How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"It's tough, him getting it like that. Miles had his faults same as the rest of us, but I guess he must've had some good points too."
"I guess so," Spade agreed in a tone that was utterly meaningless, and went out of the alley. (2.46)
The fact that Miles was murdered in a seemingly senseless way suggests that death can come at any time. We have no way of controlling when or how we die, and in this sense, we lack a certain amount of free will since there's no way of avoiding death.
Quote #2
"He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him look at the works." (7.13)
When Flitcraft narrowly misses being killed by a falling beam, he feels as if good luck was the only thing that prevented him from dying. The total randomness of death not only terrifies Flitcraft, but makes him completely alter the course of his life.
Quote #3
The life he knew was a clean orderly sane responsible affair. Now a falling beam had shown him that life was fundamentally none of these things. He, the good citizen-husband-father, could be wiped out between office and restaurant by the accident of a falling beam. He knew then that men died at haphazard like that, and lived only while blind chance spared them. (7.14)
Flitcraft believes that men have no free will in a world where blind chance is the only thing that determines whether you live or die. In an attempt to adjust to the haphazardness of death, Flitcraft leaves his current life and travels around the country, but he eventually picks up where he left off and remarries a woman remarkably similar to his first wife. What does this say about fate and human nature that Flitcraft returns to the same routine he left behind?