C discussion

SPOILERS AHEAD


The below is what I thought when reading this book:

- Serge Carrefax, the hero protagonist. The book is his life-to-death account and even on the very last page, his identity is asserted in his death rattle breaths ("sssssss, c-c-c-c; sssssss, c-c-c-c; sssssss, c-c-c-c;").

- Carbon: both the element C, the "basic element of life" (p. 292) or death, as in carbonisé; and carbon-copy, CC, which represents a certain detachment from the "real" original.

- Communication: What I personally think the whole novel is about, or lack of it in many cases. Even the science of communicating through radio removes Serge further from others. Serge mocks the idea of being able to communicate with the dead, representing, in my opinion, the way he really holds any form of communication with others in contempt.

- Caul: The manner in which Serge was born seems to be symbolic of how he lived the rest of his life, with some sort of veil between him and the rest of the world preventing him from seeing in perspective (why he prefers 2-D pictures to 3-D, why he cannot draw with perspective, why he enjoys fighting the war from a aeroplane, why he prefers to have sex without facing the other person etc) and prevents him from forming real relationships with other people.

What do you all think? Who agrees with me? Who disagrees with me? Who has any idea what the relevance of his sister might be, other than the incestuous relationship hinted at towards the end?

SPOILERS********SPOILERS******
From your question about the relevance of his sister:

It would pay to reread the first section leading up to Sophie's death if you can.
Who impregnates her? What is this person's true relationship to Serge?

In my opinion it is her death that truly drives Serge throughout the novel. In one sense, the more traditional literary one, which looks for motive and heavily considers plot, her tragedy would be the motive for Serge's strange development.