Invisible Monsters Literary Elements

A novel

The events of the story take place in the United States at the end of the 20th century.

The story is told from the first-person point of view by an unnamed narrator.

The tone is sad and bitter. The mood is grim and depressing.

The unnamed narrator is the protagonist. The self-centered society is the antagonist.

The person vs society.
“Just each of us being me, me, me first. The murderer, the victim, the witness, each of us thinks our role is lead.”
“It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power”

The fire and the manslaughter at Evie’s wedding is the climax of the story.

“Evie is standing halfway down the big staircase in the manor house foyer, naked inside what's left of her wedding dress, still holding her rifle.”
It is clear that something has gone terribly wrong. A wedding becomes a crime scene.

“Shotgunning anybody in this room would be the moral equivalent of killing a car, a vacuum cleaner, a Barbie doll. Erasing a computer disk. Burning a book. Probably that goes for killing anybody in the world. We're all such products.”
It seems that the narrator doesn’t think too highly of her friends; what is more, she doesn’t consider herself a good person too.

The novel alludes to Joan of Arc.

Images of characters, society, and drug obsession are vividly depicted in the novel.

“Except for all this high drama, it's a really nice day.”
The manslaughter, the fire, and dying people around are not what we usually call a good day.

“Gimme, gimme, gimme”

“Give us a hand, somebody.” (A hand is metonymy that means help.)
“Halfway down the bridge of her nose, she'd look at me through wireframed glasses, their lenses long and squared the way microscope slides look”. (Glasses are synecdoche that are used to name specs.)

“It's then the fire eats down the stairway carpet to Evie's bare ass.”