Point of View

Submission is told from the perspective a middle-aged French literary academic named François. It is written in the form of a first-person memoir and consists of François's memories of the year 2022. François reiterates throughout the novel that he does not believe in or stand for anything, making his observations of the political situation in Houellebecq's vision of France, 2022 very neutral in tone. He, like the rest of his compatriots, is a passive observer of a system beyond his control. François embodies the modern-day human being: desensitized by constant stimuli (in his case the media circus, reality television, and YouPorn), he goes through life unmoved by turmoil in violence. The narrator's desensitized perspective is most clearly illustrated when he recounts finding the body of a murdered cashier as he fled Paris. François saw the blood and the terrified look on the...