The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-18

Chapters 19-24

Chapter 25-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Literary Devices

Panoptic, Omniscient Narration

Jonasson writes as the omniscient narrator from the third person point-of-view: He can shift his focus to any character in the story to explain the character’s history and motives. The author often digresses either from the current narrative—Allan’s attempts to avoid capture by the police—or his historical adventures to describe the pertinent elements of the various characters. For instance, he explains why the Tehran police chief wants to assassinate Winston Churchill and the reason that Mao Zedong gives Allan a small fortune to escape from North Korea.

The novel is panoptic: It covers the 101-year scope of Allan’s life. Jonasson also uses this historical purview to describe the motivational forces in the lives of other characters. For example, he explains how Pike assembled his Never Again gang in prison, how it fell apart when his mother wrote him a sentimental letter, and how bitterness and humiliation thus fueled Pike’s ambition.

Alternating Current and Historical Chapters

Rather than starting with Allan’s childhood and proceeding chronologically through his life, Jonasson begins “in media res.” He opens with a May 2005 “current moment,” describing Allan’s escape from the nursing home and the immediate aspects of his getaway. Then, beginning with Chapter 4, the author intersperses chapters of the current story with chapters of Allan’s chronological history.

This device allows Jonasson to build and hold interest in current happenings while filling in Allan’s backstory without overwhelming history. The potential weakness of this device is the resulting awareness that Allan will survive all the wars, imprisonments, bombings, and uprisings he stumbles into, at least until he is 100. Jonasson mitigates this issue by putting Allan into situations that invite wonder about how he’ll survive, as when he blows up and burns down the Vladivostok gulag while soldiers are shooting other escapees. In addition, the author uses cliff-hangers to retain interest in the historical portions of the narrative—as when Allan’s Iranian companions are shot at the Iranian border and officials transport him to a Tehran jail for trial and execution at the end of a chapter.

Foreshadowing

Jonasson engages in foreshadowing, dropping ample hints about that something significant is about to happen. He uses this device in several ways. Sometimes, he blatantly describes something that’s about to occur, either through the behavior of characters in the story or by giving an alert as narrator. For example, to foreshadow the terrific explosion in Chapter 13, Allan’s behavior provides several hints. First, the list of supplies he needs to make the car bomb contains separate entries for two ingredients: nitroglycerin and ink. Second, Allan sets his new coffee cup where the police chief can see it. Third, Allan pulls Kevin out of the garage containing the explosive car.

Jonasson often confides a future happening. For example, when Allan checks into an exclusive hotel in Stockholm (also in Chapter 13), the room rates are expensive, so he offers to pay his bill in advance. The receptionist recognizes Allan as a particularly important guest and declines to ask him to prepay. Jonasson foreshadows an unexpected event here, writing, “If the receptionist had been able to look into the future, he would most certainly have answered differently” (179). The author broadly hints that the storyline will diverge from the expected. This practice builds empathy and focuses attention on an unknown future event.

Additionally, Jonasson’s choice of locales often serve as foreshadowing for anyone aware of their historical significance. In the US, Allan is released from four years in lockup—without any charge or conviction beyond the forgetfulness of American immigration officials—because of the need for explosive experts at Los Alamos in 1944. That destination, given its historical significance, foreshadows that Allan will somehow be involved in the creation of the atomic bomb.