Toby or not Toby: An Existential Reading of Ali Smith's There But For The

Ali Smith's There But For The (2011), a polyphonic novel with four separate narrators, was recognised as one of the year's best books by the Guardian and Publishers Weekly. The author's ample use of puns in the novel, which leads to plurisignation, encourages one to look for latent an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scottish literary review 2023-03, Vol.15 (1), p.53-73
Main Authors: Bikas, Asghar, Darzinejad, Ensiyeh, Ghaderi, Farah
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Bad faith
Best books
Bibliography
Existentialism
Humanism
Life
Literary characters
Middle class
Novels
Ontology
Postmodernism
Sartre, Jean-Paul
Smith, Ali
Society
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Summary:Ali Smith's There But For The (2011), a polyphonic novel with four separate narrators, was recognised as one of the year's best books by the Guardian and Publishers Weekly. The author's ample use of puns in the novel, which leads to plurisignation, encourages one to look for latent and imperceptible motives in her characters. The central event of the novel, around which the plot evolves, is Miles Garth's absenting himself from others and locking himself up. The main issue the narrators are dealing with is Miles's being or not being there in the room and trying to find his motivation for this enterprise. This article claims that referring to the multi-layered nature of the novel, the preoccupation about Miles's absence resonates with all the narrators' concern about their own existence or 'being there'. By deploying Heidegger's and Sartre's existential philosophies, concepts such as 'being and Dasein', 'freedom', 'bad faith' and 'death' are examined in the novel. Smith depicts an allegorical model in which her focal character's anxiety over the mentioned subjects mirrors the shared human concern about such existential topics.
ISSN:1756-5634
2050-6678