Malone Dies Literary Elements

Malone Dies Literary Elements

Genre

Fiction; novel

Setting and Context

An unnamed asylum in the 1950s.

Narrator and Point of View

An unnamed, third-person omniscient narrator.

Tone and Mood

The tone is confusing; the mood is uneasy.

Protagonist and Antagonist

Malone is the protagonist; Lemuel is the antagonist.

Major Conflict

The major conflict of the novel occurs when Malone wakes up in the asylum, naked in his bed and finds that most of his possessions have been taken.

Climax

The climax of the story is reached when Malone describes a leisure expedition that ends in murder.

Foreshadowing

The affair of Macmann is foreshadowed by the kind nurse he meets.

Understatement

The role of aspirations is understated throughout the novel.

Allusions

The story alludes to the dreams that we all have, that are sadly unfulfilled.

Imagery

The imagery of confusion and deception is present in the novel.

Paradox

The fact that Malone is writing a book about a lost man, yet is lost himself is an example of paradox in the story.

Parallelism

There is a parallel between the life of Malone and the journey that Macmann goes on to find himself.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

N/A

Personification

N/A

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