The Use of the Unreliable Narrator in Postmodernist British Novel: Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001) and Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending (2011)

Abstract

This study aims to highlight the subject matter of the unreliable narrator as a narrative strategy adopted in postmodernist fictions. As asserted by many critics, the unreliable narrator has triggered a wave of ecumenical research. Accordingly, this research work orbits around three major aims: to find out the purpose of postmodernist writers in making use of such a literary technique in their literary texts; and this will help to trace the borders between the postmodernist theory and the unreliable narrator. It seeks also to comparatively analyse this literary device in two selected novels: Atonement (2001) by Ian McEwan and the Sense of an Ending (2011) by Julian Barnes in order to demonstrate the distinction between the two novels in terms of similarities and differences in what concerns the narrators’ types and function. Therefore, the methodology that has been followed is twofold; theoretical and comparative-analytical. The findings, hence, reveal that the authors used this technique as a way to show the truth and not to hide it except for some events which bring their narrators disappointments because both novels fall under the self-narrative categorisation. Moreover, the postmodernist background of both authors contributes to their implementation of such a narrative strategy as they both believe in the veracity of truths. The reader can discover a new identity about both narrators; Ian McEwan’s Briony as being a deliberately untrustworthy narrator and Julian Barnes’ Tony as being a self-deceived yet a sincere fallible narrator. Finally, the narrators’ memories contribute to a great extent in their unreliability as they are both aged personas and they rely on a retrospective narrative.