We Can Remember It for You Wholesale is the story of Douglas Quail’s struggle to reckon with a major disruption to his identity. After a reality-twisting revelation, he must reconsider who he assumes himself to be and what it means to be Douglas Quail. What makes Quail’s transformation all the more hard to process is that they are not the result of organic personal growth or forward movement. Instead, each of Quail’s new identities is an ostensibly older identity from his past. This means Quail’s character progression is actually regression—rather than changing into a new version of himself in the present/future, he must come to terms with a forgotten past, which can’t help but reorient who he is in the present.

Quail’s regressive development has four stages. He begins the story as a dull, boring, and passive office clerk. After his trip to Rekal, he seems to remember a past as an active, interesting, and dangerous skilled assassin. After bargaining with the Interplan agents, Quail agrees to confess his deepest fantasies to them, revealing an arrogant and narcissistic desire to be the most important person on earth. Then, this fantastical status is also ostensibly revealed to be true, and Quail receives a justification for once again becoming passive.