Mental Illness and its Relationship to the Unreliable Narrator in a Work of Creative Fiction (original) (raw)

More than five years ago, I enrolled at UTEP the ultimate goal of writing a novel. I enrolled at a time when I had just begun a new beat in my newspaper job, covering crime and public safety issues in our region. The first major trial I covered involved a young man who was on trial for murdering his father. The young man, who was schizophrenic, told the judge during a preliminary hearing that he heard voices that told him that his father was evil and must be killed. He was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, what is known in the legal world as NGI, and was ordered into the mental health system. Later, the victim's brother approached me to write a story about the NGI defense, which led me to do significant research on schizophrenia and the role of mental illness in the justice system. In this project, I sought to tell a story that led to a better understanding of mental illness, the fragility of memory, and the devastating impact that schizophrenia has on those who suffer, and the people around them. In writing fiction, I have found that staying as close to the truth as possible allows for the most credible storytelling. Here, I have put together a narrative that relies in part on research and knowledge of the legal and mental health system. I am naturally drawn to novels that use unreliable narrative techniques, particularly with a mental illness component. My research and love of reading, coupled with the many lessons I learned throughout my time at UTEP, are all reflected in this manuscript. I use flashbacks, Chinese boxes, and specific language in this narrative, a story that rings true because of its origin, something all stories must have. Stories, I would argue, do not simply appear in the imagination without basis. Mario Vargas Llosa said: " all stories are rooted in the lives of those who write them, experience is the source from which fiction flows. There is always a starting point in a story that comes from the experience of the writer. I'd venture to claim that there are no exceptions to this rule and 2 that, as a result, scientifically pure invention does not exist in literature. All fiction are structures of fantasy and stimulate his imagination, leading him to create a world so rich and various that sometimes it is almost impossible (and sometimes just plain impossible) to recognize in it the autobiographical material that was its genesis and that is, in a way, the secret heart of all fiction, as well as its obverse and antithesis" (15-16). Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder in which people interpret reality in an abnormal fashion. Hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking significantly impairs daily functioning and can be extremely debilitating. Until just a few years ago, doctors placed patients with schizophrenia into five distinct categories: catatonic, disorganized, paranoid, residual and undifferentiated. But those categories have largely been dismissed in recent years in favor of a spectrum of schizophrenia, which has allowed for greater diagnostic freedom among those in the psychiatric medical community. ("NIMH » Schizophrenia") In my novel, the main character suffers from hallucinations, delusions, and thought disorders characteristic of schizophrenia. She began exhibiting symptoms in her teenage years, but it wasn't until a violent event triggered a psychotic break. Consequently, she lost touch with reality altogether. Like the defendant in the case I covered earlier, Phoebe, the main character, committed a crime and was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. The NGI defense is rare; rarer still is the successful NGI defense, in part because mental illness is so difficult to diagnose and quantify. For these defendants, the truth is skewed because their illness prevents them from interpreting what they see in a reliable manner. They hurt people without realizing that they do so. From a fictional standpoint, this is intriguing, and makes for the most compelling unreliable narrator in storytelling. 3 Without question, the use of an unreliable narrator as a literary technique has a long and well-documented history. A narrator may be deemed unreliable for a variety of reasons, ranging from limited life experience and immaturity to delusion and deliberate manipulation. The Double Blind tells the story of Phoebe, a young woman in her late 20s who has experienced significant trauma in her life, spanning from her childhood to her recent past. She does not hear voices, but she does suffer from hallucinations and delusions, which creates a scenario in which she is unable to accurately interpret the events that take place around her. Phoebe and Simon are connected not only through their shared experience in a trauma that precipitates her move to the shelter, but also because they are two facets of Phoebe's shattered mind. This is a story of loss, a life of pain and suffering. Acknowledging the human side of schizophrenia could provide a tool to address problems posed by their illness, even those that are most serious. These are the people, the characters, who may inflict pain, but do not intend to do so. They cannot be trusted to tell the truth, but it is beyond their capacity to do so. This creates a perfect storm for an unreliable narrator in a work of fiction, but also can teach us much about the human condition. The concept of the unreliable narrator was first introduced by Wayne C. Booth in 1961. His classic definition is widely studied and recognized. In The Rhetoric of Fiction, Booth writes, "I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks or acts in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to say the implied author's norms), unreliable when he is not." (Booth 158-159) Not all works follow this model, however. Instead, some authors see unreliable narration as an interpretative technique, a paradigm shift that has been reconceptualized in the context of frame theory and of readers' cognitive strategies. Booth argues that an unreliable narrator is fundamentally mistaken about himself and believes he possesses qualities which he is later revealed to lack; or, conversely, to lack qualities he is revealed to possess. Narrators with a false 4 assessment of their own abilities and a false sense of story can give room can do so either intentionally or unintentionally. In some cases, the narrator is a liar or a purposeful manipulator who perhaps has something to hide. In other cases, the unreliable narrator is a child who is simply too young and too naïve to accurately comprehend or fully describe what is happening in front of their eyes. There are other situations to consider as well, such as the case of a narrator who lacks intelligence or is feeble-minded. Others may be well-intentioned, but gullible narrators who lack the kinds of life experiences that would give them reason to reimagine the events in their stories. Schizophrenia adds another facet to this issue, because of the nature of the illness and the implications it has for those who suffer from it. The majority of novels with an unreliable narrator rely on a first-person point of view. In some respects, unreliable narrators are almost by definition first-person narrators. However, there is a solid argument for the existence of unreliable second-and third-person narrators. According to Salem, Weskott, and Holler (242), first-person narration tends to increase the predisposition to take over the perspective of the protagonist but does not always contribute to empathy and interest in the themes of the work. This is especially true within the context of film and television but is also a consideration in fiction writing. John Gardner, in The Art of Fiction, addresses the third-person point of view as a technique that can allow the writer to "dip into the mind and thoughts" of a character, thereby offering great range and freedom. (Gardner 76) This narrator can fill in crucial background and offer objective observations, yet vanish from our consciousness when necessary, Gardner explains. In writing my narrative, I relied on free indirect speech, a third-person narrative style that combines characteristics of third person along with the essence of first person direct speech. Though the 19th century French novelist Flaubert was the first to be aware of it as a style, it is 5 Jane Austen who is widely considered to have pioneered it in her work. (Ferguson 157) Austen's Emma, for example, is told from the point of view of a third person narrator who expresses Austen's views and values. Austen tells a story through the consciousness of a characters whose understanding of events is deluded or is self-deceived. Before Austen, writers largely chose between first-person narrative, which lets us into the mind of a character but limits us to his or her understanding; and third-person narration, which allows us a God-like or omniscient view of all the characters but makes them pieces in an authorial game. Austen, however, effectively combined internal and external voices, doing so in a way that lets us into the mind of a character. In Austen's novel, Emma is a self-deluded young woman who meddles in the lives of her neighbors; she is manipulative, but hardly mentally ill. The narrative was designed to share Emma's delusions, bending the narration through the distorting lens of the protagonist's mind. My novel, The Double Blind, reflects Austen's narrative technique, but in this case the protagonist isn't simply self-deluded, she is ill. She is not intentionally misinterpreting the events around her. The story is not told precisely from Phoebe's point of view, but largely from a third person limited narrator who can get inside the main character's thoughts. As the story progresses, the reader slowly learns, through alternating voices, vital details about each character's backstory. We gradually learn about the circumstances that led to Phoebe's current living situation, the attack that...