Abstract

This article scrutinizes the existential void in Iain Reid’s novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2016). It utilizes existentialism as its theoretical basis in analyzing the novel, with special references to such philosophers as Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre. The whole novel lends itself to the existential void through a sense of anxiety, estrangement, and uncertainty. This leaves the narrator in a psycho-existential state of negation, which characterizes her relationship with the surrounding world. She cannot confirm the existence of things, and she is not sure, nor is the reader, whether things happened, are happening, or even will happen. The fictionality of the form of the novel imbues the fictional reality of the narrator’s life, which negates the very basis on which it is built, embodying the existential notion of void. It is an embodiment of its own existence. That is, its existence is determined by its negation. The narrator’s existence and the events narrated become mere possibilities. Her bemused consciousness puts her in a state of existential emptiness. This emptiness triggers the desire to escape Being. It results in the possibility of self-destruction by committing suicide by the end of the novel, as suicide seems to the narrator to be more authentic than being deluded by an aimless quest for finding meaning in a fragmentary life.