Integrity is characteristic which is greatly admired and a quality which most desire to achieve through their growth as an individual person. Throughout Dan Chaon's short story "Big Me" this theme of integrity and completeness or wholeness plays an important role in the life of the main character. John O'Day's strange yet imaginative perspective on his life and the world around him leaves him constantly searching to fill the void spots which very frequently leave him feeling less than full with integrity.
             In order to fill these missing spots in his life he creates an entire imaginary city filled with real and unreal buildings, people, and plots. He lives most of his youth trapped inside this imaginary world living through his fantasy personality Detective O'Day. Detective O'Day is the perfect escape for John from the reality of life, which was less than perfect. He was always an outsider. He was even an outsider in his family. There was a great deal of tension within his house which was caused by a great deal of things which included fighting parents, unstable economic statuses, and an arguably mentally unstable mother who loved yet sometimes rejected her strange son. Detective O'Day was everything that John wasn't but wished he was. Everyone always saw John as an outsider. He was the strange, snooping, and intrusive kid who sneaks around and ties up cats in abandoned houses to question them as witnesses searching for clues about crimes and mysteries that didn't even exist. Detective O'Day was a smooth, suave, stealth man who possessed all the qualities that John lacked. The only real quality which they had in common was that they were both "lone wolves". Whether John was intentionally filling the blank spots of his own life through his second fantasy life or not, he consumed the majority of his childhood drafting blueprints, fake bus schedules, imaginary characters, and...