The Great Believers Literary Elements

Fiction

Paris in the 1920s, Chicago in the 1980s at the height of the AIDS epidemic, Paris in the present day.

The point of view is that of both Fiona and Yale.

Although the book deals with a great deal of loss and death, and is therefore both sad and depressing, it is also a book whose characters seem to maintain a great deal of hope.

Fiona is the protagonist and the cult who have her daughter the antagonists as she goes to France to try to get her daughter back.

There is conflict between the gay and straight communities when it comes to addressing the AIDS epidemic and making it a social issue rather than an issue only affecting the LGBTQ community. There is also conflict between Fiona and Claire when it comes to Claire living with the cult.

Fiona's realization that she was deeply affected by the loss of so many friends in the 1980s is an epiphany for her in the way in which she views her relationship with her daughter and also the way in which she begins to understand their relationship from her daughter's point of view.

Nico's death foreshadows Fiona's blinkered devotion to caring for his community of friends to the detriment of her own family.

Fiona believes she has suffered "loss' which is an understatement that she has made to herself. By looking at each individual death separately, and them moving on to care for another sick friend, she was understating the impact so much heavy loss has on a person and was not giving herself the time to get over this.

The author alludes to the art world in the 1920s in Paris and the way in which the city bounced back after World War One.
The book's title also refers to a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald's "My Generation".

The imagery portrayed in Richards apartment gives the reader a sense of heavy sadness as he has displayed all of the photographs he took of his friends who were dying of AIDS. This gives the reader a picture of the sheer amount of death that came to a community.

Fiona is a nurturer and a carer and by taking care of her brother's friends she was somehow maintaining a connection to him but she was caring for the dead at the expense of her relationships with the living.

There is a parallel between Paris in the 1920s and Chicago during the 1980s in the novel in that both cities seemed like a place of refuge for those who did not feel that they fit elsewhere and also in that both had to recover from an epidemic that caused particular communities to be decimated.

The gay community is the way in which each individual member of a group is described.

No specific examples.