The Narrator's Paradoxical Ideas

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The narrator has explained that the "hole" where he lives is "full of light," because he manages to use energy from Monopolated Light and Power without paying the company for it. He says that this is important because without light he becomes "formless," a state of existence that is like being dead; he then confesses that he only became alive once he "discovered" his invisibility. At first glance, this passage seems to contain two paradoxical ideas: firstly, that the narrator needs light because being formless and invisible is a kind of death, and secondly, that he was not alive until he realized he was invisible.

On closer inspection, however, it is possible to see that these concepts are not in fact contradictory. In the first sentence,

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