 In Existentialist literature, lack of a name—or of a full name—symbolizes human aloneness; the hero of Franz Kafka's "The Trial", for example is "Michael K.," and the hero of Ralph Ellison's
"Invisible Man" has no name at all.Named characters fill McCarry's last three novels, but each book's hero (in one case, heroine) never has a name; one has a "funny name" that is used for payroll and administrative paperwork, but is fictitious and meaningless.While McCarry's heroes with no name are different people in each story, the Man with No Name in three Clint Eastwood movies from the mid-1960s is the same person.