The Housekeeper and the Professor

“And yet, the room was filled by a kind of stillness. Not simply an absence of noise, but an accumulation of layers of silence, untouched by fallen hair or mold, silence that the Professor left behind as he wandered through the numbers, silence like a clear lake hidden in the depths of the forest.”

This contrast reflects the Professor’s rich inner life, which can seem ugly or boring to outsiders—even before his accident, he describes himself as spending most of his life in his own mind. But this is also a bit of misdirection; the narrator feels as if there is nothing of sentimental value here, but in fact she later finds some of his most valuable memories.

“The truly correct proof is one that strikes a harmonious balance between strength and flexibility. There are plenty of proofs that are technically correct but are messy and inelegant or counterintuitive. But it’s not something you can put into words—explaining why a formula is beautiful is like trying to explain why the stars are beautiful.”

This is one of many points where the novel bridges mathematics and art, the technical with the sublime. The narrator is used to thinking of mathematics as being about the right answer; the Professor surprisingly rejects that, explaining that it is as much about the beauty in the proof.

“There was something profound in his love for math. And it helped that he forgot what he’d taught me before, so I was free to repeat the same question until I understood.”

The novel frequently addresses philosophies of education through various qualities of the Professor’s which make him a good educator. Implied in this is that too often we are rushed through understanding, possibly in order to leap to the right answer, when we should instead be able to sit with a problem until we understand it.

“Solving a problem for which you know there’s an answer is like climbing a mountain with a guide, along a trail someone else has laid. In mathematics, the truth is somewhere out there in a place no one knows, beyond all the beaten paths. And it’s not always at the top of the mountain. It might be in a crack on the smoothest cliff or somewhere deep in the valley.”

The Professor is driven to understand, as he says, what’s in “God’s notebook”: He wants to search the unknown to find out fundamental truths about the universe. This is part of what makes him so comfortable with not knowing things—for him, life would be boring if we knew all we needed to know already.

“I tried picturing 18 and 14, but now that I’d heard the Professor’s explanation, they were no longer simply numbers. Eighteen secretly carried a heavy burden, while 14 fell mute in the face of its terrible lack.”

It doesn’t take long for the Professor to have a profound impact on the narrator. She starts carrying pencil and paper with her so that she can perform her own calculations wherever she goes.

“You see, no other sport is captured so perfectly by its statistics, its numbers. I analyzed the data for the Hanshin players, their batting averages and ERAs, and by tracking the changes, even miniscule shifts, I could picture the flow of the games in my head.”

Baseball is an important point of connection for Root and the Professor, but it’s also important to the novel because of its unique connection to numbers and statistics. Very few sports can be understood through numbers alone; baseball, however, is so statistics-heavy that it makes sense that the Professor would gravitate toward it.

“Among the many things that made the Professor an excellent teacher was the fact that he wasn’t afraid to say ‘we don’t know.’ For the Professor, there was no shame in admitting you didn’t have the answer, it was a necessary step toward the truth.”

The narrator begins the novel much more practically minded, concerned with working hard and making ends meet. Part of what makes the Professor different is his comfort with not knowing—as noted above, this is how we find fundamental truths, but it is also part of existence, particularly for him.

“Needless to say, I could not understand any of the mysteries concealed in the notebooks. Yet somehow, I wanted to stay there forever, just staring at the formulas.”

This connects back to the beauty of the proofs. For the narrator, looking through the notebooks might be a little like listening to a foreign language and finding beauty in the rhythm even without being able to understand. Understanding is only one part of the attraction.

“From the time [Root] was born, I had been obsessed with making ends meet, and somehow had forgotten to make time to have fun with my son.”

The Professor’s love for children is an important motif in the novel because it demonstrates his own purity of heart and because it helps the narrator develop warmth and affection for Root. She wasn’t a negligent mother, but she was so concerned about being a responsible one that she neglected Root’s emotional health and needs.

“Math has proven the existence of God, because it is absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot prove it.”

This calls to mind Albert Einstein’s quip that “God does not play dice with the universe.” Like Einstein, the Professor is probably not referring to a literal religious conception of God or the devil, but rather making a comparison to the unifying, harmonious—or disruptive—force that we see in pure mathematics.

“I remembered something the Professor had said: ‘The mathematical order is beautiful precisely because it has no effect on the real world. Life isn’t going to be easier, nor is anyone going to make a fortune, just because they know something about prime numbers.’”

This slight point of contention between the narrator and the Professor mirrors larger social questions about practicality. The narrator points out that mathematical discoveries frequently have important real-world applications; the Professor, however, argues that those discoveries are not the goal of mathematics. Rather, the goal is to discover truth. This debate is a concise version of the opposition between theoretical and applied sciences, including mathematics.

“Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won’t find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression—in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.”

This is an interesting take on mathematics, which many often use as a counterpoint to emotion. The Professor doesn’t juxtapose cold, hard science against emotion, but insists that in illuminating fundamental truths about the universe, mathematics also illuminates aspects of psychology.

“I needed the sense that this invisible world was somehow propping up the visible one, that this one, true line extended infinitely, without width or area, confidently piercing through the shadows. Somehow, this line would help me find peace.”

The Professor is able to live in his mind, wrestling with the eternal truths he finds in mathematics. For the narrator, though, this isn’t quite enough—she has a real world she needs to live in, and to do so, she needs something tangible to grasp.

“A number that cycled on forever and another vague figure that never revealed its true nature now traced a short and elegant trajectory to a single point. […] it only remained for a human being to add 1, and the world suddenly changed. Everything resolved into nothing, zero.

We never get a clear explanation of the significance of Euler’s formula for either the Professor or the widow, and the narrator doesn’t ask either about it. But we do get the narrator’s interpretation of this moment, especially if we incorporate the Professor’s discussion about the importance of zero in the following chapter.

“[The Professor] treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world.”

As with Euler’s formula, we never get an explanation as to why the Professor cares so deeply for children, but we do get the narrator’s interpretation. The Professor is concerned with foundational principles—in mathematics, for him, those include prime numbers; in human terms, there are children.

“Some of the notes were out of date […] but it seemed wrong to throw them out. I treated them all with equal respect.”

The novel explores the nature of memory, complicating its presentation and externalizing it. For the narrator, throwing away a note without the Professor’s permission would be like erasing someone’s memory—the notes are a fundamental a part of him—they function as part of his mind.

“Despite what the Greeks might have thought, zero doesn’t disturb the rules of calculation; on the contrary, it brings greater order to them.”

This, along with the narrator’s own discoveries, helps to explain the significance to the Professor of Euler’s formula. For him, zero is a unifying force, something that helps to bring order and cohesion to the universe. Euler’s formula, however, doesn’t get there on its own—it needs help from a constant.

“Perhaps all mathematicians underestimated the importance of their accomplishments. […] He was completely indifferent to a problem as soon as he had solved it. Once the object of his attention had yielded, showing its true form, the Professor lost interest. He simply walked away in search of the next challenge.”

This reinforces the Professor’s humility—he truly doesn’t seem to grasp why anything he does is special, possibly because he’s unable to contextualize it. But it also shows what he gets from mathematics in the first place—whether it’s pure mathematics or prize money, it’s the solving that’s important to him.

“It was the first time [Root] had really had a chance to look at baseball cards. He knew that people collected them […] but it was as if he had avoided developing an interest in them. He was not the sort of boy who would ask his mother for something frivolous.”

Root frequently displays uncommon maturity for his age—for example, he demonstrates keen insight about the Professor, noting things that even the narrator doesn’t realize after all her time working with him. Here, we see that he does the same with the narrator herself.

“Still, something was different. Now that I knew about the thesis and its dedication, the tin was no longer a simple container for baseball cards. It had become a tomb for the Professor’s memories.”

The cookie tin serves as a kind of counterpoint to the notes on the Professor’s jacket. The notes serve as an external memory device that captures the most important, day-to-day things. The cookie tin, on the other hand, holds the things the Professor had to sacrifice after his accident.

“It was a most wonderful party, the most memorable one I’ve ever attended. It was neither elegant nor extravagant […] but I am sure that Root’s eleventh birthday was special.”

The novel values simple pleasures. This is frequently out of necessity—the Professor only has his 80-minute time window to enjoy things, and the narrator cannot afford much beyond the simple things. The novel and the characters find beauty and value in what is available to them.

“The Tigers didn’t win the pennant in 1992. […] Looking back on it now, the turning point seemed to be that game with Yakult on September 11, 1992.”

The Tigers’ pennant race mirrors the arc of the novel. The high point of their time together is the game they attend when the Tigers are playing quite well. Here, they begin to slip and end up losing; at the same time, the Professor has declined so precipitously that he will soon enter a long-term care facility.

“You see, my brother-in-law can never remember you, but he can never forget me.”

This is yet another enigmatic line about the relationship between the widow and the Professor. It could be simply that they had known one another before the accident, so he doesn’t have to reacquaint himself with her. But the wording—not that he won’t, but that he can’t—suggests a more profound closeness between them.