In After Dark, My Sweet, Thompson attempts to demonstrate that life-long futility need not completely defeat a man. His first-person narrator, William "Kid" Collins, exemplifies the mentally disturbed individual which Thompson has used effectively in several of his novels. Although the action of the novel leads to Collins's death, he triumphs by saving the female character, Fay, through the ultimate act of sacrifice. Like Cosgrove, the protagonist of Recoil, Collins cannot distinguish truth.

He may recognize that many different possibilities for truth exist as related to a particular circumstance, but he cannot choose from all those possibilities.

The narrator symbolizes those fatecondemned figures with whom Thompson remained fascinated. Offered few choices in life, they simply must play with the hand they are dealt, and they seldom receive any good cards. They are used and abused by society, and they rebel by hurting those around them. In...