The Immortals Sparknotes

In Martin Amis’s short story “The Immortals” the readers are told the story of a man’s life as an immortal. The man is also the narrator and majority of the story is being told during a nuclear war. Throughout the story is becomes known that the narrator lacks credibility and he is not an immortal, which he claims to be.
Firstly, the title of Amis’s short story is plural which automatically gives the reader the impression that there will be multiple immortals. However, throughout the story the narrator refers to himself as being the only immortal that there is. In the opening paragraph he says, “I am the immortal” (Amis 47) causing the reader to question whether he is the only one or if, as the title suggests, there really are other immortals out there. The narrator repeats that line several times in the story and then at the end goes on the
For example, he says, “But the planet was in desperate shape by then and I wanted no part of it” (Amis 49). If he truly were immortal then he would have seen this destruction coming years before it happened and could have warned the humans of their ways, but he does not. This has the readers questioning not only his immortality but his motives as well. He is tired of living this life so he is allowing the humans to destroy the planet in hopes that something they do will in turn destroy him. When a nuke was being sent to Tokyo he “headed straight to the action” and “reckoned that a direct hit from a nuke was [his] only chance” (Amis 49) and he never thought twice about what the nuke would cause for everyone else, only that it might be his only chance at dying. Towards the end of the story he says “They think that they will live forever. The poor bastards, if they only knew” (Amis 53). This shows that he does pity them, just not enough to do anything about it. So, instead he just lets them keep living the way they always have and believing things