Nameless Narrative: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
Who needs names? Plenty of stories, jokes, and even ''myths'' eschew them entirely in a '''Nameless Narrative'''. If a character is "named", it's more than likely to be as their role in the story or the job they have. Sometimes, the "name" might be a unique and prominent feature to them that serves as a reminder of their basic description, such as "the one eyed man", or "the silver haired maiden".
Stylistically, it's very economical in terms of prose and narrator memory (many Nameless Narratives come from the [[Oral Tradition]]) and at times elegant, distilling a character's essence down to their archetype.
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== [[Comics]] ==
* Even though we already know their names (or perhaps because of it), Batman and Joker are never referred to as such in ''[[The Killing Joke]]''. Even the newspaper clippings only call them "Disfigured Homicidal Maniac" and "Bat-garbed Vigilante." This works well with one of the themes of the book, which is that the two of them have gotten so intimate with each other (no, not in [[Foe Yay|that way]]
== [[Fairy Tale
* Most have only one or two named characters, but frequently, you have none.
** [[The Brothers Grimm (creator)|Grimms']] "[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bearskin/index.html Bearskin]"
** "[[East of the Sun and West of the Moon|East of the Sun West of The Moon]]": The heroine is "the girl"; the hero is "the White Bear," and later, "the Prince".
** [[The Brothers Grimm (creator)|Grimms']] "[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/armlessmaiden/index.html The Girl Without Hands]"
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== [[Literature]] ==
* In the ''[[Canterbury Tales]]'', almost all the pilgims are unnamed and are identified solely by their occupation. The only pilgrims explicitly named in the work are the Prioress (Madame Eglantine), the Cook (Roger), the Reeve (Oswald), the Friar (Hubert), the Wife of Bath (Alisoun), and the Host (Harry Bailey).
* In [[H. G. Wells]]' ''[[The Time Machine]]'', the Time Traveller and most of the people to whom he's relating his story are just identified by their role, such as the Doctor <ref>
* The characters in José Saramago's ''Blindness'' are referred to by their roles or, ironically, psychical descriptions (given the fact all of them are attack by blindness).
** Saramago does this frequently, in whole or in part, for example in ''Seeing'', ''Death with Interruptions,'' and (ironically) ''All the Names''.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[HERO (Webcomic)|HERO]]'' is a partial
* ''[[Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name]]'' has {...}. He can't remember his own name. So he usually goes by Zombie by anyone too lazy to come up with anything creative or the random names Hanna gives him.
* Hardly any of the characters in ''[[Gone With the Blastwave]]'' are named, and the two protagonists aren't among them. Furthermore, all the characters are [[Gas Mask Mooks]] wearing uniforms, so the emblems on their helmets are the only way they can be told apart.
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