Less Than Zero Literary Elements

A novel; horror, realistic

The events happen during a winter break in the 1980s in Los Angeles

First person. The events are revealed by the protagonist.

Because of a large number of terrible scenes depicted in the story, the tone varies from sad, depressed, irritated to exhausted.

Clay is the protagonist, while his drug dealer, Rip, could be considered as the antagonist.

Most of the conflicts in the story are person’s struggle with drugs.

Clay finds out that Julian has to work as a prostitute to pay all his debts off and then goes with him to a client.

At the beginning of the novel, the protagonist of the story, Clay takes Valium, which foreshadows future events.

When Clay argues with his sisters over missing cocaine from his room, their mother pretends not to pay attention at all and asks them whether they have to listen to a song playing.

The story is full of allusion. Such magazines as Vogue, People and Glamour are frequently mentioned by the protagonist. The characters often talk about music, singers and movies which were popular in the 1980s: David Bowie, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Tom Petty, the “Star Raiders” movie etc.

The author uses imagery in order to describe how his characters look like, what clothed they prefer to wear and how they spend free time. It is a perfect insight into lives of the golden youth.

“Oh, shit, Rip, what don’t you have?”
“I don’t have anything to lose.”
Being a drug dealer, Rip has everything he needs: a luxurious apartment, cars, attention of men, women and even minors, an access to all kinds of entertainments. The paradox is that all these things have no value for him. He needs more extreme stimulations in order to feel alive.

My mother and my two sisters and me.
To show how incoherent Clay’s thoughts are, the author uses parallelism.

We can hear the sound of the city celebrating.
The city is a metonymy which denotes people who live in the city and also have Christmas parties. It is used in order to show that there are no people, who don’t celebrate. Everyone is involved.
The young are the future of this county.
The young is a synecdoche which denotes children and young adults, described in the novel.

Elvis looks past me, with this wry, ironic smile on his lips, staring out the window.
This is a description of a poster which hangs on the wall in the protagonist’s bedroom. Although it is just a picture of a singer, Clay refers to it as Elvis and makes a mental note that Elvis doesn’t look at him but “whoever’s standing by the window”.