I read that short stories often don’t have subplots, becuse of their length.
What are some full-length novels with no subplots?
How closely are you defining a subplot? I just reread Stephen King’s 'Salem’s Lot, and I would say the only plot is “OMFG, this town has vampires in it!”
There is a love story, I guess, between two characters, but even that is moving the OMFG vampires story along. Is the love story a subplot?
A Clockwork Orange? I can’t think of a thing going on except the narrator telling what has happened to him.
Rosemary’s Baby. Everything in that book is a masterful, singular plot.
On the Road. A string of days in the life of Jack Kerouac. It’s stretching just a bit to say it has a plot at all, let alone a subplot.
Though, on reflection, the adventures of Dean Moriarity, glimpsed as they are, do invite the reader to imaging a subordinate parallel narrative. This narrative isn’t expressly conveyed, though; I don’t think it counts.
ETA: Bright Lights, Big City. No subplot there, though it’s a short book and, as such, I’m not sure it counts.
Room? It’s all just “what happened” told from the perspective of a five year old - there are nuances but not what I’d call subplots, just things you pick up on that a five year old doesn’t.
I’m not sure the Daphne DuMaurier novel Rebecca has a subplot. There really is just the one main story and its gradual revelation.
Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises sure didn’t seem to have any subplots when I read it. Nor, for that matter, any main plot.
I don’t remember Fahrenheit 451 having any subplot.
I don’t think this question is answerable without a strict definition of “subplot”. Otherwise it’s going to be largely a matter of individual interpretation of what counts as a subplot. For instance, it’s been years since I read Fahrenheit 451, but I’d consider Montag’s friendship with Clarisse a subplot.
Moby Dick seemed rather focused on Captain Ahab’s pursuit of a whale.
Kafka’s Metamorphosis?
Yeah, and that large middle section regarding the procedures for whaling, as if Melville were writing a how-to book, in the grandest, floweriest style.
So maybe we really do need a stricter definition of what a subplot is.
Fellowship of the Ring.
That’s a novella. I don’t think it’s even 100 pages long.
In Fahrenheit 451, I’d consider the war to be a subplot, albeit one that has a big impact on the resolution. The main plot is Guy’s growth of appreciation of books, and that could have happened without the war.
The Catcher in the Rye
IIRC, Arthur Nersesian’s The Fuck-Up has no subplots and is just the story of one guy’s crazy day.
Epistolary novels usually don’t have subplots.
Edit: Speaking of Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes doesn’t really have subplots, just the main plot as experienced by three different characters.
It is difficult to define subplot. I just finished Greene’s The Power and the Glory. I can’t decide if the Lieutenant’s story is a subplot or part of the Whisky Priest’s plot, or both. Even for the few novels that have already been mentioned it is ambiguous. I think the dad and the boys have separate plots that intersect in Something Wicked; ditto for Ahab and Ishmael in Moby Dick.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsynis about one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. No subplots.
I suspect some would argue that The Catcher in the Rye doesn’t even have A plot, although I don’t agree. I would say it has multiple subplots though, like everything that happens at school at the beginning, Holden’s failed attempts to get laid in NYC, and his search for the record for his sister/his whole relationships with his sister.