Tarot Cards Symbol in Sleepwalk: Meaning, Fate, and Identity

Tarot Cards in Sleepwalk: A Symbol of Seeking Without Finding

The Tarot deck in Dan Chaon's Sleepwalk is a small, recurring object that carries outsized thematic weight. It appears at moments of acute uncertainty, when the narrator—a man who operates under dozens of aliases and lives by improvisation—finds himself unable to read the situation before him. The cards are his attempt to impose order on chaos, to find a pattern in the noise, and they consistently fail him. Yet he keeps returning to them, which makes the Tarot less a tool of divination and more a mirror of his own restless, searching consciousness.

What the Tarot Cards Literally Are

The narrator owns an old Rider-Waite Tarot deck (chapter 12), the classic 1909 deck designed by Arthur Edward Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. He keeps it in his camper, the Guiding Star, where it sits next to the salt and pepper shakers (chapter 24)—a placement that suggests the cards have become as ordinary as condiments, a routine part of his daily life rather than a sacred object.

The narrator learned Tarot from Mrs. Wetz, an eighty-year-old professional psychic in Margate, Florida, who was also a holder for some Mafia people with cash stored throughout her house. He would mow her lawn, and they would sit on her screened-in porch drinking tea while she showed him the cards like dolls with individual personalities. This origin story matters: the Tarot comes to him not through mystical initiation but through a practical, almost mundane relationship with an eccentric old woman. It is a skill he acquired, like card shuffling or Mah-jongg, rather than a belief he adopted.

Indeed, the narrator is explicit about his ambivalence: he wouldn't say that he believes in Tarot entirely, though he can read it (chapter 12). He uses the cards just for meditation purposes, a framing that allows him to engage with the symbolic language of the Tarot without committing to its supernatural claims. This is consistent with his broader character—a man who describes himself as a former magician and card sharp (chapter 4), and who approaches the world with a craftsman's pragmatism.

Where the Tarot Recurs

The Tarot appears twice in the novel's narrative present, and both appearances follow the same pattern: the narrator is troubled, he shuffles the cards, he draws a three-card spread, and the reading fails to help him.

The first reading occurs in chapter 12, after he has delivered a baby to a woman at a hospital parking lot—a routine drop-off that nonetheless leaves him feeling disgusted with himself. He sits in his camper, picking at fried breading crumbs, and brings out the Tarot to try to convince himself that the baby will be fine. He draws the Eight of Cups, the Six of Pentacles reversed, and the Hanged Man. His reaction is understated but telling: this doesn't look very good, at first glance. Before he can ponder the message further, his burner phones begin buzzing—someone has tracked his location—and he puts the cards away, one by one.

The second reading occurs in chapter 24, after his call with Cammie, the young woman who claims to be his daughter. He has been going back and forth about whether to believe her, changing his mind four or five dozen times. He shuffles the cards and asks them what they can tell him about Cammie. He draws the Lovers reversed, Temperance, and the King of Cups reversed. His reaction is more openly hostile this time: the Lovers reversed is pretty obvious and unhelpful, Temperance is condescending, and the King of Cups reversed—a card that typically represents a narcissistic older man, a wasteful user and taker and manipulator—is more than a little insulting. He feels unjustly treated and puts the cards back, thinking those cards can bite his ass.

How the Meaning Changes

The two readings trace a subtle arc in the narrator's relationship with the Tarot—and with himself. In the first reading, he is seeking reassurance about an external situation (the baby's fate). The cards give him an ambiguous but ominous answer, and he is interrupted before he can fully process it. In the second reading, he is seeking clarity about an internal situation (his possible fatherhood, his connection to Cammie). The cards give him an answer that feels personal and accusatory—the King of Cups reversed describes a man very much like himself—and he rejects it.

This progression suggests that the Tarot's meaning shifts from a tool of divination to a mirror of self-knowledge. In the first reading, the cards are opaque; in the second, they are uncomfortably transparent. The narrator's refusal to accept the King of Cups reversed as a description of himself—he insists he doesn't think he's the problem here—reveals a man who is willing to consult the cards for guidance but unwilling to accept what they reflect back about his own character. The Tarot, in this sense, becomes a test of the narrator's capacity for self-examination, and he fails it.

The placement of the deck next to the salt and pepper shakers also evolves in meaning. At first, it suggests the Tarot's ordinariness—a domestic object among other domestic objects. But by the second reading, the juxtaposition carries a darker irony: the cards are as much a part of the narrator's daily survival kit as his burner phones, his hydrocodone lozenges, and his dog Flip. They are tools for managing anxiety, not for discovering truth.

Connections to Themes and Characters

The Tarot motif connects directly to several of the novel's central themes. Most obviously, it speaks to the theme of identity, multiplicity, and erasure. The narrator lives under dozens of aliases—Will Bear, William Baird, Bill Behr, Barry Billingsly, Davis Dowty, and many more—and the Tarot is one of the few constants in his shifting identity. It is a practice he carries with him across state lines and aliases, a thread of continuity in a life defined by discontinuity. Yet the cards themselves refuse to give him a stable answer about who he is, which mirrors his own inability to settle on a fixed self.

The Tarot also connects to the theme of trust and deception. The narrator is a professional deceiver—he delivers babies to strangers, he discards burner phones, he lies to nearly everyone he meets. His relationship with the Tarot is marked by the same distrust he extends to people: he doesn't fully believe in it, he questions its motives, and he ultimately rejects its answers. The cards, in turn, seem to deceive him—or at least to withhold the comfort he seeks. This mutual suspicion mirrors his relationships with Cammie, Experanza, and everyone else in his orbit.

The theme of the search for family and belonging is also present. The narrator's Tarot readings are both prompted by family-related anxieties: the fate of the baby he delivered, and the question of whether Cammie is truly his daughter. The cards fail to resolve either question, leaving him in a state of suspended uncertainty. This is consistent with the novel's broader treatment of family as something that is sought but never fully found—a pattern established by the epigraph, which suggests a mutual but never-completed pursuit.

The character most closely associated with the Tarot's spiritual dimension is Experanza, the narrator's old friend who practices Reiki and speaks of the numinous atmosphere. In chapter 25, she proposes energy healing as a way to divine information from his aura, and the narrator agrees because he hopes she'll be able to divine some useful information. This willingness to try spiritual practices—Tarot, Reiki—suggests a man who is open to non-rational sources of knowledge, even as he remains skeptical of them. The contrast between Experanza's earnest belief in the numinous and the narrator's pragmatic skepticism highlights his fundamental ambivalence about meaning-making itself.

The Epigraph and the Tarot

The novel's epigraph—Rumi's line that that which you seek is also seeking you—provides a crucial lens for understanding the Tarot motif. The narrator seeks answers from the cards, but the cards, in a sense, are also seeking him: they keep returning to the same uncomfortable truths about his character, his choices, and his relationships. The King of Cups reversed is not a random draw; it is a card that describes the narrator with uncomfortable precision, and its appearance suggests that the Tarot is not a passive tool but an active participant in his search for meaning.

This reciprocal relationship—seeker and sought, questioner and questioned—is at the heart of the Tarot's symbolic function in the novel. The narrator wants the cards to tell him about Cammie, but the cards tell him about himself. He wants reassurance about the baby, but the cards give him ambiguity. The Tarot, as the epigraph suggests, is not a one-way street; it is a dialogue, and the narrator is not always willing to listen to what it says back.

Study Questions

1. Why does the narrator continue to use Tarot cards despite not believing in them?

The narrator explicitly states that he doesn't believe in Tarot entirely, yet he returns to the deck at moments of emotional distress. The cards function as a form of meditation and self-soothing—a way to impose structure on chaotic feelings. He learned the practice from Mrs. Wetz, and it has become a habitual ritual, as ordinary as making coffee. The Tarot gives him a framework for thinking about his problems, even if the answers it provides are unsatisfactory. In this sense, the cards are less a source of truth than a coping mechanism—a way to feel that he is doing something, even when there is nothing he can do.

2. How do the specific cards drawn in each reading reflect the narrator's psychological state?

In chapter 12, the Eight of Cups (a card of walking away), the Six of Pentacles reversed (a card of imbalance and unfairness), and the Hanged Man (a card of suspension and sacrifice) together suggest a man who feels trapped, morally compromised, and unable to move forward. In chapter 24, the Lovers reversed (disharmony), Temperance (imbalance), and the King of Cups reversed (a narcissistic, manipulative older man) describe both his fraught relationship with Cammie and his own character flaws. The cards consistently mirror his inner turmoil rather than predict external events.

3. What does the narrator's rejection of the King of Cups reversed reveal about his self-perception?

The narrator takes personal offense at the King of Cups reversed, insisting that he doesn't think he's the problem here. This defensive reaction reveals a significant blind spot: he is willing to consult the cards for guidance but unwilling to accept their diagnosis of his own character. The card describes a man who is emotionally manipulative and self-centered—traits the narrator exhibits throughout the novel, from his treatment of Liandro to his casual delivery of babies to strangers. His refusal to see himself in the card suggests a fundamental gap between his self-image and his actions.

4. How does the Tarot motif connect to the novel's epigraph and its themes of fate and agency?

The epigraph suggests a reciprocal relationship between seeker and sought. The Tarot embodies this dynamic: the narrator seeks answers from the cards, but the cards seem to seek him out, returning to the same uncomfortable truths about his identity and choices. The motif thus complicates the question of fate versus agency. The narrator believes he is in control of his life—he is a planner, a deceiver, a survivor—but the Tarot suggests that forces beyond his control are at work, shaping his path in ways he cannot fully perceive or accept.