“Listen: you might hear anxiety ticking, ticking, ticking away as he stares at that clock, which unfortunately is not ticking itself.”

Arthur Less sits in a hotel lobby, staring at a broken clock in the mistaken belief that it is working. The image encapsulates Less’s predicament as a man whom time has passed by. He is calmly unaware that the zeitgeist has moved beyond him, that his moment has come and gone and left him without the fame and fortune that would make his life easier. Less stares at the broken clock in a real and metaphorical fashion, waiting for a moment that might never arrive.

“Without the suit, there is no Arthur Less.”

Less is presented as a reserved man who fails to make an impact upon people. The blue suit becomes an important affectation for Less, providing him with a simulacrum of a personality. It distracts from the defects Less believes he possesses; this item of clothing defines him far more than his personality or his work. When he is told that he will not be able to wear the suit, he becomes worried, concerned that he might need to reveal his true self to a scrutinizing audience.

“Who the hell is Arthur Less?”

This question, asked by the old woman in the theater, plays on a key theme within the book. Less’s journey around the world is as much an attempt to answer this question as it is an attempt to avoid a wedding.