Traumatic Spaces in Tom McCarthy’s Remainder

Abstract

Tom McCarthy’s debut novel Remainder (2005) is a unique portrayal of the relationship between space and human beings as the novel portrays an unnamed protagonist/narrator who suffers amnesia as a result of an accident, “something falling from the sky” (McCarthy 5). The exact details of the accident are not known to the narrator. The character is granted eight and a half million pounds to compensate for the damage, and he decides to spend the money to re-enact his remaining memories by reconstructing the spaces in the way he remembers them. The character’s compulsion to repeat leads him to re-create space within space where he can explore and master his trauma. Through re-enacting specific memories, the character also searches for the remains of his identity within those spaces, and these spaces become, in Foucauldian terms, heterotopia of deviation as space is both a means and an end for the narrator. Over time, the re-enacted spaces exceed the simulated sphere and extend into the ‘real’ world, problematising the relationship between the re-enacted space and reality. This paper aims to explore the relationship between the narrator’s traumatic condition within the deviant spaces he recreates after the accident, which illustrates how space is used both as a means in representing his traumatic condition, and as an end that functions to regain his authenticity.