Mr. Wamblie was a success story: upper middle class, wife, kids, suburban affluence and executive status. He has lost it all in a mid-life crisis that includes a year in a psychiatric hospital and ends where the book begins: in a YMCA room. With his constant ruminations and regret, Wamblie is the darker side of life. He reminds us he pursued living without thinking until certain demon questions engulfed him. Is Wamblie a martyr, a prophet or the engine of his own undoing? Are Wamblie's obsessive questions merely self serving? Are Wamblie's caregivers in denial or just more willing to accept the limitations of life? Finally, is Wamblie sane? Do we really know what sanity is and, if so, can we measure it? If Wamblie's fears (while exaggerated) are essentially justified, how can the hospital acknowledge them and still maintain the important divide between sane and insane? This is the 'ceremony of innocence', the unanswerable conundrum that everyone seeks to avoid.