Fiction,

Ideals and Norms Final Paper

Harriette Kevill Davies

MAPSS

Children in The Elementary Particles

My MA thesis looked at media reporting into child sexual abuse, so as depressing as
the topic is, child abuse has been at the forefront of my mind this quarter. As a
result certain aspects of the various roles of and attitudes towards children in The
Elementary Particles stood out for me in this respect. I see five distinct categories
into which children in the novel fit, all of which ultimately are linked to the notion of
care and duty as callings, and their impact on an individuals ability to be in the
Heideggerian sense. In this paper I will analyze each these categories with a view to
understanding how Houellebecq places children within his critique of the post-1968
generation. To my mind Bruno represents a very clear signifier of both the effects
and the reproduction of the abuse of children, and he will be the primary focus of
this paper, but I will refer also to the lives of other characters.

Element One: Children as duty
In the novel, parenting frequently appears to be depicted as a duty, however not in
the Heideggerian sense of the care of others being intrinsic to ones being, but in the
more modern sense of being a chore. That this has such an impact on both the
brothers demonstrates that Houellebecq is deeply critical of the post-war
generations dismissive attitude towards careful parenting. From the start of the
book we learn that Brunos parents are emblematic of this generation. His mother
Janine is a gifted but promiscuous and somewhat subversive student from Algeria,
and his father Serge is a cosmetic surgeon. Houellebecq writes that Brunos

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conception was unintended but that they kept the baby because Janine believed
that maternity was something every woman should experience.1 However the
couple discovered that the burden of caring for a small child was incompatible with
their ideal of personal freedom.2 Brunos half-brother, Michel is conceived and
born in much the same way, although by a different father, as the result of an affair.
Michels father Marc is shown to be largely absent, both in spirit and physically, and
somewhat confused by his offspring. Janine takes up with a radical movement in
California and leaves the boys, both of whom are sent to grandparents for care.
Immediately we become aware that the boys parents are people for whom the
individual self is paramount. This goes against Heideggers philosophy that being
is intrinsically linked with care, and that care entails solicitude and concern,3 in
other words care towards others. Without this it is impossible to achieve ones
authentic selfhood, one cannot truly be without care. Thus, Houellebecq is
negating the authenticity of Brunos parents sense of self by highlighting the fact
that they place their own needs in primacy over the needs of their children. This has
an enormous impact on both the boys.
Throughout the majority of the novel, neither boy is capable of care. Michel retreats
into himself and when confronted with the possibility of meaningful sexual relations
with his childhood sweetheart Annabelle is unable to make the necessary
connection and so loses her to another man. At this point his withdrawal from
normal life becomes very clear, emotion would pass him by, sometimes very close.

1 Houellebecq, Michel (2001-02-06). The Elementary Particles, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle

Edition, 22
2 ibid
3 Heidegger, Martin (2013-01-31). Being and Time (Kindle Location 6606). . Kindle Edition.

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Others would experience happiness and despair, but such things would be unknown
to him, they would not touch him. He felt separated from the world by a vacuum
molded to his body like a shell, a protective armor.4
On the other hand, Bruno becomes obsessed with sex but until the appearance of
Christiane, is also unable to make meaningful connections in this regard. He sees
women and girls as sexual objects to be used, with no regard for their well-being.
Houellebecq makes a point of highlighting Brunos parents sexual nature Janine is
a subscriber to the sexual revolution, while his father was one of the first cosmetic
surgeons and so could be said to be making a living from sexuality. The fact that
Bruno is born to a promiscuous mother and a father who commoditizes sex must
surely have an impact on his sexual development. That they essentially abandon
him for the pursuit of their sexual careers may be a trigger for his inability to attach
meaning or indeed his emotional self to any of his sexual encounters.
Later, Bruno also struggles with his own son, towards whom he has no ostensible
sense of care. He acknowledges that when his son Victor was a small child and
turned to him for love Bruno rejected him,5 but states that men do not love their
sons, merely see them as rivals and competition. Bruno goes on to say that without
a trade to teach his son, his fathering is pointless.6 He claims that his life story is too
mundane to be of value to his son, and repeats a similar sentiment to Christiane on
page 167, as well as to Michel when he claims his story was of no interest to his

4 Ibid, 72
5 ibid, 138
6 ibid 139

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7
psychotherapist owing to its banality. However, Bruno is missing one of
Heideggers key points that of the everyday as a crucial element of being.
Heidegger argues that the everyday is what allows us to authentically be, whereas
angst defies this possibility. By being so caught up in the biologically deterministic
mindset that sees sons and fathers as rivals, Bruno overlooks the fact that merely
authentically being for the sake of his son is a valid pursuit. Instead his focus on
the biological, animalistic and determinist aspects of the sexual revolution becomes
overriding, precluding his ability to be. Michel is also preoccupied with the
scientific although he focuses more on the abstract elements of science, but because
of this the value of the everyday appears to elude him, and his being also becomes
inauthentic.
Thus, the way in which the two boys first experienced care or lack thereof, as not a
duty in the sense of a calling but duty as a chore can be seen impacting on their lives
throughout the book, and the lives of those they interact with. Houellebecqs focus
on determinism and fatalism may be unpalatable but he demonstrates how
childhood experiences dictate the boys life experiences and how all their actions
can be interpreted as the result of these experiences.

Element Two: Children as Products
The abandonment and permissiveness that saturates the lives of the two boys, as
well as other characters, has a second impact on their trajectories. These
characters destinies are direct results of their upbringing and in this sense they are

7 ibid, 157

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the product of their parents deeds and misdeeds. As I have noted, Brunos sexual
voraciousness seems to stem from his parents emphasis on sexuality and he
inherits his promiscuity from his mother. That Bruno and Christiane, who has a
similar background and is similarly affected by it, later make a habit of going to
couples clubs for group sex reiterates the point that both are products of their
parents licentiousness, as much as they both claim to disavow their parents ways
of life. As Houellebecq points out Children suffer the world that adults create for
them and try their best to adapt to it; in time, usually, they will replicate it8 I
contend that the obsession with sex, the promiscuity, and the clinical demonstrates
how Bruno is a product of his mother and father combined.
Michels father is described as detached, voluntarily mute and, thanks to his work as
a film maker, having an ability to view both animals and humans in a strictly
professional light.9 These traits are clearly manifest in Michel who retreats into
himself and relies on books about biochemistry for solace, rather than human
interaction. Michels lack of sexual promiscuity or indeed feeling may also be a
reaction against his mothers sexuality, particularly as his grandmother, who
essentially raises him, seems to cultivate his bookish and introverted traits.
Perhaps the most interesting child-as-product is David di Meola. His father had
founded communes in California and France which verged on the cultish and
promoted sexuality, to the point where Brunos mother had sex with David when he
was only 13. This was passed off as natural because incest was common in the
animal kingdom. Davids path reflects Brunos in many ways; as Bruno is

8 ibid, 206
9 ibid, 22

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preoccupied with being a writer, David is with being a rock star, but both suffer
from mediocrity. However, both share more base traits. Both are obsessed with sex,
and highly promiscuous, and both show signs of violence, Bruno dreams of stabbing
his grandmother as a child and then kills a cat at a young age, and David goes on a
satanic spree of killing and torturing. Houellebecq notes that this is violence is the
logical conclusion of the boys parents drives towards individual freedoms, because
physical violence [is] the most perfect manifestation of individuation.10
Therefore I suggest that both boys are the product of parents who promote
sexuality as either animalistic or clinical, and who insist on the individual as a free
and separate sexual unit, and thus represent one of the most negative results of the
sexual revolution; a generation lost to sexuality and a disregard for either emotion
or care.
Another interesting aspect of the children as products is that so many of the
characters end up as teachers. Bruno is perhaps the last person we might expect to
become a teacher after his experiences at school, but I propose that the intervention
of his teacher at Meaux has as deep an impact, albeit unspoken, on Bruno as the
abuse itself. Moreover, both of Brunos long term partners, his wife Anne and
Christiane are teachers. I contend that this is an interesting phenomenon because
for Bruno teachers are authority figures whose remit includes the regulation of the
sexuality of their pupils. It is never explicit why he is so attracted to teachers but I
would suggest that the interventionist teacher of his formative years had an impact
on Brunos views. For Bruno teachers can take control either by intervening in inter-

10 ibid, 128

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child abuse or by participating directly in abuse themselves. Although the teacher at
Meaux took one path and Bruno the other, there is arguably a direct link between
the pair, and so again Bruno becomes a product of his background.

Element Three: Children as Sexual Objects
In this category I will discuss the way in which children are objectified sexually in
the novel. There are (too!?) many instances of children being exposed to sex in the
novel and in none of them is there any notion of consent, even between teenagers of
the same age, and in all of them the child is poorly defined and treated as an object.
The only instance in which there is something approaching consent is in the
character of Annabelle who is romantic and has sexual desires, primarily for Michel.
However even when she gives up on Michel and goes with other boys, she is defined
passively, for instance at the disco Annabelle let a boy kiss her,11 and at the
commune she appears to give into David, rather than to have any real agency. For
other children this lack of agency is even more stark. At the start of the novel we
learn of Brunos abuse by other boys at his boarding school, in which he is
definitively treated as an object. Brunos teacher sees the abusive boys as
animalistic and savage which implies a certain level of objectification towards them
as well. Brunos lack of subjectivity is highlighted in an interesting juxtaposition on
page 39, where Bruno attempts to tell his father about his abuse. He concludes that
to do so would be pointless, and the next paragraph describes Serges business
interests, and the fact his focus of care is more on the business than on Bruno. I

11 ibid, 64

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propose that Bruno and the business are deliberately placed so close together, so as
to not only emphasize the lack of care Bruno receives but also to heighten the sense
that he is, to his father as well as to his abusers, merely another object to be used.
Later in life, Bruno views the young girls he lusts after in very objectifying terms,
and frequently takes their silence for consent. An example of this is when he has
relations with Annick on the beach.12 Although this is an apparently consensual
relationship, Bruno talks about Annick in an objectifying manner, focusing almost
entirely on her physicality, making very little attempt to talk to her. Annicks suicide
is not explicitly linked by Houellebecq to her affair with Bruno, but that it is
juxtaposed with the story of their tryst suggests that it is. Brunos attitude towards
her throughout their relationship is cold, and their initial encounter verges on him
raping her. They meet again later and she resists him but acquiesces and at this
point he seems to regard her as a sex machine, to be used merely for his
gratification. Brunos objectifying gaze is a continual theme throughout his life.
Even though he becomes less cold after meeting Christiane he initially analyzes her
physical traits, it is ultimately her physical attractiveness, or lack thereof after her
becoming paralyzed and committing suicide that brings about the end of their
relationship. When her body as an object no longer functions, Bruno loses interest.
He is also aware of the fragility of his body and its capital in the sexual market and is
frequently worried about the size of his genitals, and those of others. Further, when
he teaches a group of teenaged girls in school, he works out in order to gain a more
youthful and virile body so that he might be attractive to them. In this sense Bruno

12 ibid, 62

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not only sees others as objects of sexuality but himself as well. In fact Bruno
frequently displays disgust at his own body, for example on page 45 he reflects on
his sexual advances being rejected as a boy, and remembers his boyhood with
disgust, [and comes] to see this as the defining moment of his life.13 This is
linked to his being a product of his parents lifestyle, in that sex is essentially a
transaction or a throwaway activity with no connection to romance or other
feelings.
Davids seduction by Janine (at the time known as Jane) is another example of the
child as a sexual object. It interests me that, for all their emphasis on free love and
sexual abandon, those in the commune seem to encourage the seduction, based on
the argument that incest is a natural, animal function. However it is ironic that their
apparent embrace of sexual freedom and choice does not extend to David, who at 13
years old is not in a position to make a genuine choice about his sexuality. Thus he
is seen by the commune members as an object to be seduced and abused, in the
name of their own sexual freedom. They have the freedom to choose, but he does
not. That David grows up to be promiscuous and obsessed with death is perhaps a
reflection on his initiation into the adult world as an object rather than an authentic
child; to him people, including children, are mere things to be played with and
indeed tortured. The fact that part of his torture involves removing a mans penis
with a chainsaw and making a young girl watch a video of the act may be indicative
of his deeply ingrained attitudes to adult-child sex; adult sexuality becomes the
dehumanized object of his hatred, and there is a desire to eliminate it, while the

13 ibid, 45

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child is denied freedom in its sexuality and is traumatized. Thus, we have to
question whether, for David, his seduction was a form of torture. As Bruno is clearly
projecting his objectification and abuse onto others, so David is projecting what he
experienced as torture onto others. Both are not only sexual objects in themselves
as a result of their childhood, but are perpetuating the objectification of others.

Element Four: Children as Commodities
As Houellebecq writes sexual pleasure is an important commodity,14 and this
view is abundantly clear throughout the work. Just as Bruno inherits his
promiscuity from his mother, from his father he inherits a view of the aesthetics of
sex that is purely objectifying. By this I mean that when he meets women, he
analyzes their physical attributes in terms that one might expect a cosmetic surgeon
to use when assessing a patient. Bruno focuses positively on body parts that fit his
ideal but also negatively on those that he believes should or could be changed for
aesthetic improvement. On page 61 he talks about how, during his childhood, his
father completely missed out on the market for silicone breast implants. He
thought it was a passing fad. Which was utterly stupid.15 The fact that his father
failed to notice that the sexual revolution would lead to a rise in women altering
themselves to appear more attractive sexually may explain why, when Bruno sleeps
with women in the book, he assesses their sexual organs in an almost clinical way,
noting any imperfections and how they may deteriorate over time.

14 ibid, 179
15 ibid, 61

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Brunos focus on the imperfections of the body are not confined to his views on
women, however, and he is often equally disparaging about his own physical traits.
Ater Annicks suicide, Bruno feels inadequate, primarily owing to his weight, but
also feels surrounded by sexual temptation and so started visiting sex shops and
peep shows, which served only to aggravate his suffering. For the first time he
turned to prostitutes.16 Bruno returns to prostitutes when his first wife ceases to
appeal to him sexually. That he visits them on the way to and from his
psychotherapists office suggests that these prostitutes are little more than
diversions for Bruno. The therapist is interested in Brunos story that he meets his
father in a brothel but does not recognize him, but Bruno claims it is a mundane
event of no interest. To me the story of Bruno meeting his father in the brothel is of
interest as being indicative of both mens commoditization of sex, something that
Bruno has inherited from Serge, albeit in a different manifestation. The
commoditization of sex has become so ingrained that the men are obliterated, and
both become merely consumers, unrecognizable to each other.
Bruno finally stops going to prostitutes when he becomes teacher at his old school
in Meaux and finds that schoolgirls are more attractive and more readily available if
not for sex itself then for fantasy. The way that Bruno refers to the girls in his
conversations with Michel clearly denotes that to him they are of no value beyond
that of their sexuality, although his encounter with a pupil leads him to a psychiatric

16 ibid, 128

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17
hospital. Throughout the book Bruno refers to women, including his mother, as
whores, which is somewhat ironic given his own promiscuity.
Bruno also writes a tract about the nudist colony in Cap dAgde, where he notes that
the place is designed so as to maximize sexual pleasure while doing no harm to
others, in an environment where consent is paramount. However, in writing about
the colony as a form of resort, perhaps inadvertently Bruno highlights that it too is
commoditization of sexuality. This is also true at the Lieu de Changement, where
the hippie ideals of the post-68 generation soon become about profit and
shareholders, and where the sexual freedom becomes bitter and jaded, where
women past their prime are rejected as worthless. Ultimately for the generation that
espoused sexual freedom and choice, sexuality becomes nothing but a commodity,
to be used and abused for profit. Therefore, surely, the children of this generation
such as Bruno, Michel, David and Christiane, and their children too, are intrinsically
commoditized as the product of sexuality that has been packaged and sold and
stripped of any value.

Element Five Conclusion: Children as Liminal
In my prior research into child sexual abuse, I concluded that the abuse of girls
activates their sexuality and places them into a liminal phase whereby they are
neither young, innocent children, nor fully matured adults.18 The Elementary
Particles has led me to conclude that this is also true for boys. I argue that the two

17 ibid, 163-164
18 This research was for my MA thesis, entitled Above All, The Family: The Defensive Role of Tabloid

Newspapers in British Discourses of Child Sexual Abuse

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brothers, particularly Bruno, are in a liminal stage following the trauma of their
childhood. Michel is trapped in a state whereby he is unable to make meaningful
connections owing to being deprived of such connections as a child. Even when he
reunites with Annabelle he is unable to say much to her and their evening seems
somewhat cold.
Brunos liminality is clearly the result not only of his parents abandonment but also
of his abuse at school. He appears to be stuck in the Freudian phases of
development. For Freud the child is born with his mother as his primary object
choice, which he identifies with entirely and wants to possess. However as a
toddler, it is necessary for the child to separate this intense bond with its mother,
and become a being in itself, and this constitutes the Oedipal phase. The other
phases of development include the Oral, in which the childs mouth is a zone of
gratification, the Phallic, in which the childs genitalia become of paramount concern
to him, and particularly in comparison with other childrens genitals and, later, the
Genital in which the child learns to direct his sexual impulses into relationships with
others. I suggest that Bruno is somehow trapped in various of these stages at
various points in his life, but not in the manner of usual sexual development where
these stages happen in early childhood. Bruno has an obsession with Oral sex, and
in particular when he is the recipient, and this suggests he is fixated on the idea of
the mouth as an erogenous zone. Later, he becomes preoccupied with the size of his
own genitals and the size of others by comparison. This indicates that he may have
remnants of the Phallic stage. Further he attains the Genital stage with Christiane,
although does so far later in life than the normally developed sexual being. It is the

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Oedipal stage that is most telling in Brunos development, however. His relationship
with his mother is fraught, and he never truly has the chance to bond with or
separate from her. This, combined with her promiscuity, leads him to have an
obsession with her, and it is almost unsurprising, although no less shocking, when
he goes to molest his mother in her sleep. Nor is it surprising that, despite his
disgust at his mothers lifestyle, he finds romance with a woman who is equally
promiscuous and committed to sexual freedom. Brunos sexual development is
manifestly abnormal, and his various fixations point to this. Houellebecq suggests
that this is primarily the result of the post-68 hippie culture which placed sexual
freedom and individuality as paramount, and the animalistic way of viewing sex that
transpired. For Bruno it is first his abandonment by his mother, second his fathers
clinical and objectifying approach to the sexual, and third the animalistic behavior of
his childhood abusers. These situations force him to be in a state of partial
development where he has sexuality but no ability to control it, and where he is
unable to link sexuality with meaningful relationships. In this way Bruno is like a
child, who as a result of his background has become a product, a commodity, and an
object, and who is unable to escape the liminal stage in which he is stuck.

Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Liveright; Reissue edition,
1989.

Freud, Sigmund, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, W. W. Norton &
Company; The Standard Edition, 1990.

Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time. Kindle Edition, 2013.

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Houellebecq, Michel, The Elementary Particles, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Kindle Edition, 2001.

Kevill Davies, Harriette, Above All, The Family: The Defensive Role of Tabloid
Newspapers in British Discourses of Child Sexual Abuse. MA Thesis, 2013.

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