Atlantis, pages 17 and 18, is a story that compares a barber shop to the undersea world of Atlantis. We are introduced to a male character who is arriving to get a hair cut. He admits that nothing could have prepared him for this haircut. He starts comparing everything in the shop to the theme of the ocean. "Strands and locks in arrested motion, cresting waves styled into hard edges, like Japanese prints of typhoons." Here he is describing the many different hair styles he is considering, and as he looks he realizes that the models don't have a face. I think that here he is expressing his identity issues that he has within himself.
It seems like the man comes to the barber shop for comfort. In one part of the passage he says, "The drone of the fan, the mint and intoxicating scent of Barbasol pressed upon me; phosphene shimmered like minnows in the dark corners of my vision, and I found that this world, cigar stained, sergeant striped, basso profundo, was the lost world of my father, who could not love me." I think that these certain things remind him of his father or maybe even a father that he never knew. It refers to the name of the passage, Atlantis. Atlantis is this unknown, never found, under the sea world. It seems like this man has never know his father and he can't find him or he could also be fictional like the made-up world Atlantis.
No matter which of those situations the man is in he turns the hair dresser, Nick into his sort of comfort or father figure. When he is cutting his hair it takes him to the unknown world of Atlantis, aka the world with a father that he has never known. He explains, "His fingers flowed over my forehead like water. I began to smile imperceptibly and see barber poles aslant like sunken columns and voluptuous mermaids in salmon-pink bikinis and bubbles the size of baseballs rising to the surface and bursting with snippets of Filipino small talk." This also suggests that his father, or he thinks that his father was or is Filipino because he has mentioned the barber's ethnicity twice now in the story. He even goes as far to say, "…this inundation of two paternal hands", which proves even more his fantasy of a father figure. He is obsessed with the idea that this barber is basically acting like a father and his home is that of Atlantis, aka the unknown. "I've driven by and glimpsed him asleep in the barber chair, his face turned toward the street, his combs soaking gin blue medicinal liquid, the barber pole softly aglow like a nightlight, the stripes cascading endlessly down, rivulets running toward a home in the ocean."
