Apex Hides the Hurt

Apex Hides the Hurt is a meditation on the nature of naming. In mythology and folklore, giving something a name is associated with power: In the Bible, God gives the first man Adam the ability to name other creatures to cement his power over them; in fairy tales, learning the name of an entity like Rumpelstiltskin counters its magic. In politics and science, naming bestows ownership: For a long time, diseases were named after the doctors who first identified them; European travelers renamed the lands they encountered, considering them unclaimed territory.

In the novel, the protagonist’s profession divorces names from the objects they describe—the power of naming is separated from ownership. In the novel’s version of consumer culture, a product’s name is a key factor in its success, regardless of quality. Whitehead often mines comedy from this dissociation: By turning Luno into New Luno, the soft drink appealed to a younger demographic; giving a luxury automobile the meaningless name of “Q 100” added an air of prestige and mystique. Most menacingly, the protagonist fondly remembers coming up with the name “Redempta” (35), which led to his promotion—but the reader never learns what product was sold under this suggestive branding.

“Apex” is the prime example of the power of naming. As the protagonist notes, any product could be named Apex—the word sounds trustworthy and powerful but evokes nothing specific besides money: “The eye on the top of the pyramid as it appears on the dollar bill. He had heard this was a symbol of immense power according to mystics. What the mystics saw was Apex. It was the currency of the world” (99). Like “Q,” “Apex” is an abstraction, an empty container.

For the town of Winthrop, choosing the right name seems paramount. The town council and many of the residents believe that the town’s name will determine its future. The battle over the name pits uplifting history, in the form of Regina’s preference to return to the original name Freedom, against a legacy of white power; in the form of Albie’s desire to retain the name Winthrop, against the demands of capitalism to erase the past with an eye to a profitable future; in the form of Lucky’s commissioned name New Prospera.

The only counter to this fixation on names is the bartender Muttonchops, who argues that a place has a character embedded in it and changing its name will not matter. But the protagonist wonders whether the opposite is true, imagining a label that reads: “Warning: The Name Remains the Same, But Contents May Have Changed Over Time” (159). Either way, it is unclear whether a name can represent someone’s true self. Even the name Freedom, which seems to be the positive counter to the power of enslavers to give their own last names to those they’ve enslaved—the founders of the town chose its name for themselves—turns out to reflect a somewhat jaundiced view of human nature, as its creator eventually betrayed a fellow founder to rename the town Winthrop. The protagonist’s vision of a naming utopia, in which “citizens walked the streets, alone, in comfortable pairs, in ragged groups, with their true names blazing over their hearts, without pride or shame” (180-181), has yet to come true.