Nemesis Literary Elements

Fiction

The novel spans the period between 1944 and the early 1970s. The story primarily takes place in the Weequahic neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey.

The narrator is Arnie Mesnikoff, a former student that Bucky looked after on the Chancellor playground. Arnie reunites with Bucky nearly thirty years after the height of the polio epidemic. Bucky tells Arnie his story, and Arnie conveys this narrative to the reader.

The tone is somber and reflective. The mood is brooding and depressed.

Bucky is the novel's protagonist. The antagonist is both Bucky (his own enemy) and polio.

The Weequahic community struggles to remain afloat after it is ravaged by the polio epidemic. Bucky Cantor, the neighborhood playground director, struggles to decide on an appropriate course of action given the tragic circumstances.

Bucky contracts polio while working at Indian Hill Summer Camp.

The butterflies that swarm over Indian Hill foreshadow that the camp's good fortune will soon come to an end.

Bucky admits that he feels guilty. However, his guilt is understated and becomes a driving force in his life. Ultimately, Bucky is unable to feel true happiness because he is weighed down by his depressive thoughts.

There is a historical allusion to World War Two, which serves as the backdrop of the novel.

When Kenny Blumenfeld has a tantrum about Horace spreading polio on the playground, he begins swatting at him with a baseball mitt. Kenny's action agitates Horace, and he begins "emitting a kind of radio signal from high in the back of his throat; a thin, oscillating sound of distress." Roth's use of auditory imagery conveys the "otherworldly" disruption that Horace causes among the Weequahic community.

Bucky goes to the summer camp to avoid catching polio but he actually becomes ill upon his arrival.

The tough-guy attitude to Bucky's grandfather, Sam Cantor, parallels Bucky's behavior amidst the polio epidemic. This outlook prevents Bucky from rightfully acknowledging his fears and vulnerabilities.

An example of synecdoche is when the sun is referred to as "the ubiquitous eye of gold isolated in the blue body of the sky." An example of metonymy is when Donald's "legs don't work," which represents his paralysis.

Polio is personified in the novel as venomous and spiteful.