The lost men in Missing Person

Abstract

For the Nobel Literature Prize being rewarded to him in 2014, Patrick Modiano is among the most popular French novelists allover the world. In Vietnam, many books of his have been translated and published, especially since the year of his Nobel Prize, leading to many reviews and comments in newspapers and social networks. In addition, his novels have been interesting subjects to many studies in universities. However, we tend to pay more attention to his ``art of memory'' and his obvious obsession to history, memories, identities, the feeling of loss, etc. without paying attention to the loss itself, which makes it hard to deeply understand both his works and his world. In this article, we try to examine the loss in one of his most well-known novels, Missing Person (original Rue des Boutiques Obscures in French, which brought him the Goncourt Prize in 1978), to get a thorough understanding of this theme in his writings. By examining the characters and their being lost in Missing Person in terms of memory, language and nationality as well as seeing their state in the relations to cultural and historic events then (in the Occupation and about ten years later in France), we try not only to completely depict their loss but also to get things clearly explained. From the lost men in Missing Person, we also expect to point out humans' close connections to their community, their mother tongue language and their nation, showing how vulnerable they are through historic events. From this point of view, Modiano's missing person is a victim of history – just like many refugees today. Therefore, his writings not only are something from the past, not only belong to the past, but also are attached to our present and towards the future.