Department of English and American Studies English ... - IS MU [PDF]

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature

Jana Mališová

Narrative Unreliability in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Robert Švábenský

2017

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Jana Mališová

Table of Contents 1

Introduction............................................................................................................1

2

Theoretical Framework ..........................................................................................4

3

4

2.1

Narrative Unreliability ....................................................................................4

2.2

Narrators and Focalizors..................................................................................7

Narrative Unreliability in The Blind Assassin .........................................................9 3.1

Unreliability of the Narrated .......................................................................... 10

3.2

Unreliability of Narration .............................................................................. 20

3.3

Unreliability of the Narrator .......................................................................... 29

Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 39

Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 42 Summary ..................................................................................................................... 45 Resumé ....................................................................................................................... 46

Narrative Unreliability in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin 1 Introduction In 2000, Margaret Atwood won the Booker Prize for her novel The Blind Assassin. The book is a literary achievement that combines an intriguing story with a striking and very complex narrative structure, while confronting the readers with fundamental ethical issues of innocence and guilt, power and powerlessness. Interestingly, critical reception and interpretation of The Blind Assassin is extremely disparate, ranging from classifying the novel as a “feminist memoir” (Brooks Bouson 251) to claiming that “the novel is largely unencumbered by . . . feminist ideology” (Kakutani, par. 2). Similarly, interpretation of who or what is the eponymous “blind assassin” varies enormously (compare for instance Brooks Bouson and Dancygier). Many other aspects of the text are interpreted in similarly contradicting ways. This paper argues that the ambiguity of the novel is enhanced by Atwood’s use of different aspects of narrative unreliability. Reading The Blind Assassin is like reading several books in one. Partly because the novel is composed of several different narratives combined in a mise en abyme. The frame narrative is a fictional memoir and it combines passages of the narratorprotagonist’s present and past; another component of the novel is a seemingly less related embedded narrative containing also a frame story and a second-level embedded story; all this is completed by a collection of pseudo-factual newspaper clippings. Another reason for the readerly feeling of having to deal with more than one book is Atwood’s use of narrative unreliability. While reading the novel, the audience is incited to gradually discover (or at least ponder the possibility) that the narrator might be unreliable, due to the cumulative effect of her morally questionable past actions, as well as the slowly emerging reason for her writing the memoir. Also, as the story unfolds,

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the meaning of the embedded narrative becomes more and more questionable. Towards the very end of the novel, a piece of information is disclosed that sheds a new light on the embedded narrative and thus also on the novel as a whole. Therefore, when the final denouement is revealed, the reader is invited to reinterpret the meaning of both the embedded narrative and the whole novel, to re-assess the role of the narratorprotagonist-fictional author and her trustworthiness. In retrospective, many facts from the storyworld acquire a new meaning and the whole narrative becomes outspokenly dominated by its narrator. Margaret Atwood uses different aspects of narrative unreliability to perpetually destabilize the readers’ interpretations and to enhance the ambiguity of this narrative, dealing with ethically challenging questions. Unreliability is used on the level of the text and fabula, of the story and also of the narrator. Interestingly, most individual propositions on the textual level reflect the facts of the fictional world correctly – but it is the one exception that boosts the overall unreliability of the whole narrative and its components. The interpretation and evaluation of individual claims is unreliable because – although often presented as belonging to different instances – it actually always originates in the mind of the character-bound narrator. As the story unfolds, unreliability is more and more prominent on the level of narration, since events are presented in a way that leaves many gaps and suggests interpretations which are later disclosed as false. Also, the complex structure of the novel implies that there are teleological relations between different sub-narratives, but these are left unexplained for a very long time, thus creating an impression of suspense and ambiguity. All the previously mentioned aspects of unreliability converge in the unreliable narrator whose unreliability is both “estranging” and “bonding” (Phelan, “Estranging Unreliability” 222). The fact that the novel is so much centered around the protagonist puts forward

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her character and ethical choices regarding her responsibility for her own life and the lives of others. James Harold pertinently points out that the embedded narrative “is written as a clue to the mind behind it” (138). I believe that it is possible to apply his sentence to the novel as a whole. In fact, Atwood uses numerous kinds and aspects of narrative unreliability to offer a full picture of her heroine. One could argue, as Michael Dirda does, that some major characters of the novel are rather shallow (Richard, Winnifred) and that the character of the protagonist’s sister Laura fails to come to life. This is true in a sense, but slightly beside the point. Since Iris is not only the narrator, but also the fictional author of the novel, such instances of literary underachievement (acknowledged directly in the text) are yet another way to characterize the protagonist. The whole novel is centered around Iris and the ethical choices she is confronted with throughout her life. The use of unreliable narration allows Atwood to prospect her heroine in extraordinary depth and to bring forward emotionally and ethically challenging themes of suffering, guilt, innocence, power and powerlessness without being too moralistic and in a complexity otherwise hard to imagine. This paper is concerned with different aspects of narrative unreliability and their function in The Blind Assassin. Therefore, the first part is dedicated to defining narrative unreliability, its types and possible functions. The major aspect of narrative unreliability in general, and in the studied novel in particular, is the role of the narrator; hence a section of the theoretical part is dedicated to this phenomenon. The second part is a practical analysis of different aspects of narrative unreliability in The Blind Assassin, focusing on how narrative unreliability enhances the ambiguity of individual elements of the narrative and of its teleology.

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2 Theoretical Framework 2.1 Narrative Unreliability The concept of narrative unreliability was proposed by Wayne C. Booth in 1961 in his book The Rhetoric of Fiction; unreliable narration and narrators are notions that narratology has studied since, with a peak during the last twenty years or so (Vogt 131). However, as is the case with many narratological concepts, the theory, terminology and classification are far from unified. Even the very recent volume Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2015) features a number of articles suggesting different re-conceptualizations and new classifications, while rehearsing and drawing on previous ones. Nonetheless, virtually all these revisions have more in common than what would divide them; and the constant rethinking aims to understand the subject-matter better and to offer practical tools for literary analysis. Very generally, it is possible to define the reliability of a person or thing as an assumption that they are “unlikely to be wrong or go wrong, to fail or to fail us” (Margolin, “Theorising” 32). While studying (un)reliability (in any domain), it is important to bear in mind several aspects which are logical, but might be easily overlooked. First, (un)reliability is a function with many variables and thus can be assessed against different criteria with different outcomes (31, 32). Besides, it is not an absolute value, but a “gradient” – so a narrative or a narrator can be “highly, . . . fairly or marginally” (un)reliable (31; see also V. Nünning 89). Moreover, (un)reliability of narratives and narrators can also vary throughout a single text (Pettersson 121). Unreliable narration is well known from outside the world of literary fiction; it is a common phenomenon in people’s daily lives. Unreliability of fictional narrative texts and their producers (i.e. narrators, but also authors) has, however, very different 4

outcomes for their audiences than in the case of real-life situations. The greatest difference is that unreliability in fictional narratives does not pose any threat to the audience (V. Nünning 99). A complex outline of possible functions of unreliability in fictional narratives is suggested by Vera Nünning (99-102). Narrative unreliability can offer “the pleasure of suspense and detection”, but it can also fulfil a host of possible “epistemological, cognitive and ethical functions” (99). The epistemological functions encompass “[presentations of] deviating viewpoints” and prompt the reader to consider and re-consider the notions of legitimate subjectivity and mere inadequacy, as well as to comprehend the working of exceptional minds, including the functioning of misinterpretations caused by different reasons (100). The cognitive functions comprise a “practice of flexibility”: the need to “revise and reinterpret” information gathered from the narrative – and in ambiguous narratives to “deal with complexity and ambivalence” (99). The ethical functions lie in enhancing the readers’ ethical evaluation of unreliable narrators, stressing the problematic nature of these judgements and the importance of empathy (101, 102). Besides, “unreliable narrators [and focalizors] can serve to implicitly criticize culturally entrenched beliefs” (101). This list is obviously not an exhaustive one, because individual realizations of these functions within the teleology of a particular narrative can be manifold and combined, but it provides an insight into the great variety of these functions and a starting point for the analysis and interpretation of individual narratives. For interpreting unreliability in fiction, it is useful to define textual clues and signals that lead to the recognition of unreliable narrators, unreliable focalizors and of unreliable narratives. Narratologists usually identify three types of signals: “intratextual, paratextual and contextual” (V. Nünning 96). Intratextual signals are either “intratextual inconsistencies”, i.e. inconsistencies between the actions, words and thoughts of a

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narrator or focalizor (a typical trait of Virginia Woolf’s characters) or discrepancies between different points of view presented within a story (e.g. in James’s The Turn of the Screw); direct indications or “stylistic features that signal a high degree of emotional involvement” of narrators or some kind of their derangement, often accompanied by their urge to convince the reader of their own truth (96) (e.g. the narrator of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” or Chief Bromden in Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest). Another intertextual feature of unreliable narration is “manipulative distribution of narrative information” which leads the readers to “construct a false image of the fictional world” until they get the missing piece of information (a famous example is Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd where the narrator assists Poirot in solving the mystery only to reveal at the end that he is the murderer) (96). Paratextual signals are indications of unreliability comprised in paratextual elements, such as the title of the whole narrative (e.g. Gogol’s Diary of a Madman), a title of a chapter, preface, dedication, afterword etc. (Margolin, “Narrator” par. 14). Contextual signals “refer to the relation between the reader’s beliefs about the world and the events portrayed in the story” (V. Nünning 96) (such as the clash between Huck Finn’s naïve narration and the reader’s rather easy decoding of the real meaning of events and behaviors). Another sign of unreliability is the inadequacy “of the narrator’s behavior in a given social situation” (96) (a famous example of this type of unreliable narrator is Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita, who instead of acknowledging his pedophilia blames Lolita for seducing him). As Uri Margolin points out, unreliability does not only concern the facts of the storyworld (alethic unreliability), but also the interpretation of these facts (epistemic unreliability) and their evaluation (axiological unreliability) (“Theorising” 39). He suggests dividing narrative unreliability into three categories, relating to different

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constituents of the narrative: unreliability of the narrated (i.e. the text as a series of individual claims about the storyworld, the fabula); of narration (i.e. the narrative process which is a kind of communicative act, the story) and of the narrator (i.e. the producer of the text, his/her personality) (36-37). Margolin’s classification is used as a point of reference for my analysis of The Blind Assassin which is divided into corresponding sections. Further details about unreliability in each of these domains will be provided in the respective sections of this study. It is also worth mentioning that although Margolin’s well-ordered approach is theoretically very neat, in an actual text, all aspects function in an interplay. The process of narration is only accessible via the text, as is all information regarding the personality of the narrator.

2.2 Narrators and Focalizors For the description of the combined issues of narrators and the perspective from which the text is being narrated, this paper uses the concept and terminology proposed by Mieke Bal in her study Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Her structuralist approach makes a clear cut between narration and focalization: narration is a part of the textual level of the narrative, the way in which the text is organized and how the story is being told by its narrator (Bal 19). Focalization, on the other hand, is an aspect of the story level; it is the perspective from which the events are being perceived (142). Bal uses a specific term for the agent of focalization – the focalizor, which offers a handy tool to my analysis. Obviously, narrator and focalizor can be one and narration is impossible without focalization of some kind; but it is useful to regard these aspects separately and to distinguish the fictional mind that perceives, interprets, or evaluates (focalizor) from the fictional mind that presents someone else’s perception, interpretation or evaluation to the reader (narrator). It is doubly useful in unreliable

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narration, because an unreliable narrator often presents his/her rendition of a separate focalizor as objective, while in fact it is always a subjective meta-representation. For the description of narrators, rather than using the usual, but somewhat superficially technical terms of 1st person and 3rd person narrators, Bal chooses more explanatory and in-depth terms. A “character-bound narrator” appears in texts where “the ʻ I’ is to be identified with a character in the fabula it itself narrates” whereas an “external narrator” “never refers explicitly to itself as a character” (22). This distinction is obviously more than a grammatical feature; in a very much simplified way it is possible to say that a character-bound narrator endows the text with a rhetoric of autobiography (22) and the reader is bound to believe and understand such a narrator in issues related to the narrator’s identity – his/her story, motivations, evaluations (23). An external narrator, on the other hand, is – by default – perceived by readers as an authority “used to present a story about others as true” (25). Obviously, this is a basic distinction and basic rhetoric that is used with infinite variation in literary practice where narration is always accompanied by focalization whose type can change or even invert this basic rhetoric. Besides, narrators assume different roles within their narratives. The narrator can be “a reporter” whose motivation for narrating is to transmit a true story as he/she sees it; an “editor or publisher” who endeavors to convey some documents not created directly by him/her. But he/she can also act as “an author-fabricator, a storyteller engaged in the invention of stories” where aesthetic qualities are more important than the truth-value (Margolin, “Narrator” par. 19). In parallel, Bal distinguishes “character-bound focalization” and “external focalization”. The term character-bound focalization is self-explanatory; but it is useful to add that different characters can become focalizors within the same narrative even if their focus is voiced by the same narrator. In external focalization “an anonymous

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agent, situated outside the fabula, is functioning as focalizor” (148). Character-bound focalization is used to communicate the perception, evaluation and motivation of the focalizing character(s) which in turn orient the reader’s “attention and sympathy” (148). For a character-bound narrator, external focalization is virtually impossible since the narrator is a character in the story, a person in the fictional world who – objective as they may try to be – is always influenced by their individual perception, their fallible memory and can hardly completely disregard their own opinions, ethics and experiences. This is the situation in The Blind Assassin.

3 Narrative Unreliability in The Blind Assassin The structure of The Blind Assassin is a very complex one. It is a highly fragmented text; furthermore, it is composed of several inter-related textual levels. On a large scale, the novel comprises two seemingly separate narratives which are supplemented by a collection of fictional newspaper articles. The primary narrative (which I refer to as N1) is a fictional memoir, a “pseudo-autobiographical confession” (Dancygier 138) of Iris Chase Griffen, once a prominent Canadian socialite, now an almost forgotten solitary octogenarian. N1’s basic storyline covers the personal and family history of Iris from before her birth till her death, with a focus on the years of her adolescence and young adulthood in the 1930s. This narrative contains two distinct layers: the frame story of elderly Iris, her striving to go through the difficulties of solitary old age including passages about her writing her memoir; the second layer is the story of Iris’s past. The narrator of N1 is old Iris, focalization shifts between old Iris and young Iris; other characters are occasionally presented as focalizors too. The second narrative that composes the novel is an embedded novella also called “The Blind Assassin” (I will refer to it as N2). Atwood uses an effect of mise en abyme

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by further dividing the embedded novella into two story levels: the story of a young couple of lovers meeting clandestinely and an embedded science-fiction story that one of the lovers, the man, recounts orally during some of their meetings. The narrator of the frame story of N2 is external, focalization shifts from the woman to the man to external. The effect of the formally external narration whose fictional author is a character in N1 will be discussed in chapter 3.3. A third constituent of the novel is a collection of newspaper articles (plus one official letter) concerning characters and events described in N1 and N2. They are interspersed throughout the novel and written from a neutral perspective.

3.1 Unreliability of the Narrated “A narrative is … a collection of propositions or claims about a domain, each of which in isolation or any conjunction of them or their totality being reliable or unreliable regarding the information they provide” (Margolin, “Theorising” 39). These claims can be divided into three categories: alethic claims concern facts about the storyworld, its elements or events, and they are either true, or false, or indeterminate. Epistemic claims concern implications of these facts, their explanations and interpretations; they are valid or invalid and plausible or implausible. Axiological claims concern evaluation of the facts of the storyworld within the context of a chosen value: ethics, but also aesthetics, utility etc. Axiological claims are appropriate or inappropriate and tenable or untenable (39). First, this paper will focus on the alethic (un)reliability of the novel. “Alethic propositions serve the function of reporting of what is the case in a domain” (Margolin, “Theorising” 42). Margolin suggests assessing alethic reliability by the four following criteria: “the truth of individual propositions in isolation”; “the relation of consistency”,

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“overall coherence and semantic relevance” and “completeness or comprehensiveness of information” (42-43). In connection with fictional narratives, Margolin mentions the “principle of semantic charity”: the reader “should accept all factual … propositions as true unless there are strong counter-indications” because the factual information about the storyworld is in principle impossible to verify from external sources (42). It is important to bear in mind that an unreliable fictional narrative must not be as successful as to persuade the reader completely about false claims concerning the fictional world, otherwise it would just become an uncontested reverse image of itself. Therefore, the aim of an unreliable narrative is to raise suspicion and thus stimulate the readers’ attention and their questioning of the truth-value of the text. This is exactly the case in The Blind Assassin. The story of The Blind Assassin is set against the background of real history and partially in real places (Toronto), but its characters and a great part of settings are fictional. This, however, has no impact on the reliability of the text; the background is simply part of the storyworld which is not more or less unreliable just because its events coincide with a truthful historical account of the events of the 1930s and 1940s in Canada. Following Margolin’s criteria for alethic reliability of a narrative, one will find that individual alethic propositions that constitute the text are mostly true, i.e. in accordance with the “textual actual world” (a term from possible-worlds theory, used in Vogt’s study (137), which I borrow because I find it conveniently self-explanatory). In fact, there is only one blatantly false factual proposition in the communication between the fictional author and the reader. It breaks the rule of “semantic charity” mentioned above and thus it is difficult to identify, because the reader is generally reluctant to accept such break of narrative conventions (Vogt 133). Therefore, the reader takes the claim at its face-value for a long time, which has great implications on the interpretation

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of the text. When the truth is finally disclosed, it makes readers “revise their assumptions about the facts and events in the story” (ibid.). This unique false alethic claim is the attribution of the authorship of N2. The embedded novella is introduced as written by Laura. Much later – towards the end of the novel – this is disclosed as a misleading piece of information and Iris is presented as the ‘real’ author of N2. Interestingly, the words “By Laura Chase” are part of the novel’s paratext, notably the bibliographic information about N2 (Atwood 7). It means that Iris, who published N2 under Laura’s name in 1947, was deceiving the publisher and her contemporaries; and she fails to clarify the real authorship fifty years later, when compiling her memoir. Besides, the first chapter of N1 ends with the discovery of “the stack of cheap school exercise books” (Atwood 4, emphasis added; the definite article appears in the text from the very first mention, which stresses the importance of the notebooks). After this, N2 begins. The reader is thus bound – and indeed prompted by the text – to make the logical deduction that N2 must be the content of Laura’s notebooks discovered by Iris. Nevertheless, Iris’s characterization of her sister throughout the novel makes it harder and harder to believe that Laura should be the author, let alone the protagonist of N2. The reader is subtly led to hesitate. Remarkably, since the false attribution of the authorship of N2 appears only in the paratext and is never directly confirmed by Iris the narrator, it is an inconspicuous foreshadowing of the final revelation – best appreciated at second reading. Interestingly, there are no directly false alethic claims in N1. The frame story of old Iris is rendered accurately and without omitting important facts; the memoir is much more complex in this regard, but without actual false claims. The story is full of lying and concealing information among characters, but the narrator notifies the reader about them. For example, when Richard urges Iris to notify him if she hears of Laura, who has

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escaped from Bella Vista, this is how Iris replies – and how she explains her reply to the reader: “I would not hesitate. Those were my very words. It was a sentence without an object, and therefore not technically a lie.” (Atwood 541). Such explanations enhance Iris’s reliability as a provider of a true account of events – at least until the disclosure of the real authorship of N2. Iris’s memoir spreads over the whole of her life, even prior to it when she describes the lives of her grand-parents. But it is reliable in this aspect – much information is presented as passed on by Reenie; direct speech is not used in scenes the narrator could not witness. Besides, in this part of the narrative, the narrator often uses hedging: “I expect he did it awkwardly” (Atwood 86, emphasis mine). As Margolin points out, paradoxically, such restrictions serve to increase reliability because they highlight the narrator’s honesty (“Theorising” 51). The situation regarding alethic reliability is intriguing for the frame story of N2. At first sight, it looks like a story narrated by an external narrator with abundant passages of external focalization. Hence, it uses the inherent characteristic of external narration mentioned by Bal: that readers take an external narrator as an authority and normally believe his/her account to be true (25). Nevertheless, the reader is aware from the very beginning of N2 that its author is a character from N1. Thus, the status of N2 is different from what it is presented like. The readers know (or think they know) the fictional author of the text, thus all “external” focalization is in fact attributed to a character from N1. Ambiguity is created by the discrepancy between the form of an external narrator and an implied character-bound focalization. Not only does this focalizing character appear on a higher level of the narrative, but the situation is much more complex. It might be a story by Laura, maybe even of Laura, but it is clarified at the end of the novel that the story is Iris’s. Therefore, Iris acquires several more

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important roles in the text – she is the fictional author of N2 and also its protagonist. The open revelation comes towards the very end of the novel. This disclosure not only incites the reader to reinterpret N2 and its relation to N1, but also casts the shadow of suspicion on everything else the reader has read. Because once unreliability is detected, it reduces “by contagion, even though this does NOT follow logically, [the perceived reliability] of the narrational process itself and … of the claims made in it about the narrated domain” (Margolin, “Theorising” 51). The collection of sources of alethic claims about the textual actual world is completed by a series of newspaper clippings. As a rule, they do not provide facts important for the story that would not be included in N1. They are written from a neutral perspective – so they offer a counterpart to Iris’s rendition of events. In their neutrality, they serve as an external eye and present the surface of events, the public side of people and happenings as a contemporary observer not directly involved in the plot would have perceived them. It is in contrast with this neutrality that the inner turmoil of Iris’s memoir becomes more prominent. Regarding the criterion of consistency, or “compatibility and lack of contradictions” (Margolin, “Theorising” 43), it is violated for example in the following case. There is a letter from the director of Bella Vista clinic in which he refers to Laura’s “delusions” (Atwood 496). Later, the reader is confronted with Laura’s direct account of the events, including a pregnancy with Richard’s child and an abortion which – as Laura claims – was conducted in this very clinic. The doctor does not specify the nature of these “delusions” and is in all aspects extremely vague. Therefore, it is unclear which of Laura’s claims (the pregnancy or Richard’s fatherhood or both) he designates as delusive. In any case, the doctor’s negation of Laura’s assertions introduces a new variety of unreliability into the text – indetermination regarding the

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truth value. The doctor’s claims (endorsed by Iris’s husband and sister-in-law) are contradicted by Laura and Iris cannot be sure whose account is correct, since she was not a direct witness of these events. Hence, she must decide whom to believe. Iris finally opts for Laura, but a certain degree of ambiguity remains and it cannot be incontestably solved. The third criterion of alethic reliability is an overall coherence of individual alethic claims whose sum constitutes the fabula of the narrative (as opposed to cohesion and intratextual relations of the story which will be studied in chapter 3.2). Alethic propositions need to “hang together to provide a fairly interconnected account of a particular series of actions and events in a domain (Margolin, “Theorising” 43)”. Uri Margolin claims that unreliability occurs where the text creates a feeling of randomness (ibid.). Unreliability is not created by incoherence in the fabula of The Blind Assassin where, contrastingly, everything is plausibly explained at the end. Even temporarily, the events of the storyworld do not appear to happen randomly: explanations that were used to convince Iris at the time are presented to the reader (as with the removal of Laura to Bella Vista); or possible reasons are hinted at. Sometimes, these hints are misleading or providing only partial guidance. For instance, when Iris comments on her first meeting with Alex in Toronto: “that moment I had already committed treachery in my heart.” (Atwood 393). At first reading, Iris seems to be alluding at betraying Richard. But on second reading, when the reader knows the whole fabula, it transpires that she probably speaks of betraying Laura and her love for Alex. Anyway, even misleading and incomplete hints keep the temporary image of the fictional world, created in the mind of the reader, coherent. Finally, there is the criterion of “completeness and comprehensiveness of information” (Margolin, “Theorising” 43). In this domain, The Blind Assassin makes

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interesting use of unreliability. First, there are elements from the fabula that are not clarified by the text, not even at the end (where many revelations are dumped at the audience almost at once, in great contrast to the rather slow tempo of the greater part of The Blind Assassin). In fact, information about Iris’s life after she lost her daughter Aimee is extremely scarce and also a comprehensive outline of Aimee’s life story is missing. In a sense, these issues should be included in the temporary cadre that relates Iris’s present to her past. Also, since Iris claims that her granddaughter Sabrina is the narratee of her book and “the only one who needs it” (Atwood 627), she might add some elucidation about the life of Sabrina’s mother. However, she does not. Hence, in a sense, narrative unreliability serves once more to center the narrative around Iris, in spite of her claiming otherwise. It is Iris who needs the book – and Sabrina’s comprehension. As Margolin amply remarks, in case of missing information, readers tend to fill in the gaps by inventing possible links, using their knowledge of the world, previous experience with literature, genre norms (“Theorising” 43). Here, the narrator (and author) makes the greatest use of alethic unreliability for stimulating the readers’ engagement with the novel. Although most matters will be clarified in the end, the presentation of individual events is such that it elicits a great activity on the part of the reader to try to make sense of the fabula. However, this aspect has more to do with the unreliability of narration and will be further developed in section 3.2. The text is not unreliable in the sense that it would conceal facts of the storyworld infinitely; the ending indeed “reveal[s] the truths for which [the readers] have been waiting” (Ingersoll 549). However, although there is the unequivocal factual ending and the readers will finally find out what happened, it does not clarify the ethical question of responsibility. In Iris’s words: “You want the truth, of course. You want me

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to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth” (Atwood 484). Importantly, the whole fabula is rendered truthfully at the end by the narrator herself and not by some logical contradiction. She clarifies everything – the reader can deduce some elements as the story unfolds, but Iris has the final say. This implies that it is useful to look for the reason of the postponement of the clarification of the real course of events. Iris wants the reader to understand the broad picture first, from her own point of view – hoping that it will make the audience share her perspective. She uses the effects of “bonding” unreliability in this context (Phelan, “Estranging Unreliability” 225). By using a system of prolepses and analepses, Iris the narrator and fictional author provides the reader with as much background information as possible to understand not only the facts of the story, but – more importantly – the motives, causes and consequences which interplay in her mind and determine her behavior. Paradoxically, as cognitive narratology emphasizes, even ascriptions of a characterbound narrator’s own mental states are very often unreliable because they are frequently misinterpreted by the self or the self does not notice their change (Palmer 125-126). Regarding epistemic and axiological claims, it would be possible to apply the same interpretative frame as for alethic claims. However, since this might be somehow overloaded, and also given that there is much epistemic and axiological unreliability already on the level of individual propositions, I will make the analysis more concise. The set of unreliable epistemic claims is enormous. Some of Iris’s inferences and interpretations of facts are ostensibly invalid or implausible, e.g. when Iris spots Alex in Toronto and is afraid that other people might recognize him, too, and start chasing him: “Surely everyone else on the street was looking at him too – surely they all knew who he was!” (Atwood 393). As Vogt asserts, if the text offers an interpretation incongruous with events from the textual actual world (in this case, no one recognized Alex and

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nothing happened), it is a signal of unreliability (137). The use of “surely” strengthens the discrepancy between Iris’s judgement of the situation and the reality. Nevertheless, this example of unreliable focalization (and similar ones that occur frequently throughout N1) can easily be attributed to young Iris at the time of the described event; this unreliability is easily identified – therefore not misleading. The passage serves to transmit impressively Iris’s perceived anxiety. At the same time, it shows a pattern of the working of her mind and can warn the reader that in other situations, where the real outcome is not known, Iris’s inferences and interpretations should be taken under advisement by the reader. And indeed, many of Iris’s interpretations are dubious or improbable. Such as when Laura falls off the bridge in the opening chapter and is reported to wear white gloves. Iris interprets her gloves as follows: “The white gloves: a Pontius Pilate gesture. She was washing her hands of me. Of all of us.” (Atwood 4). But it was very usual for women in the 1940s to wear gloves; Pilate, on the other hand, did not wear any gloves. Iris is possibly over-interpreting Laura’s clothing. Nonetheless, this interpretation is very important to understand Iris’s own evaluation of Laura’s situation and of Iris’s own role in Laura’s fate. Paradoxically, the perceived reliability of interpretation and evaluation is strengthened by moderating or restricting qualifiers: “Richard did not appear in person, which was a sign (to me) of his guilt.” (Atwood 617, emphasis added). Such qualifiers serve to admit that the interpretation is subjective and alert the reader to perceive it accordingly (compare Margolin, “Theorising” 50). More than anything, Iris’s inferences and interpretations of events and behaviors point at her own world views and elucidate the working of her mind. The situation with axiological claims is very similar; there are hardly any evaluations that would be considered absolutely inapt or untenable, but many of them are biased or provocative. Again, this serves mainly to complete the picture of

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the person who attributes such evaluations, most often and importantly Iris – the young one, the old one or indeed the disguised one in N2. Besides, Iris is very apt in foisting her own visions, opinions and interpretations on others – not only other characters, but her audience as well. “Winnifred blamed me, of course. After that, it was open war. She did the worst thing to me that she could think of. She took Aimee.” (Atwood 624, emphasis added). But it is only Iris’s interpretation; surely, she never discussed this with Winnifred. There are other possible interpretations: maybe, Winnifred really considered Iris a bad mother and wanted the best for the child – not in order to hurt Iris, but for the child’s sake. Such interpretation, however, would not suit Iris the narrator who needs to blame Winnifred as much as possible and assume the role of a victim. Assigning other motives to Winnifred would undermine Iris’s position. Besides, a very frequent stylistic feature used by Iris the narrator is direct addressing of her audience, often combined with a generalizing remark that inconspicuously foists her own views on the reader. Such as “you often give the wrong response when you’re frightened, and Aimee had frightened me.” (Atwood 532, emphasis added). Similarly, the audience is included in the pronoun “we”: “I did believe, at first, that I wanted only justice. I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we’re about to do something harmful, to someone else.” (Atwood 607). As Lisa Sunshine pertinently observes, similar imputations have the effect “that we half-consciously acquiesce to [the narrator’s] view of himself” (106) – in Iris’s case, that she is no different from the readers and thus they are not in a position to judge her.

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3.2

Unreliability of Narration The process of narration is (un)reliable when (un)successful (37). In this context,

Margolin (similarly to Vera Nünning) makes use of Grice’s conversational maxims and the principle of cooperation. Unreliable narration violates norms of successful communication (“Theorising” 47). “A narrative claim is defined as quantitatively wellformed if it is as informative as the purpose of the telling and the context of utterance require, and qualitatively well-formed if it is correct, grounded and believed by its originator to be true in the narrated domain” (Kindt; qtd. in Margolin 47). Besides, it is also possible to study how an individual narration reflects and respects Grice’s maxims of relation and manner. Obviously, criteria for assessing (un)reliability of fictional narratives are less strict regarding observation of the cooperation principle. A certain benevolence is ‘part of the game’; the narrator is not merely a “gatherer and purveyor of information” (Margolin 47), so aesthetic criteria or the effect of suspense play their role and usually outweigh a straightforward claim for reliability, especially regarding the maxim of manner. Fictional narratives are often ambiguous, not orderly, and not brief – this helps to increase the aesthetic and intellectual pleasure of reading. The maxim of relevance is transgressed in The Blind Assassin by the narrator’s insistence, in N1, on describing her current life. There is simply too much of the frame story which is not relevant to clarifying the past events, thus creating an inconsistence with the expressed purpose of Iris’s writing which is to explain her past. This, again, serves to concentrate the readers’ attention on the protagonist – and to allow them to assess her reliability as narrator. Also, the science-fiction story in N2 seems to break the maxim of relevance. However, it is exactly the maxim of relevance that can help clarifying the teleology of this doubly embedded narrative. Since it is included in the complex novel, there must be

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some relation to its other layers. The story of N2 is introduced by Iris because it relates her memories of her relationship with Alex and serves as a way of preserving his legacy. From Iris’s point of view, the content of Alex’s sci-fi is coincidental and she has limited power over his narrative (unless the readers take it as her own fiction, which is a possible interpretation). However, on a higher level of text analysis, there is important symbolism in Alex’s fantasy and analogies with Iris’s own narrative. Most importantly, the notion of “blind assassin” could in fact be attributed to Iris herself: unwittingly, she caused her sister’s death. It would not make sense from Iris’s point of view to insert such interpretation, because it goes against her own motives. Therefore, this possible interpretation could only be inserted by the real author – an organizing entity of the text that surpasses Iris. The possibility of labelling Iris as a “blind assassin” downplays her reliability in two aspects: as “blind”, her capacity to offer a correct depiction of the fictional world risks being impaired; as “assassin”, there is a risk of a deviation from standard ethics and from standard evaluation systems. Importantly, in the domain of fictional narratives, it makes sense not only to assess (un)reliability of the process of narration as reflected in individual claims – which can be sometimes difficult, sometimes even futile, to distinguish from the unreliability of the narrated text. Therefore, it is also fruitful to consider the way and order in which individual elements and events of the fabula are organized and presented – in other words, the story (Bal’s terminology). Bo Pettersson terms this type of unreliability “expositional manipulation”: an unreliable presentation of events of the story (i.e. of the narrative structure) which later appears to be incorrect or inappropriate (116). Such “play with multiple, corrected and thwarted meaning of all kinds [leads to] a deepened interest in the plot and the motivations of its characters” (ibid). As

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Pettersson expands, readers do not discard untenable meanings altogether, but they complete the mosaic of the overall meaning of the text. There is a high level of unreliability in the story of The Blind Assassin. The narration is such that it continually violates the principle of cooperation. The maxim of quality is mostly respected; but the manner of presentation of the elements is such that it can easily lead to an incorrect interpretation of the course of events by the reader. The maxim of quantity is much more often violated – the narrator purposefully withholds important information throughout the process of narration. This, again, leads to possible misinterpretations. Besides, many facts from within the storyworld are known, but are presented in different timelines and with important links missing. Moreover, there is a series of situations where the narrator incites the reader to interpret or deduce actions of different characters, but soon offers other clues that make new interpretations possible. This is a characteristic of an ambiguous narrative as defined by Shlomith RimmonKennan: “the existence of a central permanent gap and of mutually exclusive systems of clues designed to fill in” (qtd. in Vogt 133). The most notable gap occurs in the description of the lives of Iris and Laura during Iris’s affair with Alex Thomas. Neither N2 nor N1 until towards the very end claim openly that it was Iris who had the affair; nor is Laura mentioned directly as pursuing a love affair. However, there is a host of hints – which lead alternately at both sisters and thus keep the reader uncertain. There are several indications that Iris is not disclosing all her experiences; from time to time, a sentence like the following one occurs, without any further clarification: “What else can you do when what you are thinking about every waking moment is so far removed from the life you’re supposedly living?” (Atwood 452, emphasis added). Obviously, Iris is hiding something. At the same time, however, she says about Laura: “I was afraid she might have been meeting someone – meeting a man. She was getting to be the age for

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it.” (Atwood 461-2). Interestingly, it is much easier to identify the true hints on the second reading when the reader already knows that Iris was keeping back an important piece of information. As Phelan observes: “effective surprises are ones in which the audience begins by being taken aback and ends by nodding their heads as a result of recognizing that the surprise has been prepared for” (“Narrative Judgements” 333). Moreover, the use of embedding implies a complex system of interrelated meanings. Mieke Bal asserts that “the embedded story can explain the primary story, or it may resemble the primary story” (53). In the first case, the embedded story clarifies why some events from the primary story happen; it completes the information – some of the characters overlap and the outcome of the embedded story influences the primary one. In the second case, the two stories do not complete each other, they belong to different storyworlds, but the embedded story is an analogy of the primary story, or presents a contrast to some of its aspects (Pier, par. 28). However, in The Blind Assassin, it is difficult to decide which function N2 fulfills – explanation, analogy, or both? At first, the reader is led to believe that it is fiction in relation to the textual actual world of N1, hence some kind of analogy. In the end, it is disclosed that the story of N2 belongs into the same storyworld as N1, so it can complete the primary story. However, it is impossible to decide how much of it is true and how much is ‘poetic license’, since Iris’s explanation is “[I was] just writing down. What I remembered, and also what I imagined, which is also the truth” (Atwood 626). The situation is formally clearer with the doubly-embedded sci-fi: it obviously belongs to a different storyworld; therefore, it must function as an analogy of (or contrast to) the primary story. Its precise function is, nevertheless, far from being unequivocal. The formal organization of the text of the novel is very systematic. The text is divided into parts. Except for the opening and closing part, the novel is composed of

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parts containing N1, where some chapters cover exclusively the contemporary frame story while others include also (or solely) Iris’s memories; and of parts in which N2 alternates with the newspaper clippings. Throughout the novel, linear chronology inside individual text levels is observed – save for a very limited number of significant exceptions. However, because the starting points of different text levels are distant, the whole of the novel becomes an intricate web of time relations full of foreshadowing, prolepses and analepses in which different textual levels interplay. Fragmentation is not an uncommon feature of modern literature whose readers are fairly used to it and often take pleasure in the process of deducing the ‘real’ course of events and other elements of the story (Dancygier 134). However, at a closer look, Atwood’s novel is extremely well organized in the frame of its fragmentation and the web of internal relations among different layers of the text serves to build an over-all meaning (or meanings); to perpetually recreate and redefine the fictional world. The reader discovers gradually that individual components of the narrative are “partial in the double sense of incompleteness as well as misconstruction through bias” (Dvorak 60). Besides, continuous shifts of narrative levels lead to an even greater feeling of incompleteness because the stories are being continuously interrupted. These interruptions fulfil a “dramatic function, as [they] defer or interrupt the embedding narrative” (Nelles, qtd. in Pier, par. 28), they incite the reader to guess how both stories (N1 and N2) will continue and reinforce readerly engagement. As the fictional author of her memoir, by imposing her rules of narration on the audience, Iris assumes a position of importance and unlimited power within the narrative. This creates a marked contrast with her position of powerlessness in her life where her destiny was first decided by her father who persuaded her to marry Richard; during her marriage, she became virtually Richard’s and his sister’s puppet; later, she was powerless face to face with the patriarchal and

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money-ridden social system which resulted in her losing first her daughter and then her grand-daughter. As Ruth Parkin-Gounelas amply remarks, the structure of The Blind Assassin can be likened to a kaleidoscope (685). It contains a multitude of colorful shards of narration, aspects and points of view that can temporarily assemble into a bright meaningful image, only to be shattered and reassembled a moment later by a slight shift of perspective – and thus fail to render a final, stable picture. Not only does the novel present different layers endowed with their own coherence and meaning, but it also manages to build “vertical” relations, “correspondences grounded in logic and analogy” that add up to an overall meaning (Dvorak 68). However, these correspondences are not acknowledged directly, they are the result of the readers’ search for coherence and for an overall teleology. This is why the interpretation of the meaning of N2 and of the doubly-embedded science-fiction story by different scholars is so disparate (compare Brooks Bouson, Dancygier, Harold). Another textual level is the collection of newspaper clippings. As a rule, events described by them precede – often in a number of years, and an even greater number of pages – the events depicted by Iris’s memoir. Hence, the reader is uncertain how to make sense of them. Besides, the newspaper clippings only describe the surface of events, not their causes. In this way, the narrative succeeds in pointing the reader’s attention to potential explanations, so the reading of the text is different. Later, when Iris comes to describing these events, they resonate as a repercussion of what the reader already knows. “What makes chronological disruptions interesting is not that they occur, but how they affect the understanding of the story. A flashback does not just break the sequence, but breaks it so that important aspects of story construction are highlighted – such as the character’s current psychological state or the way in which

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past actions affect future choices.” (Dancygier 139). An important break of the otherwise very systematic chronology is the insertion of the first four newspaper articles which relate – within the first thirty pages of a book that spreads on more than six hundred pages – the deaths of four prominent characters (Iris’s sister Laura; Iris’s husband Richard; Iris’s daughter Aimee and Iris’s sister-in-law Winnifred) who have not yet been introduced in N1. This ‘carnage’ has a multiple effect. Firstly, it highlights Iris’s power in relation to her textual audience (Myra, Sabrina). She can narrate what she wants because all possible opponents are dead. Secondly, the exposition, opening with one or more deaths which need to be clarified, introduces a structural resemblance with the genre of detective fiction. From the point of view of unreliability, this resemblance can – to some extent, because the novel is not directly presented as a detective story – bring in a specific readerly attitude: to disbelieve every information received (Zunshine 124). It is, however, unclear at the beginning which role is assumed by Iris: is she the detective, a witness, the murderer, another victim, or a combination of them? The construction of the narrative makes it difficult to decide and the reader is left to contemplate all options. The chronology of N1 is almost linear, with some significant exceptions, however. First, the opening chapter is an anachronism in relation to the rest of the novel. It starts with the tragic fate of Iris’s sister Laura: “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.” (Atwood 3). In fact, slowly but surely, the text leads to a clarification of this initial situation. As Earl Ingersoll remarks, the “‘truth’ would be diminished without the slow preparation for the end.” (544). It transpires from this organization that the core of Iris’s memoir is the relationship with her sister Laura and events at least partially related to it.

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Another interruption of the linearity of N1 is the account of Iris’s last interaction with her daughter Aimee three weeks before her sudden death, which comes right after the chapter describing Aimee’s birth. (After this, the interrupted story is continued as usual.) The link for the interruption is the notion of Aimee. Since the reader has been alerted of her death at the beginning of the book in one of the newspaper articles, before the start of the ‘autobiographical’ narrative as such, the event does not really come as a shock. However, its proximity to the scene of the birth when the protagonist vows “to do the best for her that [she] could” (Atwood 526) highlights the huge discrepancy with Aimee’s situation some 30 years later as well as Iris’s incapacity to fulfill the meaning of her vows. At the same time, this proximity – and thus probability that the reader still remembers the exact wording of the vow – also highlights its evasiveness and relativity. Iris could always claim that she did the best that was in her capacities and nobody could prove her wrong. This deviation from the chronology of the story thus serves to stress the protagonist’s fallibility and ethical ambiguity, putting her reliability as a narrator more in question. Moreover, the closure of the novel is peculiar and once more undermines a preconception the readers were led to form. In fact, the whole novel is constructed as though Iris is not only its protagonist, focalizor and narrator, but also the fictional author – the organizing entity who not only writes the texts of N1 and N2, but also arranges their sequence and inserts newspaper clippings where she sees fit. However, the last clipping – which is not the last chapter – informs about the protagonist’s death. Since one last chapter written by Iris follows, the reader is left with a feeling of ambiguity as regards the organizing power of the text – and no possibility of solving this puzzle. It could have been Sabrina, the implied audience and receiver of the memoir; so this little element of organization could be a proof of a kind of happy

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ending: if she has introduced the obituary, then she has probably read the rest and understood or even pardoned Iris. But it could also have been Myra; or indeed it can be interpreted as a little touch reminding of the presence of Margaret Atwood. In any case, this example of expositional manipulation adds, again, to the ambiguity of the narrative. Even more so that it occurs at the crucial location of the narrative’s ending, so no further explanation can be expected. Another important aspect related to the unreliability of the process of narration is metanarration (Margolin, “Theorising” 50-51). This narrative device is used for a continuous dialogue with the audience and to destabilize the interpretation of events described. Metanarrative comments can both strengthen and reduce unreliability – and in The Blind Assassin, they often do both, thus increasing the narrative’s ambiguity. There are passages which concede that Iris’s narration is not perfectly accurate, such as: “I’ve failed to convey Richard, in any rounded sense. He remains a cardboard cutout. I know that. I can’t truly describe him, I can’t get a precise focus.” (Atwood 585) or “I’ve looked back over what I’ve set down so far, and it seems inadequate.” (509). The reader is thus incited to keep a certain reserve. At the same time, however, the narrator’s admission of her own limitations highlights her sincerity. Other metanarrative comments are used to introduce reflections about the truth value of the narrative: “is what I remember the same thing as what actually happened? It is now: I am the only survivor.” (Atwood 266). The narrator thus admits that her account might be biased, but the reader has no option to verify it. Also, this passage underlines Iris’s position of power inside her text – as opposed to the powerlessness that characterizes her life. As James Harold pertinently points out, “attention to literary style and structure is ipso facto attention to a character’s psychology, since these literary features are supposed to

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be a product of … Iris’s intentions” (140). Let us now pursue the unreliability of the narrator.

3.3 Unreliability of the Narrator The narrator’s role in a narrative is that of “information gatherer, processor/interpreter and transmitter” (Margolin, “Theorising” 52). The narrator is considered unreliable when he/she is not dependable (37). It is possible to study the degree of intentionality of this unreliability as well as its motives; Margolin distinguishes playful versus deceptive intentionally unreliable narrators; and narrators whose unreliability is unintentional due to their ignorance (caused by age, naiveté etc.) or caused by the “limitations of narrators’ cognitive processing” (delusion, confusion etc.) (53-54). Since in fiction, readers do not have other access to the personality of the narrator than via the text, “our judgement of the (un)reliability of the narrator … is a function of our prior judgement of the (un)reliability of the discourse itself” (Margolin 52). But also, conversely, fallible or deluded character-bound narrators raise suspicion about the reliability of their narration. This incites the reader to examine the narration more closely, to be alert and not to accept automatically the narrator’s claims at their face-value. In fact, a character-bound narrator assumes several roles in the text – and in all of them, unreliability may occur. It is a character, a focalizor and a narrator as such; and can be more unreliable in one of these functions and less unreliable in others (Pettersson 112). Iris as a character is fallible morally. There is ample evidence in the text of the novel that she is not a person too concerned with morals (learning to cheat from Mr. Erskine; learning pretense from Winnifred; etc.). Even when she presents her ethical

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choices as noble, such as marrying Richard in order to save her father, Laura and the factories – other, more down-to-earth motives for her action are present too. In marrying Richard, she also opted for richness and luxury. This, at least, is the interpretation of Reenie and the townsfolk, which the narrator Iris presents and does not deny completely. A finding from cognitive science is illuminating in this context: it is extremely common to misinterpret one’s own motivations and mental states (Palmer 124-129). But most often Iris’s ethical choices are those of passivity and learned powerlessness. The objectivity of Iris’s powerlessness is sometimes contradicted by the examples of other characters acting (as when Reenie succeeds in discharging Laura from Bella Vista while Iris did not even try to contact her sister, being deterred by Richard); often, it is left up to the reader to doubt. A voice of direct ethical judgement of Iris’s behavior is Reenie. So when Iris thanks her for helping Laura, she retorts: “‘No need to thank me,’ said Reenie stiffly. ‘I only did what was right.’ Meaning I hadn’t.” (Atwood 544-545). Nevertheless, Reenie’s morals are bourgeois, conventional in the patriarchal sense, even hypocritical when it transpires that she got pregnant before her wedding – so her ethical judgement is simultaneously righteous and dubious. Another scale against which Iris’s behavior can be assessed is Laura. Her childlike logic is often impractical, but points at problems and possible solutions that shed a new light on Iris’s actions – or inaction. Such as this explanation of Laura’s running away when she ought to have joined Richard’s household. “‘Richard killed Father,’ she said. ‘I can’t live in his house. It’s wrong.’” (Atwood 402). Although Laura’s claim is not literally true, it is true metaphorically, as the reader knows and as Iris indirectly recognizes when commenting on her evasive reply to Laura: “I felt ashamed of myself for saying that” (Atwood 402). Numerous instances of Iris’s ethical failures as character serve to put into question her interpretation and evaluation – in the roles of focalizor and narrator.

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Interestingly, old Iris, the narrator of the memoir, frequently leaves focalization with her own younger self, the one who experiences the events. Young Iris’s interpretation of facts is often later (sometimes much later) presented as inaccurate. For example, when Iris meets Laura after the war and learns that Laura had really been pregnant. The focalizing young Iris attributes the fatherhood to Alex: “I hated to acknowledge such a possibility, but really there was no other choice.” (Atwood 593) Later, this attribution is proved wrong. This procedure increases suspense – if old Iris the narrator revealed all her knowledge directly, there would be no surprises for the reader. Importantly, the instances of characterial and focal unreliability are unintentional. Conversely, the above-mentioned examples of characterial and focal unreliability are always intentionally used by Iris the narrator. On one hand, she is an extremely reliable narrator of the facts of the frame story of N1 – and if there are occasions of questionable epistemic or axiological reliability, they only reinforce the psychological fullness of Iris’s portrait as a character. In fact, she does not have any motive for deceiving her audience on this textual level. The situation is different for her memories. Being positioned – in her role of narrator – at a time long apart from the events she describes, there are no surprises for her in the story or its outcomes. However, she does not allow her audience direct access to a chronologically complete account of events or to their consequences. When narrating her memoir, Iris is often intentionally unreliable, thus creating ambiguity in the sense of impossibility to decide which interpretation is correct (Vogt 132). In a way, Iris “appears to be admitting her own unreliability as a narrator” (Ingersoll 547), for example in the following metanarrative passage: “The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any

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other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself.” And, a few lines further, she resumes: “Impossible, of course.” (Atwood 345). Paradoxically, this kind of admissions can serve to lessen unreliability – as if the narrator laid their cards on the table and while the readers have been alerted to the narrator’s limitations, they can accept them. The narrator of N2 is – at least formally – external. This is an uncommon situation since usually, an embedded narrative is a story directly recounted by a character, where this character assumes the role of character-bound narrator (Margolin “Narrator”, par. 21). As Margolin expands, “embedded narrators … can function either as reporters, in which case issues of reliability are paramount, or as storytellers, where their skill at storytelling and its impact on their destiny are key” (ibid.). Interestingly, the narrator of N2 appears for a long time to function as a storyteller – N2 is introduced as a fictional book, a romance combined with science-fiction. Therefore, for a long time, aesthetic criteria prevail over questions of reliability in the evaluation of the narrator. Gradually, however, factual relations between the frame story of N2 and N1 emerge – and it is disclosed towards the end of the novel that the story of N2 actually belongs to the storyworld of N1 and serves to fill in some gaps in the story of N1: Iris’s love affair with Alex is the enigmatic “true being, unknown to those around me” (Atwood 411) that she refers to throughout her description of her life in Toronto with Richard and Winnifred; the unnamed lovers from N2 are in fact Iris and Alex. The Blind Assassin explores the impact of a formally external narration where the seemingly external narrator is a character of the frame story. In this way, Iris, the ‘real’ narrator and author of the frame story of N2, acquires yet another role in her text and – assuming the formal role of external narrator – takes over (for some time) the characteristics of external narrators. As Robert Vogt explains, “statements by heterodiegetic [i.e. external]

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narrators are always regarded as fictional truth … when in conflict with statements which are assigned to other sources” (147). This situation creates an interesting tension: the reader knows that all claims made by the formally external narrator of N2 ought to be stored with a “source-tag”, but the form does not prompt the readers to remember this and it is cognitively expensive to keep the “source-tag” in mind all the time, so the readers tend to forget the “source-tag” and store the information as objective (Zunshine 103). Moreover, the formally external narrator has direct access to the mind of the heroine of N2. The status of her rendition by this narrator is very different from that of N1 because in N2, there is a semblance of objectivity. Thus, tension and ambiguity enter once again the picture, but also the complex picture of Iris is completed by yet another means. Importantly, there is one narrator in The Blind Assassin separate from Iris – it is the man recounting the science-fiction story in N2. His doubly embedded narrative is characterized by emphasized fictionality; metanarration abounds and highlights the omnipotence of the narrator within the storyworld he creates by his narration. This is a parallel to Iris’s power within her own narration. Another view on unreliability of the narrator is suggested by James Phelan. He proposes a functional distinction of two broad types of narratorial unreliability, from the perspective of its impact on the reader: “estranging unreliability” and “bonding unreliability” (2007, 222). Bonding unreliability is explained as “unreliable narration that reduces the distance between the narrator and the authorial audience” in the domains of affection and ethics (Phelan, “Estranging Unreliability” 223). In other words, a bonding narrator elicits the readers’ affection (consciously or not) and/or seeks their sympathy which then has an impact on the readers’ evaluation of the narration, especially its axiological aspects (i.e. aspects of different value systems such as ethics).

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“Estranging unreliability” works in the opposite direction, it “underlines or increases the distance between the narrator and the authorial audience” (223). In Iris, Atwood combines both “estranging” and “bonding” unreliability and this mixture adds to the overall ambiguity of the text and its teleology. There are numerous elements that bring in estranging unreliability. Particularly when the narrator is shown in an ethically contemptible manner, where some morally dubious behavior or position is shown. Actually, such instances are easy to find in the novel. It is important to stress that narrative unreliability considers those instances of behavior or judgement that are unusual and prone to clash intensely with the morality of the reader. Hence, Iris will probably not be judged a highly unreliable character for having had an extramarital affair or for having misled her unlikeable family about the paternity of her child. Equally, the fact that Iris insinuates an excessively harsh evaluation of herself to Winnifred – “I would have been a lush, a tramp, a slut, a bad mother … a slovenly harridan, a crazy old bat” (Atwood 625) – does not impede Iris’s reliability, because Winnifred is depicted as a negative character. But opting for comfortable ignorance instead of trying to find out what happened to her sister and to help her; or conceding so easily to the way how her husband treats her, not only sexually, but also regarding her privacy and self-sufficiency; or declaring not to be able to love her newborn daughter; or being too harshly open to her mentally unstable sister as to hurt her feelings deeply and pointlessly; or yielding to the temptation of male company although she knows there is an extremely high risk of losing her daughter; or being so easily put off reestablishing a relationship with her daughter and grand-daughter later – these and other instances raise the question of Iris’s reliability on the axis of evaluation of events. In other words, being such a fallible person, can her account of events and her interpretation of them be apt?

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Nevertheless, all the most blatant examples of Iris’s fallibility as a character happened in the remote past. Besides, old Iris, the frame narrator, is frank about them, she recognizes and describes her failures openly. As Pettersson observes, “characters’ frankness about their misdemeanor may override their unreliability” (113). Also, Iris provides the readers with a very complex background of the events of her life, presenting reasons and justifications of her sometimes dubious behavior. But that is exactly the point where her reliability as a narrator becomes ambiguous. She is so good at providing excuses, at focusing attention on things that were outside of her control, at pointing at the condition of women in general – that she succeeds in concealing her own role and her own passivity even from herself. She recognizes a part of her responsibility, but – in a face-saving strategy – not all. I’m on trial here. I know it. I know what you’ll soon be thinking. It will be the same as what I myself am thinking: Should I have behaved differently? You’ll no doubt believe so, but did I have any other choice? I’d have such choices now, but now is not then. Should I have been able to read Laura’s mind? Should I have known what was going on? Should I have seen what was coming next? Was I my sister’s keeper? (Atwood 522). Iris’s old age, or rather the great distance from the events of her youth, allows her to compare the two periods, their prevailing ideologies (blatant patriarchy of the 1930s, 40s and even later; a more liberal atmosphere of the turn of the millennium). In these comparisons, such as in the quotation above, she poises herself as a victim of the circumstances. Which she very much was, but still, her reluctance to assume responsibility for her own life as well as for her role in the lives of her sister and her daughter is striking. Due to Iris’s unreliability as narrator, the reader is prompted to ask

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whether Iris’s possibilities of changing things were really so limited. No uncontested answer to these questions is offered by the novel, which is ambiguous in this sense and leaves the part-taking (or the decision that it is undecidable) on the reader. Furthermore, as Reed points out, a strikingly great deal of attention is given to descriptions of the current state and occupations of old Iris (22). At the beginning of the book, the places encountered on her errands through her hometown serve as prompts to her memory. But later, when her writing becomes a race against time due to her deteriorating health condition, it is somehow surprising that she dedicates any time at all to the description of her present when she seems to be so apprehensive to manage to finish the story of her past. Seen through the lens of narrative unreliability, this seemingly strange dwelling in the narrator’s fragility serves several narrative functions. First, stressing Iris’s old age, poor health and all the difficulties it brings can also alert the reader to her potential unreliability due to her possible confusion, maybe even senility. She does not get enough good sleep, there are various accounts of sleeplessness and nightmares, so the reader might deduce that her intellectual capacities risk to be impeded by this. At the same time, however, the protagonist’s condition elicits compassion or at least leniency. Sometimes, Iris even requests her audience to be tolerant: “But please bear with me. The dying are allowed a certain latitude, like children on their birthdays.” (Atwood 581). This position is represented in the narrative by her friend and sort of keeper Myra and her husband. Although old Iris has the habit of secretly mocking their benevolent attention, she takes advantage of it rather willingly. This aspect brings in Phelan’s “bonding unreliability”. Also, Iris’s often witty comments about her own state, full of sarcastic humor, make her more likeable. The reader can then be prone to share the narrator’s perspective in evaluating the events she describes and to judge her more

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indulgently (Phelan, “Estranging Unreliability” 225). Interestingly, Iris is apt at forestalling readers’ potential criticism, thus ‘taking the ammunition from the reader’: “whoever’s left alive gets blamed. That’s the rule in things like this. Unfair, but there it is.” (Atwood 577). The readers know that in the world of her narrative, Iris is the demiurge, but also a character deeply involved. Hence they are theoretically bound to keep some restraint, being aware that she is not completely reliable for an objective rendition of facts, still less of feelings and motivations of others. As Mieke Bal points out, “if the narrator’s realistic rhetoric seeks to keep up the pretense that it relates true facts, it can never represent the thoughts of actors other than itself” (46). However, it is very easy to become ‘enchanted’ by the narrator, swallow the bite and consider Iris’s attribution of other people’s thoughts as a signal of other characters’ ‘real’ contribution to Iris’s tale, while in fact it is a meta-representation. This technique is closely studied by Lisa Zunshine who applies findings of cognitive science on readerly interpretations of narratives featuring unreliable narrators. According to this approach, it is “cognitively expensive” to continually keep track of the fact that the narrator is the source of every representation within the narrative, even of those attributed to other characters. Especially when at first, the narrator seems trustworthy (Zunshine 103). Therefore, the narrator gains even more power within her text. In relation to the question of power, a possible interpretation of Iris the narrator is in the symbolism of her name. It has three main meanings in English. Interestingly, The Blind Assassin only mentions two of them: the name of a flower and, in Greek mythology, the name of the messenger of the gods. A parallel of the second meaning with Iris’s life and her role in Laura’s destiny is not hard to find; especially highlighted as it is by the presence of the passage about Dido and Iris in Laura’s notebooks – her

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final message to her sister (Atwood 609-610). From one point of view, the protagonist assumes the rather passive role of informer – as when she tells Laura about Alex’s death and their secret affair. In this perspective, she does not assume responsibility, she is only telling the truth. On the other hand, however, the reader as well as Iris are aware that the power of words is immense. “Now I should have bitten my tongue, now I should have kept my mouth shut. Out of love, I should have lied, or said anything else: anything but the truth.” (Atwood 595). Because this ‘raw’ truth killed Laura. Nevertheless, ambiguity appears once again: it was not Iris’s intention to bring about her sister’s death. Besides, it is questionable whether an individual can assume responsibility for another one’s reactions. Peculiarly, the novel does not mention the third meaning of “iris” which is the central visible part of the eye. It is both colorful and hollow at the center; through the adjustment of the size of the pupil it regulates “the amount of light transmitted to the retina” (“iris, n.”, OED). This anatomic description is a perfect metaphor of Iris the protagonist and Iris the narrator and fictional author. Atwood uses this allusion without ever explicitly pointing it out; yet the choice of the protagonist’s name is highly symbolic of her central position in the narrative and of her ultimate regulating power as for the amount of light shed on things. It is one more instance that underlines the contradiction between Iris’s unlimited power as narrator and author on one hand and her powerlessness as character on the other. In relation to Iris’s (un)reliability as narrator, this metaphor further stresses that everything in her memoir is seen through her own eyes and thus alerts the reader that even a seemingly objective depiction of the storyworld is in fact subjective. Besides, this metaphor is related to the eponymous blindness. If one combines both images, it leads to an ambiguous situation: the eye that mediates the readers’ perception of the storyworld may be blind to some aspects of the

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fictional reality, yet – except for the newspaper clippings, which are painfully vague and superficial – it is the only source of information.

4 Conclusion As this paper has endeavored to show, Margaret Atwood uses numerous types and aspects of narrative unreliability in her novel The Blind Assassin. At the first reading and throughout the greater part of the novel, the most obvious aspect of unreliability lies in the presentation of events from the storyworld – the structure of the text is fragmented and the readers strive to combine these fragments into a meaningful wholeness. However, the possibility to rely on what has been said is limited because by omitting pieces of information, the narrator often intentionally misleads her audience. By using hints that point in different directions and by leaving obvious gaps, the narrator manages parallelly to suggest a possible story and to incite the readers to ponder other options of the ‘real’ course of events in the fictional world. The journey through the text of The Blind Assassin is an intellectually pleasurable quest to infer the fabula from the extremely complex story whose structure is fragmented and whose different levels are intricately interrelated. Readers are invited to combine information gathered from different layers of the narrative; to ponder which hint to trust and how to make sense of prolepses suggested by the pseudo-factual newspaper articles. However, although the narrator-fictional author engenders ambiguity throughout the text, she is anxious to clarify the fabula towards the end of the novel, so that the facts of her life story are ultimately unequivocal. When the only open ‘lie’ to the readers – the false attribution of authorship of N2 – is disclosed in the end, the first readerly impulse is probably to condemn the narrator’s untrustworthiness. However, at a closer look, this ‘untrustworthiness’ is not

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so straightforward and – especially on second reading – the reader has to recognize that the revelation has been prepared for. The misleading claim is part of the bibliographic information about the embedded novella, therefore, it does not belong to the sphere of direct communication between the narrator and her audience. Besides, there are several hints scattered throughout N1 that the story of N2 could be about Iris. Iris’s motivation for the unreliable construction of her memoir is to present the events in a way that would win her audience’s favor or at least persuade them that her story is far too complex as to allow clear-cut ethical judgements of her behavior. There are two more major aspects of narrative unreliability in The Blind Assassin – and they are closely connected. Firstly, interpretation and evaluation of facts from within the storyworld is highly questionable due to the narrator’s status. The character-bound narrator of N1 is unreliable not only when presenting interpretations and evaluations of her focalizing younger self, who lacks the knowledge of the real outcomes of events, but also when old Iris is the focalizor, because she is extremely emotionally involved in the story. Moreover, being a character-bound narrator, all her presentations of the thoughts of other characters are in fact meta-representations. Ambiguity is created by the impossibility to decide whether to trust these metarepresentations, which are often the only source of information the reader gets. Interestingly, the formally external narrator of N2 only adds a tension between form and content, but in praxis induces the same questions because N2 is also narrated by a character from N1. Secondly, Iris as a character is extremely ambiguous morally: her behavior (or inaction) and thoughts are often shocking; yet she always either offers explanations or openly recognizes her fallibility, sometimes both. This simultaneously puts her capacity of accurate interpretation and evaluation into question and highlights the impossibility of impartial external judgement. Interestingly, unreliability caused by

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the structure of the story invites the readers to be on their guard regarding unreliability of interpretation and evaluation. And vice-versa, suspicious interpretation and evaluation raises doubts whether the narrator is able and willing to convey factual truth. A related function of narrative unreliability in The Blind Assassin is to center the complex narrative around the narrator-protagonist. Iris is the central figure of the whole novel: the protagonist of N1, its main focalizor and narrator, but also the fictional author of the whole novel including N2 and, last but not least, the protagonist of N2. Her dominant position has a multiple impact on her perception by the readers. Her unreliability is strengthened by ample evidence of her ethically questionable behavior that is depicted throughout the novel. But simultaneously, the reader can identify with Iris because the events are related from her point of view, so she has a chance to explain her feelings, evaluations and motives. She is so witty, sarcastic and persuasive that it is easy for the reader to adopt her perspective. Iris’s motivation for telling the story is to explain herself and to be comprehended, accepted, maybe even atoned. However, The Blind Assassin is more complex. The text puts forward the themes of responsibility, power and powerlessness, but it does not offer a straightforward answer to the question whether Iris’s past ethical choices were as limited and as innocent as she presents them. Nevertheless, the cumulation of challenging situations combined with unreliability keeps the issue of Iris’s responsibility ambiguous and incites the reader to constantly ponder it. According to Vera Nünning, one of the functions of narrative unreliability is to highlight the “problematic nature” of ethical judgements (101). This is certainly true for The Blind Assassin. The treacherousness of external judgements is illustrated by other characters (Winnifred, Reenie, Laura) whose interpretation and evaluation of Iris’s behavior and motives is depicted as unreliable; but also the fact that Iris’s

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unreliability is at the same time “estranging” and “bonding” prevents the audience from judging unequivocally.

Bibliography Atwood, Margaret. The Blind Assassin. London: Virago Press, 2006. Print. Bal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. University of Toronto Press, 1999. Print. Bouson, J. Brooks: “ʻ A Commemoration of Wounds Endured and Resented’: Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin as Feminist Memoir.” Critique: studies in contemporary fiction (44:3) Spring 2003, 251-269. Literature Online. Web. 20 September 2016. Dancygier, Barbara. “Narrative Anchors and the Processes of Story Construction: The Case of Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin.” Style 41.2 (2007). 133-155. Literature Online. Web. 21 May 2016. Dirda, Michael. Rev. of The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood. The Washington Post: 3 September 2000: WBK.15. ProQuest. Web. 11 March 2017. Harold, James. “Narrative Engagement with Atonement and The Blind Assassin.” Philosophy and Literature 29.1 (2005), 130-45. Literature Online. Web. 14 May 2016. Ingersoll, Earl. “Waiting for the End: Closure in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin”. Studies in the Novel 35.4 (2003). 543-559. Literature Online. Web. 21 May 2016. “iris, n.” OED Online. 3rd ed., Dec. 2016. Oxford University Press, 2017. Web. 20 March 2016.

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Kakutani, Michiko. “Three Stories Woven into a Suspenseful Design.” Rev. of The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood. New York Times, 8 September 2000, late ed. (East Coast): E.43. ProQuest. Web. 1 March 2017. Margolin, Uri. “Narrator”. In: Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.): The Living Handbook of Narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University, 2014. Web. 12 Apr 2017. Margolin, Uri. “Theorising Narrative (Un)reliability: A Tentative Roadmap.” In: Nünning, Vera (ed.): Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. De Gruyter, 2015. Print. Nünning, Ansgar F. “Reconceptualizing Unreliable Narration: Synthesizing Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches.” In: Phelan, James and Peter J. Rabinowitz (eds.): A Companion to Narrative Theory. Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Print. Nünning, Vera. “Reconceptualising Fictional (Un)reliability and (Un)trustworthiness from a Multidisciplinary Perspective: Categories, Typology and Functions.” In: Nünning, Vera (ed.): Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. De Gruyter, 2015. Print. Palmer, Alan. Fictional Minds. University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Print. Pettersson, Bo. “Kinds of Unreliability in Fiction: Narratorial, Focal, Expositional and Combined.” In: Nünning, Vera (ed.): Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. De Gruyter, 2015. Print. Phelan, James. “Estranging Unreliability, Bonding Unreliability, and the Ethics of Lolita.” Narrative (15:2) 2007, 222–238. JSTOR. Web. 13 March 2017. Phelan, James. “Narrative Judgements and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative: Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” In: Phelan, James and Peter J. Rabinowitz (eds.): A Companion to Narrative Theory. Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Print.

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Pier, John: “Narrative Levels”. In: Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.): The Living Handbook of Narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University, 2014. Web. 12 Apr 2017. Reed, Alison. “Disembodied Hands: Structural Duplicity in Atwood’s The Blind Assassin.” Margaret Atwood Studies (3:1) 2009, 18-25. Literature Online. Web. 21 May 2016. Ridout, Alice. “ʻ Without memory, there can be no revenge’: Iris Chase Griffen’s Textual Revenge in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin.” Margaret Atwood Studies (2:2) 2008, 14-25. Literature Online. Web. 20 September 2016. Vogt, Robert. “Combining Possible-Worlds Theory and Cognitive Theory: Towards an Explanatory Model for Ironic-Unreliable Narration, Ironic-Unreliable Focalization, Ambiguous-Unreliable and Alterated-Unreliable Narration in Literary Fiction.” In: Nünning, Vera (ed.): Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. De Gruyter, 2015. Print. Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006. Print.

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Summary Margaret Atwood’s novel The Blind Assassin combines an intriguing story with a striking and very complex narrative structure, while confronting the readers with fundamental ethical issues of innocence and guilt, power and powerlessness. Margaret Atwood uses different aspects of narrative unreliability to perpetually destabilize the readers’ interpretations and to enhance the ambiguity of her narrative. Unreliability is used on the level of the text and fabula, of the story and also of the narrator. Interestingly, most individual propositions on the textual level reflect the facts of the fictional world correctly – but it is the one exception that boosts the overall unreliability of the whole narrative and its components. The interpretation and evaluation of individual claims is unreliable because – although often presented as belonging to different instances – it actually always originates in the mind of the character-bound narrator. As the story unfolds, unreliability is more and more prominent on the level of narration since events are presented in a way that leaves many gaps and suggests interpretations which are later disclosed as false. Also, the complex structure of the novel implies that there are teleological relations between different sub-narratives, but these are left unexplained for a very long time, thus creating an impression of suspense and ambiguity. All the previously mentioned aspects of unreliability converge in the unreliable narrator whose unreliability is both “estranging” and “bonding” (Phelan, “Estranging Unreliability” 222). The fact that the novel is so much centered around the protagonist puts forward her character and ethical choices regarding her responsibility for her own life and the lives of others.

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Resumé Strhující příběh románu Margaret Atwood Slepý vrah, vystavěný na pozoruhodně komplexní formální struktuře, konfrontuje čtenáře se základními etickými problémy: nevinnost a vina, moc a bezmocnost. Margaret Atwood využívá nejrůznější aspekty nespolehlivého vyprávění a neustále zpochybňuje interpretace, které si čtenáři utvářejí v průběhu četby, čímž zdůrazňuje nejednoznačnost a nesnadnou uchopitelnost tohoto románu. Nespolehlivost se objevuje na úrovni textu, fabule i syžetu a široké uplatnění v románu najde i nespolehlivý vypravěč. Přestože většina jednotlivých výpovědí v tomto textu odráží realitu fikčního světa pravdivě, jediná výjimka z tohoto pravidla výrazně zvyšuje nespolehlivost celého narativu a jeho jednotlivých složek. Interpretace a hodnocení dějů a postav je nespolehlivé, protože – ačkoli je často prezentováno jako by vycházelo z nejrůznějších zdrojů – vždy pramení v mysli hlavní postavy-vypravěčky. Nespolehlivost je v románu postupně čím dál výraznější zejména na rovině vyprávění. Jednotlivé události jsou prezentovány způsobem, který nechává v příběhu bílá místa, případně nabízí vysvětlení, která se později ukazují jako nepravdivá. Román má složitou strukturu, v níž se střídají různé dějové linie. Je zřejmé, že jednotlivé linie spolu musejí nějakým způsobem souviset, ale souvislosti zůstávají velmi dlouho zastřené. Tato nejasnost dodává románu napětí a nejednoznačnost. Všechny výše zmíněné aspekty nespolehlivosti soustředí čtenářovu pozornost na postavu vypravěčky, jejíž nespolehlivost je zároveň „odcizující“ i „sbližující“ (Phelan, “Estranging Unreliability“ 222). Skutečnost, že ve středu pozornosti se tak výrazným způsobem ocitá postava vypravěčky, zdůrazňuje význam morálních dilemat, souvisejících s její zodpovědností za život svůj i ostatních.

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