestern politeness
She moves to New York and describes the inescapability of other people
The chapter concludes that loneliness may exist primarily in the observer

Character Development

Kristen Radtke (narrator): The chapter traces her shift from a child who felt unbelonging in rural Wisconsin to an adult in New York navigating constant proximity to strangers. Her annoyance at urban congestion transforms into tenderness as she projects loneliness onto strangers. Learning about her father’s ham radio obsession gives her access to his need for connection, something she’d never imagined he possessed.

The father: Revealed through the uncle’s stories as a man with hidden desire—someone who stayed up every night seeking connection across radio frequencies, despite his stoic, strict exterior.

The uncle: Serves as the conduit for family history, remembering the beeps of his brother’s radio calls with precision because he heard them constantly.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

CQ calls as seeking: The radio call is the chapter’s central symbol—a reaching outward, an attempt to make connection with someone you’ve never met. The author reframes urban sounds (subway screeching) as “searching CQ calls,” suggesting the city is full of people broadcasting their own quiet signals.

Evidence of existence: QSL cards are described as evidence that contact has taken place, “evidence, in a way, that you exist.” This motif connects to how we verify our own existence through connection with others.

Projection of loneliness: The author’s key argument is that loneliness may be primarily in the observer. She projects loneliness onto strangers’ routines, applying an “Edward Hopper glaze” to their banal moments, and concludes that we may see loneliness in others simply to feel less lonely ourselves.

Midwestern politeness vs. urban congestion: The author contrasts her rural upbringing (“be quiet, don’t touch”) with New York’s inescapable proximity to others, framing both as forms of isolation—one geographic, one social.

Tenderness from annoyance: The chapter traces a transformation from hostility toward strangers to tenderness, suggesting that observation can convert irritation into empathy.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter is pivotal because it connects the book’s central question—what does loneliness look like, and how do we seek connection?—to the author’s personal history. The father’s hidden radio obsession provides a concrete, intimate example of someone broadcasting into the void, seeking connection across thousands of miles. The chapter also introduces the book’s most important conceptual turn: the idea that loneliness may be a projection, something we see in others to feel less lonely ourselves. This reframing moves the book from documenting loneliness to questioning its nature.

Study Questions

1. How does the author use the CQ call as a metaphor throughout the chapter?

The CQ call is introduced as a literal radio practice—a series of beeps meaning “seek you,” broadcast to anyone who might answer. The author then applies this framework to urban life, describing the screeching of subway cars as “a chorus of solitary voices, like searching CQ calls.” The metaphor suggests that the city is full of people broadcasting their own signals of need, and that the author’s observation of strangers is itself a form of listening for those signals.

2. What does the father’s ham radio obsession reveal about him, and why is it significant to the author?

The obsession reveals that the father, despite his stoic, strict, order-obsessed exterior, had a need for connection. The author had never seen evidence of desire beyond order in him, and never thought he would have looked for connection. The revelation humanizes him and gives the author access to a hidden dimension of his character, suggesting that even the most seemingly self-contained people are seeking others.

3. What is the chapter’s central argument about loneliness, and how does the author arrive at it?

The chapter’s central argument is that loneliness may exist primarily in the observer. The author arrives at this through her own experience of projecting loneliness onto strangers in New York—the girl asleep on the subway, the man illuminated by his laptop, the woman on the phone in a parking lot. She concludes that these moments are only lonely for those observing them, and that we may see loneliness in others simply to feel less lonely ourselves.