While the entire novel is written from the narrator’s perspective, the reader never learns his name. He insists that his name doesn’t matter and describes himself as “a phantom, a figment” (1). In truth, his name matters: The narrator’s permanent namelessness symbolizes his indistinct sense of self. As a Black man, he harbors deep self-hatred because of societal racism. His internalized racism, however, yields a defensive egoism: He considers himself unique because of his lofty education and absent incarceration history—something that separates him from most of the City’s Black population who lack his good fortune. Despite his awareness of his sheer luck, he eyes other Black people with suspicion and derision. While this apparent hypocrisy is an often unsympathetic trait, it is the consequence of racial trauma. A childhood steeped in subjugation (his own and others’) produces an involuntary fear of Blackness and a constant, gripping terror that his biracial son could be perceived as Black. Rather than instilling self-love or resilience in his son’s inner life, however, he fixates on the bodily exterior; he sees demelanization—or Black erasure—as salvation. The father’s lack of identity threatens to engender itself in his child.

The narrator is consumed, personally and professionally, by his illusions of cosmetic deliverance.