Unreliable Narrator

¶ … 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 behavior in the home, such as spying on a married woman as she bathes and also sleeping with a woman who he "didn't want" to know well, but also because he comes right out and admits to being one of the "recovering drunkards and dope addicts," (121). 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 sociopathic, not caring about how they hurt others, and yet at the end of the story, the narrator states, "Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing," (42). Ironically, the narrator does garner some sympathy from the reader by noting that Dundun had been through a lot and was messed up because of it.

The underlying message is that people who do bad things did not necessarily start out as bad people, but they have become that way due to circumstances. Still, his background and his point-of-view makes the narrator less than reliable. The narrator of "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" is also unreliable because, like the other narrators in Jesus' Son stories, he is an addict. When he says "I sensed everything before it happened," the narrator seems like a deluded person or a psychotic.

When he claims "There was nothing wrong with me," while being carried off to the.