An Analysis of the Unreliable Narrator in Ian McEwan’s “Solid Geometry”

【Abstract】Ian McEwan is a British novelist and screenwriter， and one of Britain’s most highly regarded writers， whose works provide us all the satisfaction of brilliant narrative and imaginary story plots we have come to expect from the master of English prose. He used unreliable narrative in many of his works， but in this paper I will have an analysis of the application of unreliable narrative in one of his earliest short stories， “Solid Geometry”， exploring the author’s ingenious maneuvering and reader’s correlative reaction， as well as the particular effect of unreliable narrative in the art of fiction.

【Key words】Unreliable Narrator; Ian McEwan’s; “Solid Geometry”

【作者簡介】陈园园（1994.04-），女，河北邢台人，首都师范大学外国语学院，硕士研究生在读，研究方向：外国语言学及应用语言学。

1. Brief Introduction of “Solid Geometry”

“Solid Geometry” is a short story by British writer Ian McEwan published in collection First Love， Last Rites. Here is the plot of this story： When the narrator was going through his great-great grandfather’s belongings， he came across the theory of “a plane without a surface” in his great-great grandfather’s secret diaries—through a series of folding， objects can disappear. He becomes obsessed with research into solid geometry contained in the diaries and is fascinated by the mysterious disappearance. He follows the instructions and succeeds in making his wife he hates a lot disappear in bed when they make love.

2. Introduction of unreliable narrator

Wayne C. Booth was the earliest who formulated a reader-centered approach to unreliable narration and distinguished between a reliable and unreliable narrator on the grounds of whether the narrator’s speech violates or conforms to general norms and values. The concept of unreliable narrator can be adequately explained with the help of the concept of the implied author. The reader’s idea of the implied author includes the inferable meanings of the events， their moral and emotional content， briefly“the intuitive apprehension of a completed artistic whole” （Booth， 1983， p73）. Briefly stated， according to Booth， narrators are reliable when they behave in accord with the implied author’s norms， and unreliable when they break them. And it is the reader’s task to pick out the unreliable narrator even though it is wearing a mask or hiding behind the fog.

3. Unreliable narrator in Ian McEwan’s “Solid Geometry”

The story is told by a first-person narrator， who maintains a very restrained attitude and a plain tone throughout the narrative process. The brilliance of this story is that the reader is led by the nose and believes what “I” narrate and it’s not until the end of the story that the reader surprisingly find the narrator actually is a heartless and cruel criminal who designed to murder his wife. And at this moment the reader finds that the essence of this story should be reinterpreted： This is a murder’s crime self-statement， which is full of self-defense in which he has no confession at all. And it is until then that readers find they are deceived by the narrator， who actually is an unreliable narrator. After reading the story， the reader knows that the narrator has killed his wife before narrating this story and the narrator is a murderer at the beginning of it—the narrator always knows more than the reader—and this makes the first important reason of his unreliability. At the end of the first paragraphs， the narrator said， “I used to think that at the end of it all I would try， if it was possible， to divorce my wife Maisie， but now there is no need at all.”（p25）After we know the ending and rethink this sentence“to divorce my wife Maisie， but now there is no need at all.” we can view this statement here is an “underreporting”（Phelan，1996）， because he doesn’t give a complete and clear narration of his solution to the contradiction between he and his wife. At the same time， this description also implies the unreliability in the axis of value / judgments （Phelan，1996）， because the action of depriving his wife’ life here was just narrated as “no need at all”. And this leaves a distinct clue of revealing the unreliable face of the narrator. The second reason that we find the narrator is unreliable is that he always narrates with obvious intention， which is to prove his wife’s mistake in order to make his murder reasonable. And this makes his narration unreliable in the axis of value/judgments， like in many sentences of evaluation on his wife： ‘Part of her problem was...and of my purpose and energy in editing it. She was doing nothing.’（p26）

4. Conclusion

“Solid Geometry” is a typical example of unreliable narrative， in which the author sets a lot of unreliable “pitfalls”. Between “true” and “untrue” narration， it not only creates the character successfully， but also makes the reader think and rethink the the truth of narration. It broadens the theme meaning of the text and the aesthetic effect of reading between “true” and “untrue” narration.