Genre
A novel
Setting and Context
The action takes place in Algeria, during the first part of the 20th century.
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person narration
Tone and Mood
Tone and mood of the novel is gloomy and sad. The events described cover the themes of war, poverty, and hardship.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is Jacques Cormery; the antagonist might be considered war and its effects on ordinary people, who are not involved in political life.
Major Conflict
Self-identity along with the search for this identity stands out as the major conflict of the novel.
Climax
Because the novel was not finished by the author, the climax cannot be discerned.
Foreshadowing
The images of devastation and ruin provided in the beginning of the novel foreshadow that the story is not happy; it is about deprivations and extreme poverty.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
The novel alludes to the Algerian war.
Imagery
Images of poor Algerian areas and landscapes are depicted in the novel with vivid details. The images appeal to the reader’s imagination and help to create a picture of the life that the characters lead.
Paradox
N/A
Parallelism
The events of the past - Jacques’s birth and childhood - are told in parallels with the present, when Jacques is a grown-up person.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“the home was expecting them” (home is a metonymy for people waiting at home)
Personification
“poverty that creates beings without names and without a past, that sends them into the vast throng of the nameless dead.”
