Namelessness in “Boyhood” by J. M. Coetzee (post 2): The memoir’s only comment bearing on why the narrator makes the protagonist nameless.

I find that the memoir itself gives a reason for the protagonist's namelessness:

“He seethes with rage all the time. That man, he calls his father when he speaks to his mother, too full of anger to give him a name: why do we have to have anything to do with that man? Why don’t you let that man go to prison?” (1, p. 132).

Thus, according to the only comment in the text about why anyone would refer to another person by pronoun and not by name, the narrator of this memoir may be doing this to express anger at the protagonist.

And while a person could be angry at himself, I think that it would not occur to a person to express that anger by making himself nameless. It is a way to express anger at someone else.

So the narrator is relating to the protagonist as though the latter were someone else at whom he is angry. And the only sense in which that could be true would be if the narrator and protagonist were alternate personalities and saw themselves as different people.

(Search "nameless" and "namelessness" for past posts regarding other writers.)

1. J. M. Coetzee. Scenes from Provincial Life: Boyhood [1997], Youth [2002], Summertime [2009]. New York, Penguin Books, 2011.