Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of violence, murder, death by suicide, and infidelity.

The narrator’s true name is never revealed, which points to the theme of The Complexity of Identity. Fittingly for a narrator who is never given a name, he struggles to figure out who he is and who he wants to become. Having no family, dreams, or sense of purpose of his own, he believes he has found purpose with Millicent. Not only does she create a structured family wherein the narrator serves a purpose as a father, but she is also his partner in literal crime, which makes him feel more powerful and in control than he feels in his career or home life. After committing his first murder to defend Millicent and his family, the narrator believes for a while that he wants to transcend his social position as an “average,” upper-middle-class father and tennis instructor by becoming a criminal mastermind, which would make him “above” average. In reality, the reason he drew satisfaction from the first murder was because he did it to protect his family. The subsequent murders that Millicent commits do not protect the family; the victims are not threats and do not even know the family, let alone intend to harm them.