A Visit from the Goon Squad Literary Elements

Fiction Novel

Arizona, California, and New York; near-future, past, and present (late-aughts)

First-person limited, as well as free indirect discourse

Tone - somber, reflective, escapist
Mood - thoughtful, sophisticated, exclusive

Protagonists - Sasha, her family, friends, and employer; bandmates. Antagonist - these same people, but placed in different contexts (such as Sasha in her capacity as Bennie's assistant)

The characters depicted want to make lives for themselves, but in doing so they use up portions of their lifetime.

Scotty prepares to play the concert which he and the producers hope will define an era.

The characters' future lives are foreshadowed through mentions of their families and the scenarios in which they will find themselves.

Sasha understates the nature of her theft and minimizes the chance that others notice it.

Egan alludes to Proust's madeleine and to the structural components of various songs, especially in relation to pauses; she also alludes to critical theorists through the inclusion of certain terms.

Egan provides imagery of band practices and performances, as well as the tactile details of a safari and bathrooms throughout the novel.

Characters get to know one another only through their own lives, but the characters are linked at different moments in their lives.

The process of getting old as a music executive is demonstrated using the parallel between Bennie and Lou, his mentor.

Metonymy - Egan's reference to the influencers based on their ideas of what the participation means; she references them as such
Synecdoche - Egan uses synecdoche throughout the penultimate scene, which depicts Scotty's concert

Musical technologies and sounds are personified throughout the text, and Egan displays how Sasha personifies her stolen objects and, later, found objects, attributing animate characteristics to them and dealing with the disconnect that arises from this process.