Suspended Animation

"It felt strange punching in the code at the gate and seeing how things were different and the same, how the trees had grown but the flowerbeds remained in a state of suspended animation, everything in perpetual bloom and clipped to within a millimeter of perfection. The gardeners saw to that. A whole battalion of them that swarmed over the place twice a week with their blowers and edgers and trimmers, at war with the weeds, the insects, the gophers and ground squirrels, and the very tendency of the display plants to want to grow outside the box."

This passage is written in tightly clipped and regimented language, mirroring the grounds it describes. Keeping this kind of garden is symptomatic of the kind of people who keep it, the Strikers, and is in fact an introduction to their characters. They wish to keep everything, including their pet, in a "state of suspended animation." Throughout the story there are multiple references to this resistance to change. Frankie, the "young woman in the demeaning and stereotypical maid costume" even articulates this theme when she says of Nisha and herself, "We're the temps. And Mr. and Mrs. Striker- dog crazy, plain crazy, two hundred and fifty thousand dollar crazy- they're permanent." Of course, this permanence is only a fragile construct, highly artificial and utterly dependent on their wealth to maintain it. Even Admiral, their child-substitute, has been artificially constructed, body, mind, and memory. The sheer, extreme absurdity of living this way is clearly highlighted.

If TC Boyle is trying to make a point about the unhealthy nature of having so much money that you have essentially no limitations, because the Strikers freakishly maintained homeostasis is certainly facilitated by their wealth, why wouldn't he just let Erhard be right about them? How does Mrs. Striker's obvious affection for Admiral betray an even deeper sickness?