Status Updates From Thomas l'Obscur

Obscure indeed

So far, I have the following questions:

What exactly is Thomas?

•Is he part of the human consciousness?
•Is he Death? Or the angel of death?
•Is he the state of beyond death, the nullity?
•Is he a feeling, a specific state of paradoxicism that not many experience?

And yet Thomas is not strictly any one of these things—he is all of them at once, the face the void wears.

Death was a crude metamorphosis beside the indiscernible nullity which I nevertheless coupled with the name Thomas.

The concept of death not being the final destination but a transition into something else that lies beyond, the nullity perhaps. And yet the author connects it to Thomas again, making us wonder what exactly is this entity?

Death was a crude metamorphosis beside the indiscernible nullity which I nevertheless coupled with the name Thomas.

The concept of death not being the final destination but a transition into something else that lies beyond, the nullity perhaps. And yet the author connects it to Thomas again, making us wonder what exactly is this entity?

But since I was real only under the name of death, I let the baneful spirit of the shadows show through, blood mixed with my blood, and the mirror of each of my days reflected the confused images of death and life.

Thomas could be a personification of death, an Angel of Death, or even a liminal figure—someone who exists between the living and the dead, embodying both at once.

There was no one left in the world to name Anne.

If no one remains to remember someone, do they still exist? Perhaps memory-based immortality is illusory—real eternity is found in the dissolution of individuality. You become immortal when you're one with the universe (after the death of your current physical form).

My personal theory is that Thomas and Anne are not different people existing in the world but the male and female aspects of the human mind/personality. I think the story's setting is the mind or subconscious (which would explain why the scenes change abruptly in a dream-like sequence).

Possibly the strangest book I've ever read.