The safety of the community following the chemical spill is determined and defined by the authorities, the knowledge they are privy to and the manners by which they interpret that knowledge are unknowable to the public. However, their authority not only grants their conclusions credence, but solidifies their reality in the minds of the public. Jack's desire to reach the unknown and penetrate the veil of false images is what drives him to uncover the chemical properties of Dylar, and to seek out Mr. Grey. Furthermore, it is the keystone of his relationship with death: death is necessarily incomprehensible to living beings.

Despite Jack's apparent attempts to get close to death or to somehow reach it, these attempts are masked efforts to distance himself from it or to defeat it. Although he associates himself with Hitler -- a man who is synonymous with death -- this is done with the...
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