Loneliness

Throughout the collection, the author explores loneliness as an innate facet of the human condition by depicting each of his first person narrators in states of extreme isolation. Although each of the short story’s first person narrators is a distinct individual, they all live primarily by themselves. Though they all possess narrative authority over their own accounts and agency within their own lives, they devote little narrative attention to describing themselves, nor little time to reflecting upon the veracity of their longing and frustration.

In order to quell their unattended and unresolved loneliness, therefore, the narrators all become obsessed with the lives of their neighbors and community members. In “The Old Man with No Name,” the narrator tries to “combat [his] loneliness,” by making random phone calls, and later by observing and hunting down Mrs. Casper’s new attic tenant (4). In “Joshua Karabish,” the narrator...