Invitation to a Beheading

Cincinnatus C. is the protagonist of Invitation to a Beheading. However, he lacks the agency of a traditional protagonist. The novel begins with his sentencing and charts his growing frustrations with incarceration as he approaches his execution. His passivity is an important part of his character, however, revealing how little power he has to overcome the might of the absurd totalitarian state that is trying to kill him. Cincinnatus’s suffering ties to the theme of Irrational Bureaucracy. He simply wants to know when his execution will take place, but even this information is denied him by the arcane and inefficient system that governs the jail. His failures, his suffering, and his struggles to gain any agency over his life become the social critique that forms the foundation of the novel.

The question of stopping the execution or reversing the court’s decision is never raised, as this is fundamentally impossible in the characters’ view. Cincinnatus wants to know the date and time of his execution, because having this knowledge is the closest he can come to having any kind of control over his life. His uncertainty about the timing of his execution looms over the narrative; he wants to finish the novel he is reading and complete the pages of scribbled notes he has begun, but trying to finish either project seems impossible to Cincinnatus when he might be executed at any moment.