I Am the Messenger Literary Elements

Young Adult novel/fiction

An unidentified large city in Australia, mostly set on the wrong side of the tracks of its suburban sprawl.

The novel is narrated in the first-person perspective from the point of view of Ed, a nineteen-year-old cabbie.

The narrator immediately strikes a tone of hopelessness which is leavened by the elasticity of his fatalistic mood which begins with the suggestion that things are completely beyond one’s control but which slowly evolves into a more sanguine understanding as the narrative progresses.

Protagonist: Ed Kennedy, narrator. Antagonist: The mysterious stranger sending the cards, though this dyadic relationship gets complicated.

The conflict which drives the plot is situated as the tension between Ed who receives mysterious playing cards with addresses written on the back which leads him to interact with a variety of characters engaged in a series of minor conflicts.

The disturbing climax occurs when Ed discovers that a stranger has seemingly been writing—and thereby controlling—all the events of his life over the past year.

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In noticing that only half of the Tatupu’s Xmas lights actually light up, Ed observes: “It’s not a big thing, but I guess it’s true—big things are often just small things that are noticed.”

While a poem by Sylvia Plath plays a major role in one of the minor conflicts, her name is shared on one of the playing cards with two other authors who are really only alluded to, although titles of their novels are mentioned: Graham Greene and Morris West.

Imagery is heavily utilized throughout the novel, but one of the first examples is one of the most effective as it conveys a myriad of information about the conditions of the bank robbery which opens the novel: “We remain flattened on the worn-out, dusty blue carpet of the bank, and Marv and I are looking at each other with eyes that argue. Our mate Ritchie’s over at the Lego table, half under it, lying among all the pieces that scattered when the gunman came in yelling, screaming, and shaking. Audrey’s just behind me. Her foot’s on my leg, making it go numb.”

Ed comes face to face with a bewildering admission from his own mother which qualifies certain as paradoxical as well: “Believe it or not—it takes a lot of love to hate you like this.”

The book opens with an example of parallel construction: “The gunman is useless. I know it. He knows it. The whole bank knows it.”

The book also opens with an example of synecdoche: “The gunman is useless…The whole bank knows it.” The “bank” synecdochally refers to everyone in the bank: employees, customers, and even the robber.

Personification plays a big role in the narrative through its inventive application to a major character: The Doorman. The Doorman is the narrator’s German shepherd/Rottweiler mutt who is given extensive personhood through attribution of human traits.