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Narrative Finality, Armine Kotin Mortimer

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The cloturai device of narration as salvation represents the lack of finality in three novels. In De Beauvoir's Tous les hommes sont mortels an immortal character turns his story to account, but the novel makes a mockery of the historical sense by which men define themselves. In the closing pages of Butor's La Modification, the hero plans to write a book to save himself. Through the thrice-considered portrayal of the Paris-Rome relationship, the ending shows the reader how to bring about closure, but this collective critique written by readers will always be a future book. Simon's La Bataille de …