The simple answer is everything. These two novels open in similar ways. I am unpleasant man. We can never be sure. But they are letting you know that they exist. Arguably, these linguistic choices convey to use that there are one of many.
Or maybe we have. For all three authors, they are living in a dystopia because society has failed them. Whether it was through systemic oppression, Europeanized, cultural upheaval, or societal leanings toward modernity, these characters are caught in the middle between history and present.
They are the physical representations of oscillations. This rupture in temporal continuity is why all four novels tend to be claustrophobic as we are trying to understand who they are without knowing anything about them. For namelessness, as these books illustrate, is a social as well as a metaphysical disease, one that tends to afflict women, minorities, the poor, the outcast—those treated as background extras in the primary story lines of history.
With this in mind, one can spot a contradictory trend that runs parallel to the recent spate of namelessness: novels whose mission is to belatedly grant identities to past figures who have been unjustly unknown. But these are historical projects. In contemporary fiction with nameless narrators, the real-world, present-day phenomenon of namelessness is not usually confronted.
Those who do much of the cleaning and cooking and building and dismantling in this country, people who are so often, in a broader sense, anonymous, play little part in these novels. They do not even enjoy the distinction of being left unnamed. By David Haglund. By Nicholas Dames. Rand hypothesizes what a purely egalitarian society would be like: Committees make all the decisions—whom to marry, what job to take, and what to learn.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a father and son walk through post-apocalyptic America—defending themselves and their few resources against marauders and cannibals. They have a gun with only two bullets.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Everyman by Philip Roth. This classic story is told by an anonymous narrator hoping to convince the reader of his sanity while describing a murder he committed.
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Surprisingly, the protagonist of this well-known book and movie adaptation is named in the film—but not in the book. He uses several aliases to attend different support groups…but his real name? Falls on July 27, at pm. Submit a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.
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