Can I Rely on You?
First person narration can be both plural and singular. First-person plural narration means that the narration comes from group of characters from the story. This narration technique uses words such as “us” and “we.” Singular first-person narration, as is the case in All the King’s Men, supplies the stories narration from the one person, who the main character. This narration technique uses words such as “I” and “me”. Though this narration style is very intimate, when a story is written in first person, the reader is only privy to the information that the narrators knows and does not get introduced to any information in the story that the narrator does not know. Once the reader received this information, the reader sees the information the same as the narrator and in the order of the narrator. The readers’ understanding of the plot, the characters, and any conflicts within the work are all persuaded by their relationship with the narrator. This is exactly what happens throughout the story of All the King’s Men.
The reader is limited to the knowledge of Jack Burden, the narrator. However, in If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, the reader is subjected to second person narration; where the narrator tells the story to another character by using words like “you”. This type of narration allows the narrator to make the reader a character in the story. In addition, in If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, the reader is also provided the experience of authorial intrusion, which means the author who wrote the novel also speaks to the reader. In this, the reader is led to believe only what the author gives them. Different narration types offer a different amount of reliability. A reliable narrator is a narrator whose values are like that of the author. On the contrary, an unreliable author tells the story in a way that is not completely factual or credible, depending on their intentions, mental state, or maturity. First person narrators can lie to the reader, misdirect their thought process about other characters, influence the readers’ understanding of the text.
Published by American author Robert Penn Warren in 1946, All the King’s Men gives the reader a look into a part of politics that are not glamorized or sensationalized for the public. The reader is able to see the dark side of politics; they are shown the story from the point of view of someone inside the political arena. Jack Burden, the only narrator of All the King’s Men, is both a central and a peripheral narrator. He is a central narrator because the reader does not receive information about the story from any other character’s point of view. Though Jack talks about himself in second or third person in the novel, narration is strictly told in first person. Jack becomes a peripheral narrator when he tells his story parallel to the story of another character. For instance, Jack identifies the story as a story of Willie Stark, but he also informs the reader that this story is his also. “This has been the story of Willie Stark, but it is my story, too". As his name would imply, Jack had the “burden” of remembering the past and being able to relate it to the reader efficiently. Jack provides background on many different characters in the text. The reader is introduced to characters such as Cass Mastern and Judge Irwin. However, since Jack is a filter for these different stories, the reader is only provided information that has been altered and edited by Jack.
Throughout the story, Jack tells the reader that he is “dedicated to finding the truth,” however, his entire narrative is a collection of flashbacks. This makes Jack an unreliable narrator because his story relies on his ability to remember the sequence of events. Since memory in itself cannot be trusted, it is impossible to say that Jack’s recollection of events is 100% accurate. In addition, Jack tells the reader a lot of information concerning problems in his personal life. He is carrying around a lot of emotional confusion and turmoil as a character. It is difficult to be reliable when you are ashamed, broken-hearted, and bitter about topics in your life. For example, in chapter one, Jack tells the reader that he “…had been a piece of furniture a long time, but some taint of the manners my grandma taught me still hung on and now and then got the better of my curiosity". In additional to insight on his emotional state, the reader also understands that Jack has a difficult time controlling his “curiosity”. This trait of his seems to be the driving force behind most of his action in the novel.
Jack’s passiveness can make him seen like an unreliable narrator. The novel provides a scene where Jack is around age 35. In this scene, he describes to the reader a situation where he is treated like a piece of furniture by his mother.
I let her pull the arm. […] I let myself go and keeled toward her. I lay on my back, with my head on her lap, the way I had known I would do. She let her hand lie on my chest, the thumb and forefinger holding, and revolving back and forth […] and her right hand on my forehead.
In this scene, Jack’s mother put him on display for his step-father to see once he walked into the room. Even when Jack tried to get his head off his mother’s lap, the holds him there so Theodore can see the two of them together like that. It is emotionally charged scenes like this one that makes the reader empathize with Jack, but it also taints the light in which they see other characters.
Though first-person narration allows the reader to create a sense of empathy for the narrator, Jack’s inability to remove himself from the action of the story adds to his unreliableness. These emotions cause the reader to see other characters how Jack sees them. A disadvantage of first-person narrative is that the reader does not get to receive an honest description of the narrator. Since the reader experienced the story through the senses of the narrator, the only way for the reader to “see” the narrator would be if the first-person narration changed and the character was described, or if the narrator looked into a mirror and described themselves for the reader.
Jack sees Willie as a hero. He does everything in his power to make Willie happy, though this story is meant to provide the reader with the details concerning Willie’s rise and fall as governor of the state. Even when he is upset with Willie, he still seems to view him through rose-tinted glasses. This political story is about Willie’s rise to power and corruption, but through Jack’s narration, Willie doesn’t truly become a full character. The reader is not allowed into the depths of Willie’s story, but we are given very intimate information on Jack. This makes Jack seem like more of a real person than Willie, drawing the emotion of the reader to relate more to Jack.
The only other instance where Jack is not the main narrator is when narration switches from Jack to Cass Mastern. The narration provided by Cass, though told to us by Jack, is seemingly unaffected by Jack’s emotional state because Jack is telling Cass’s story by quoting the information from his journal. Authors sometimes use the first-person plural, so the story can skip from one person to the next while maintaining the first-person point of view. This shift in the first-person narrative must be clearly identified in the story so the reader is not confused and loses the focus of the story. The fact that the reader knows Jack was reading the journal of Cass Mastern was the needed indication that the narration changed.
It is very possible that Jack did not give the reader the full truth of the story. Jack tells the reader his idealism, which he calls very simple. He says “What you don't know don't hurt you, for it ain't real. […] If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it is not real anyway". This could serve as a moment in the story where Jack understand that the reader is only privy to his interpretation of events and won’t really have an opportunity to seek clarification or a second opinion with any other character. In his need to cope with the emotional pain he has experienced, Jack has omitted large portions of the story.
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler was translated from Italian to English and uses a completely different type of narration as compared to All the King’s Men. Due to its modernist structure and metanarrative plot, the reader is Calvino’s main character. Published by author Italo Calvino in 1979, the very first lines of the novel make the reader feel like they are reading something more akin to a prologue than the first chapter. Though the use of authorial intrusion takes away the ability of the reader to relate to the work through their own understanding, it does provide the opportunity for the author to take away the guess work of the path the reader takes to understanding. The book addresses “you, the reader” in a way that would identify them as one of the main characters. However, this technique also establishes a one on one relationship between the writer and the reader. Authorial intrusion does not allow for an indirect audience but makes the reader the main subject of the author’s goal of storytelling. Similar to the narrative technique of All the King’s Men, this novel leaves the reader without an actual description of the narrator.
Considering how to create a new way of structuring his art, Calvino takes major liberties in the creation of this text. From the reader’s point of view, he has made every odd number chapter a mini adventure in which the reader is searching for a book to digest. Through these chapters, the reader seems to be rushed to finish the many books they have set aside to read. However, the even numbered chapters tell the reader the first chapter of the story of the very book they are trying to read. Seeing oneself as the narrator of the novel, the narrator’s reliability may seem like an easy question to answer. However, Calvino addresses “you, the reader” as the narrator, but he does not mean any and every reader. He has very specific demographics on the “you” that is narrating the story.
“You” refers to a middle-aged white male who enjoys books and the sight of a beautiful woman. Obviously, this description would not apply to every reader because the world is not filled with only single white men. This creates a very large issue with this form of narration. Written as a type of general-boy character, the assumption that everyone will be able to relate to “you” takes away the individuality of any reader that does not fit into that category. This could cause the reader who does not fit in that mold, to believe that the author is attempting to portray that they don’t trust any reader outside of that description. In the time that this book was written, many authors penned their word with the mindset the reader would be male. This assumption negates much of the reliability that the reader (not the “you”) places on the narrator. Depending on the relationship the reader has with the identified “you” of this story could cause a distrust in the narration, making the narrator unreliable.
The novel is written in such a way that the reader finds adventure in the hunt for the completed novels and tries to find the truth behind the assumed misprints in the books. Though this is written for the “average” male, Calvino offers adventure in the incomplete pages. Calvino pens the reader/narrator as an adventurer, who is very brave; traveling all over in search of the truth. He also writes the reader as someone who is bold in their desire for the mysterious and beautiful Ludmilla. The reader is forced to become a double agent, kidnapped, abandoned and so much more-all in the name of finding the completed novel.
Many writers wrote to this audience because women were often treated as sex symbols or made to be overly submissive to the men in the works. This was done mainly to appease the literary desires of men who found themselves more drawn to reading than actually interacting with individuals. Calvino, whether through criticism of the reader or the time, explains that the reader is "the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything". This assumes that the “you” is someone who has been repeatedly disappointed by life and has possible lost ambition. This “you” seems to be detached from what is going on around them, and only seems to only take risks when it concerns a new book. The issue with this is that Calvino has structured the novel in such a way that the reader (the actual reader, not the “you”) expects a pretty basic and mundane story. However, that expectation gets completely subverted with the modernism of the book.
For instance, if a person of another race read the story and realized that the narrator resembled or represented someone they didn’t trust, they would be more likely to immediately make the narrator unreliable based off their lived experiences. The specificity of the narrator in this story can the reader’s ability to relate to the author, the person who is telling them the story, or both hinges on the relatability of the narrator. Calvino could have been criticizing the targeted demographic of authors at the time, or he could be criticizing the person reading the book for leading a safe, boring, and risk-free life.
Though writers create the story, it is up to the reader to determine if the narrator is reliable or not. A strong characteristic of reliability in a narrator is whether they can be trusted by the reader. The unreliable narrator will deceive the reader, has a distorted sequence of events, and their credibility will be irrevocably compromised. Unreliable narrators are written to give the reader a chance to construct their own interpretations of a story. In All the King’s Men, the reader is given examples of Jack’s reliability. However, at the same time, the reader is also given examples of Jack emotional instability, which would affect his reliability. In If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, the reader is forced to confront themselves as the narrator of the story (as long as you fit in the description provided by Calvino). This turns the determination of reliability onto the reader, since they are filling to position of narrator in this story. The reader will have to consider the subject of the text and determine if they find themselves to be reliable storytellers.
Work Cited
Calvino, Italo, and William Weaver. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. Print.
Warren, Robert Penn. All the King's Men. New York: Time
Incorporated, 1946.
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Karen R. Nelson is a senior pursuing a Baccalaureate of Arts in English.