Little White Lies: Postmodernism and Unreliable Narration in Atonement and The Sense of an Ending
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2022-07-01
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en
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Postmodernist thinking and unreliable narration coalesce in their hesitancy to commit to an absolute truth in literature. Truth has the potential to become elusive and changeable due to the fallibility of memory and the defense mechanisms of a hurt ego. A narrator might consequently voice a narrative that contains layered truths and a constant deferral of meaning. Ian McEwan’s Atonement and Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending engage the reader in an interpretative strategy that is based on the limited experience and subjective memory of the novel’s narrators. Scholars such as Wayne C. Booth, Ansgar Nünning and Richard Walsh have formed synthesised definitions of unreliable narration, which aids in the detection of unreliable narration in literature. The understanding of unreliable narration nevertheless continues to change due to new discourses that alter the interpretation of a work. This research therefore explains the dynamic effect of unreliable narration and postmodernist thinking, which when combined, demonstrate the constant deferral of meaning in Atonement and The Sense of an Ending through unreliable characters.
Key words: unreliable narration, postmodernism, memory, truth, implied author, fallible and untrustworthy narrators, intersubjectivity, alterity, defense mechanisms of the ego
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Faculteit der Letteren