One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand
Symbols
The mirror
The mirror is the object in which Vitangelo Moscarda seeks what he does not find: the stranger others see in him and that he has never seen. There is the street mirror, in which he is surprised walking and does not recognize himself; the wardrobe mirror in...
The nose
Vitangelo Moscarda's nose leans to the right, and it is the first thing the novel says about him. The observation comes from his wife, Dida, calmly and with a "dear," on the day she finds him in front of the mirror pinching one nostril, and she drags behind...
The house
The house is the image with which Vitangelo Moscarda explains to the reader what man does with the world and with himself: he takes stones from the mountain, squares them, sets them one on top of another, and what was mountain becomes house. The novel uses...
Gengè
Gengè is the name Dida uses for her husband, and also the doll she built with that name: a good-natured, foolish man, with tastes and feelings that are not those of Vitangelo Moscarda and that he could not change without becoming, for her, a stranger she...
The tree and the cloud
The tree and the cloud are what remains when no name is left. They appear twice in the novel, and in both Vitangelo uses them to speak of what he wants: in Book II, the cloud is the desire attributed to the reader, to no longer be conscious of being, like a...
The revolver
The revolver is the small weapon, with a mother-of-pearl grip, that Anna Rosa found in her father's waistcoat, dead six years before, and that she has carried since then in her little bag. She finds it a toy, all the more charming because it holds within its...