Asterios Polyp is a successful architect and professor who is also considered a serial philanderer. A lightning strikes and burns down his apartment and the arrogant academic is now reduced to a tragic and sympathetic figure. With nothing and nowhere to go, he decides to retreat and go to the farthest place his fare could take him. He ends up in Apogee in Arizona where he becomes an auto-mechanic. The escape is crucial as it helps Polyp to self-reflect and discovers himself afresh.
While in Arizona, Polyp starts to have daydreams that merge his past and the present. The experience is likened to the story of Orpheus and Euridice of Greek Mythology. His daydreams are similar to the ones Orpheus had in the Underworld. It is presumed his Greek heritage plays a part in this. As he tries to understand who he is and confront his flawed nature, his stillborn twin brother assures him in the dreams, that it is not his fault that he is flawed. He tells him that they are very similar in the ways they act and that gods had already decided he would be that way long before he was born. In this case of nature vs. nurture, nature overcomes.
Polyp also struggles with questions of destiny and free will. He wonders if a person is ultimately governed by the heart or the head. He is still in a spiritual crisis and starts to explore and confront the amoral whims of gods. Polyp also explores a number of false dichotomies in nature vs. nurture, destiny vs. free will, Apollonian vs. Dionysian which consequently raises questions about how people become who and what they are. Eventually, he is able to fill in some missing elements about who he is.
