Introduction
One of the characteristic appeals of modernist literature is the ability to promote modern liberal ideals over traditional conservatism[1]. Ford Madox’s novel The Good Soldier is no different and uses the unreliable first-person narrator to achieve this goal. If one is able to translate the characteristics of the unreliable narrator, it is paramount to fully appreciate what this idea entails. Unreliable narrators are mostly used in literary fiction, such as Carraway in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Dowell in Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, and many other modernist literary works. Whereas the characters mentioned herein are all recognized as unreliable or fallible narrators of John Dowell, they share little else. Yet, there is a common ground between them in that the reader knows that their commentary is not to be trusted[2]. Once the understanding has been gained, John Dowell will be put to the test against the assertions that he is an unreliable narrator and how narrative skills are used in the story.
The unreliable narrator
In the contemporary approach to creative reading, unusual narrative may be regarded as a rare technique possessed by the author, in which he/she endeavors to fix events and actions via the associative grips of imagination and memory spheres.[3] As a result, the reader tends to view the memory domain against the backdrop ion an imaginative domain. Additionally, the unreliable narrator is also committed to ensuring that individual readers focus their attention on the storyteller and specifically, the mental processes through which the narrator wades. Such mental processes are usually typified by a definite mentality and are devoid of any social adaptation. Another crucial aspect of the unusual narrative is that the narrator cuts off all links to the events taking place in the narrative.[4] He/she also experiences
psychological trauma but endeavors to find closure to such pain and suffering once the story unravels. The storyteller is deeply affected by the sense of guilt and loss.
At first glimpse, there seems to be no misgivings about John Dowell as a reliable narrator since he is a first-hand witness to the events of his story. He leads the reader to that heart-warming relationship with himself and the story as if he were telling it inside a cottage by a fireside, to his reader[5]. He is intricate in his descriptions. He often references the definite dates, periods of time, and people’s ages. Figures can be easily verified, unlike moods and feelings. This is what gives the audience the impression that Dowell’s story is truthful and accurate[6]. Yet shortly after the war, DS Dowell’s reliability starts to crack and crumble. He shows clearly how doubtful he is of himself, His knowledge,dge and his facts. He ponders his success in making an impression on Edward Ashburnham. He further ponders whether, in his writings, he spends time attending to the various things that Ashburnham partook in. Dowell spells out the various daily routines that Ashburnham undertook, starting with taking a bath, having breakfast, and participating in sporting activities like cricket. And how he would even find time to engage in love affairs. Ironically, Dowell appears to be appealing to the audience by sharing his own worries, suspicions, and fears. By this, he not only establishes a very strong bond with the reader but also treats Ashburnham’s wayward ways as what would normally happen in a well-ordered society[7].
It is easy to believe the narrator if you are an insensitive reader, since you are likely to miss crucial pointers about his own unreliability, especially since his narrative style gains a lot of traction with such an audience. Dowell appears to be honest about what he knows and what he does not. He is not shy to reveal lacunas in his knowledge base. Nonetheless, the reader has no reason to believe that Dowell can lie. Ironically, the reader cannot accept that he is as ignorantly uninformed as he appears to make himself look. Dowell is “a faux-naif of the most artful kind”[8]. He is pretentious of innocence, a manipulator of tricks. Yet, through this trickery, they can trick the reader into overlooking the inexcusable social norms.
Showing that Dowell really is an unreliable narrator requires tact. The first evidence used by Ford is contained in the paratextual elements of the novel, such as titles[9]. The title The Good Soldier can give the wrong impression of Ford’s narrative. It conceals the immorality in the life of the narrator and other characters therein. Ford makes it the work of the narrator's exemplary skills to amplify the meaning given in the title over debauchery and the decline of human nature as seen in the close reading of the novel[10]. Dowell uses sentimentalism and a psychological advantage of the reader in defending Ashburnham’s ill acts of debauchery, thus: “Anyhow, I hope I have not given you the idea that Edward Ashburnham was a pathological case. He wasn't. He was just a normal man and very much of a sentimentalist”[11]. This text, while viewed against the title and the character of Ashburnham, is seen as ironic to the keen reader as Edward Ashburnham – herein playing the good soldier – is unworthy of that moniker. Yet, it is another effective use of narrative style to hoodwink the reader into overlooking social ills.
It appears that Ford intentionally separates himself from the story by inserting an unreliable narrator, thereby escaping direct criticism for obscuring the true nature of his characters. This appears to be most convenient when, to the keen reader, facts and figures given by Dowell appear to be fictional. While an analysis of the dates given in narration goes against those of corresponding real-life events, it is the variance of facts in the given text that is most telling. In the text, Dowell says that Ashburnham, far from being of a pathological nature, was in fact a noble man, but his difficult past still haunted his present life[12]. This alludes to an all-knowing narrator, one who understands the depths of his characters’ personalities[13]. Yet, further on, Dowell seems to contradict his prowess at unravelling his characters’ personality by asking thus, “who in this world knows anything of any other heart – or of his own? I don’t mean to say that one cannot form an average estimate of the way a person will behave”[14]. This may imply that Dowell’s misappropriation of facts is accidental. Yet, it falls in line with Ford’s attempts to use the narration to sanitise the story.
Ford’s minimalist approach to narration appears to be in the use of a simple-minded first-person narrator, Dowell, as a conspicuous figure in the story, as a good example of the modernist technique of self-consciousness. Dowell’s self-awareness is manifested in various ways, especially in the way he tells his story. In this case, Dowell seems to be extremely aware of the aesthetics of his storytelling technique. He assumes a simplistic approach to storytelling becomes a success in that he manages to grip the reader’s attention away from the sadness in the story. As a result, this ends up having a positive impact on the reader[15]. Instead, the reader focuses on the style of narration and the narrator’s self-consciousness. As such, Dowell, through his narration style, appeals to the reader’s affective domain and somewhat becomes the main attraction of the story. His humanistic philosophies are amplified above traditional morality. Dowells seems self-conscious of his chronologically chaotic narration: “I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way”[16]. This gives the reader the impression that the story is being told as it comes to him, and that such self-consciousness is accidental. Yet, his assertion in the text that it is perplexing to give an all-inclusive impression of any person and that he had not succeeded in unravelling to the reader the mysteries behind the character Edward Ashburnham reveals that it is deliberate.
Conclusion
Modernist Ford’s literature is intensely transitional. In practice, Ford’s transitionalism is habitually felt as compromising his entitlement to be Modernist, therefore compromising the value of his literary originality[17]. Critics are less disturbed that comparable tautness in other archetypal Modernists, such as Stephen Dedalus’s, yyetitwe must acknowledge that The Good Soldier is doing rather what other writers do too: taking a panoramic view of the period of transition[18]. Through Dowell, Ford can explore how societies transitioned to modernism during Edwardian England and the First World War through a very effective unreliable narrator. [19]
Bibliography
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[1] Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 8th ed, 2005, 45
[2] Shunami, “The Unreliable Narrator in Wuthering Heights.”2001, 12
[3] Kalinina, E.V.’ Unreliable narration as a tendency in modern literary discourse’, World of Scientific Discoveries 57 [2014] 9, 979.
[4] Kalinina, E.V.’ Unreliable narration as a tendency in modern literary discourse’, World of Scientific Discoveries 57 [2014] 9, 979.
[5] Boyle, Unreliable Narration in The Great Soldier, 1994, 34
[6] Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction Narration, 2005, 101
[7]Ford, The Good Soldier. 1915, 2001, 23
[8] Goodheart, “The Art of Ambivalence, C ec Thee Good Soldier.” 1998, 619 - 630
[9] Herman, The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, 2007, 56
[10] Hoffmann. Ford Madox Ford, 997, 54
[11] Ford, The Good Soldier. 1915, 2001, 34
[12] Leec and Mick. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. 2nd edition, 2007, 23
[13] Olson, “Reconsidering Unreliability: Fallible and Untrustworthy Narrators.” 2003, 99 - 110
[14] MacShane, Critical Writings of Ford Madox Ford, 1994, 34
[15] Mizener, The Saddest Story: A Biography of Ford Madox Ford. 1982, 76
[16] Ford, The Good Soldier. 1915, 2001, 43
[17] Saunders, Ford Madox Ford: a Dual Life 1996, 76.
[18] Richardson, Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction, 2006, 65
[19] Ohman. Ford Madox Ford: From Apprentice to Craftsman. 1994, 87
