Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
¶ … thematic and stylistic threads hold Denis Johnson's collection of stories together in Jesus' Son. Even if they can be approached as independent units, the stories share in common several literary devices linking them together under the collection's umbrella. One of the most notable literary devices stringing together the disparate tales is the use of an unreliable narrator. As a literary device, the unreliable narrator invites the reader to question the authenticity of the events, making it possible to interpret the meaning of the tales in a variety of ways. Moreover, an unreliable narrator adds a depth of realism and honesty that is absent from an omniscient narrator. In addition to telling the story from only one point-of-view, what makes the narrator unreliable throughout Jesus' Son is being out of touch with the reality of social norms either through moral depravity or drugs. A narrator who lies or cheats others is likely to lie or cheat when telling a story. Three of the stories in Jesus' Son that use a narrator who is unreliable include "Beverly Home," "Dundun," and "Car Crash While Hitchhiking."
In "Beverly Home," the narrator describes his work at the Beverly Home, where "they made God look like a senseless maniac," (116). Describing the people who live and work in the Beverly Home, the narrator also lets the reader in on his own quirks, mental deformities, and abnormalities. The reader knows the narrator is unreliable not only because of his immoral...
Because the first person narrator is dishonest with people, and because he has a history of mental illness and substance abuse, he is a classic unreliable narrator.
Similarly, the narrator in "Dundun" admits straight away in the first line of the tale that he seeks out pharmaceutical opium. He buys his drugs from the title character, who is a social misfit as well. The two had met in jail, further alerting the reader that the narrator cannot be trusted to keep his story straight. Both Dundun and the narrator are ruthless, speaking of murder as if it was as easy as cooking breakfast. The narrator and Dundun come across as…
Works Cited
Johnson, Denis. "Beverly Home." In Jesus' Son: Stories. New York: Picador, 1992.
Johnson, Denis. "Car Crash While Hitchhiking." In Jesus' Son: Stories. New York: Picador, 1992.
Johnson, Denis. "Dundun." In Jesus' Son: Stories. New York: Picador, 1992.
Cask of Amontillado and Unreliable Narrator Mental Disorder and Poe's Unreliable Narrator Edgar Allan Poe is most known for his fascinating tales of the macabre and grotesque. Many of Poe's short tales are told from an unreliable perspective in which the narrator tells the events that have occurred as he interprets them. Furthermore, these tales of the macabre often explore the concepts of paranoia and murder. These themes are prevalent in "The
The unnamed narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe almost immediately reveals himself to be unreliable and untrustworthy, in terms of his ability to present events as they actually are. The narrator claims he killed an old man because of the man’s evil eye. But his description of the eye suggests that he believes that the eye almost has disembodied evil, a life of its own beyond that
I missed the people altogether."(Morrison, 167) the narrator perceives his or her flaws in many other aspects, and realizes that the characters and the story have escaped the control of the omniscient fiction: "I was sure one would kill the other...I was so sure it would happen. That the past was an abused record with no choice but to repeat itself... I was so sure, and they danced and
She tells her neighbor, "you have no way of knowing, but you're talking to a person whose life may be more like yours than you could ever imagine" (Wideman 34). This clearly links the non-white and white narrators together in a common bond based on how racism has torn them apart from each other. However, the white narrator seems more willing to try and rectify the situation that racism has
Glass Menagerie Although its narrator and author are men, The Glass Menagerie is arguably a play about women in the 1930s. As such, author Tennessee Williams gives women a voice they might not otherwise have had, and at first glance the play could be considered a positive feminist statement just by nature of having major women characters. However, while giving the women voice, Williams denigrates them at the same by
As Robillard points out, "Julian's cynicism shuts him off from any human association," (143). He has lost his family home due to the changes taking place in Southern society. The economic infrastructure that was supported by slavery has crumbled. Julian notes, "He never spoke of it without contempt or thought of it without longing. He had seen it once when he was a child before it had been sold."