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North London Book Of The Dead Character Analysis

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The North London Book of the Dead is part of the compilation of short stories named The Quantity Theory of Insanity (1991) written by Will Self. A British author whose writing is characterised by a sense lightweight humor and fantastical themes, The North London Book of the Dead follows the narrative of a son who had lost his mother to cancer, only to meet her again alive and well in a different part of London. Instead of using descriptive devices to create an eerie mood, Self uses these to create a familiar setting that does not make any room for doubt. Using a comic style of writing that reflects British culture and humor does not only further assist in establishing a common atmosphere for the reader to assimilate into, but it pushes back …show more content…

In addition to his encounter with Mother and how she had changed, her reaction to him pointing out her dead status is also repeated from another of his dreams. He describes in his dreams, “When I tried to remonstrate with her, point out to her that by her own lights (she was a fervent atheist and materialist), she ought to be gently decomposing somewhere, she would fix me with a weary eye and say in a characteristically deadpan way, ‘So I'm dead but won't lie down, huh? Big deal.’” Upon their encounter, the same situation had transpired: “‘But Mother, what are you doing in Crouch End? You're dead.’ Mother was indignant, ‘Of course I'm dead, dummy, whaddya think I've been doing for the last ten months? Cruising the Caribbean?’” The message he never received followed by Mother’s phone call creates an unnerving ending by providing a third person to the situation. A coworker, his bewilderment arouses all the possibilities of different interpretations of the story because of his third person objectivity. Whether Mother is a hallucination, a doppelgänger, or the real Mother, it seems to be deliberately left open by the author by placing such a simple event as the ending of the story. The North London Book of the Dead uses the devices of how to establish the uncanny but executes them unconventionally. Intertwining the ordinary and unknown seamlessly, all the while keeping its satirical tone, the story creates something that stimulates thoughts rather than nightmare

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