You could write an entire essay on the way the phrase "we are nothing, we are nobody" is used in The Chimes of Midnight. The way it operates on every possible level, from Edwardian class dynamics to faceless truism to existential horror to genuine grief, is absolutely incredible. Robert Shearman has this amazing writing trick of introducing a phrase that means one thing very early on in a story, and regularly returning to it under different, ever-more-horrifying circumstances to examine every possible meaning -- all of which were there from the start, but only become apparent under these new lights.
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