Romer i romanen - Aarhus Universitet

insist is itself a part of a communicative situation and this notion causes an evacuation of the self,
but it simultaneously creates a possibility for a new elevation. The self is not only dependent of the
communicative situation, it is also able to control this situation and thereby control its own
appearance. The text can thus be seen as the author’s way to construct and create his own identity,
to perform and construct his own self – by himself.
In my analysis of Den som blinker er bange for døden I will have two main focuses: the concept of
reality and the concept of the self. These focuses will firstly be evident in a paratext analysis in
which I will describe how the relation between fiction and reality has been debated in the press in
both an ethic and an aesthetic perspective and try to account for the way Knud Romer was
presented by him self and others through the debate. Secondly the focuses structure my analysis of
the actual text in which I seek to show how the concept of reality and the concept of the self are
presented as themes in the plot as well as the language of the novel.
This analysis start with a chapter about the “I” presented in the book. This I is interesting because
it seems to referrer to both the narrator and the author. The I thus exists on the boundary of fiction
and reality and can be seen as the author’s self construction. In the chapter Fiktionens virkelighed I
will hereafter concentrate on the concept of reality by focusing on the use of fantastic elements in
the text. These elements seem to mirror the ambiguous relation between fiction and reality in the
text and cause a destabilisation of the reality concept.
In the following chapter I will account for the texts evacuation and elevation of the self arguing
that the text can be seen as a performative trauma. Knud Romers childhood in Nykøbing was
traumatic: He was bullied in school and his family was socially isolated because his mother was
German. But the trauma seems not to lie in the actual name-calling and schoolyard violence, but in
the experience of being identified by others and not being able to define and communicate ones own
self. This experience is an evacuation of the self, but when written it becomes a part of an elevation
of the self – a part of the novel in which Romer takes control of the communicative situation and
expresses and constructs his own self.
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