“The Virgin Suicides” by Jeffrey Eugenides (post 2): Who is narrator? Why is he nameless? Why does namelessness suggest multiple personality?

Five teenage sisters commit suicide. Neither the sisters nor any other character is rounded or deeply understood. The narrator’s nostalgic conclusion is as follows:

“So much has been written about the girls in the newspapers, so much has been said over backyard fences, or related over the years in psychiatrists’ offices, that we are certain only of the insufficiency of explanations…The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness…It didn’t matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn’t heard us…” (1, pp. 241-243).

Why is the speaker, the protagonist, the narrator, the only character who is nameless?

Nameless Narrator

The reader’s initial impression is that the narration is a first-person plural “Greek chorus,” a metaphor used by some reviewers, prompted by the author’s name. The narrator speaks of “we” and “us,” referring to a group of teenage boys who are neighbors and schoolmates of the five sisters.

But later in the novel, the nameless narrator, routinely and repeatedly, refers to each of the other boys in the group individually, by name, making it clear that the narrator is not a group. He is an individual, the group’s spokesman. Why, then, is he alone nameless? What makes him different?

My theory is that the narrator is the author’s literary “voice” alternate personality, discussed in the previous post. Namelessness is a common attribute of alternate personalities.

Search “nameless” for past posts on other writers.

1. Jeffrey Eugenides. The Virgin Suicides [1993]. New York, Picador/Farrar Straus Giroux, 2018.