THE UNRELIABLE NARRATOR IN NORMAN SILVER’S “MR.
NAIDOO’S HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY”
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Vicky Soficana Septin
112008029
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
ii
THE UNRELIABLE NARRATOR IN NORMAN SILVER’S “MR.
NAIDOO’S HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY”
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Vicky Soficana Septin
112008029
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
iii
THE UNRELIABLE NARRATOR IN NORMAN SILVER’S “MR.
NAIDOO’S HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY”
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan
Vicky Soficana Septin 112008029
Approved by:
Lany Kristono, M. Hum Danielle Donelson-Sims, M.A.
iv
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
This thesis contains no such material as has been submitted for examination in any course or accepted for the fulfillment of any degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and my belief, this contains no material previously published or written by any other person except where due reference is made in the text.
Copyright@ 2012. Vicky Soficana Septin and Lany Kristono, M. Hum.
All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be produced by any means without the permission of at least one of the copyright owners or the English Department, Faculty of Language and Literature, Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga.
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In developing my knowledge, I agree to provide SWCU with a non-exclusive royalty free right for my intellectual property and the contents therein entitled:
The Unreliable Narrator in Norman Silver’s “Mr. Naidoo’s Hundredth Birthday”
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This declaration is made according to the best of my knowledge.
The Unreliable Narrator in Norman S
ilver’s “Mr. Naidoo’s Hundredth
Birthday”
Abstract
A story is narrated by a narrator, who may act as one of the characters or an observer. Because of
his or her role, a narrator plays a great role in shaping the readers’ understanding of the story. As
a story-teller, a narrator may be reliable or unreliable. This can only be identified through a critical reading of the story. The ability to read critically is necessary for English teachers so that they can transfer their skill to their students later. Since class discussions on literary works is often focused on understanding the works, this study will examines how the narrator of “Mr.
Naidoo’s Hundredth Birthday” perceives the events and other characters to find out if he is
reliable or not. An analysis of the story using Rimmon-Kenan’s aspects of unreliable narrator, which are young age, inexperience and personal involvement, proves that the narrator of “Mr.
Naidoo’s Bundredth Birthday” is unreliable. His unreliability reflected since he is inexperienced
and he is immaturity about changing opinions toward the characters based on single event. The findings are expected to motivate readers to be aware that their understanding of a text is shaped by the narrator and that a story may be different when it is narrated from a different perspective. Therefore, readers will be motivated to be more critical in reading literary works or any texts.
Keywords: critical reading, narrator, reliable, unreliable
Introduction
Literature is simply a way of experiencing the world through imagination (Jones, Jr. 1).
Such an experience may make readers to deeper philosophical issue so that reading literary
works can make readers discover different realms of wider political, social and economic
concerns while probing the emotional, intellectual, and rational dimensions of the world (Fisher
qtd. in Surajbali-Bissoonauth 127). Similarly, Jafar and Commeyras argue that reading literature
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intellectual challenge (qtd. in Surajbali-Bissoonauth 130). Further Chambers believes that
reading literature may not only give readers power and potential to be more than what they are,
but also conceive that they might be more than they are (qtd. in Hodges 65). So that critical
reading is important to readers to improve his or her knowledge.
Literature can be read in the forms of prose, poetry, and drama. Prose is built of plot,
characters, settings, theme, and point of view, i.e the perspective used to narrate the story. Of all
forms of prose, short story is one that can be read at a single sitting because its plot is usually not
as complicated as that of a novel. A short story is constituted of a narration; i.e the act or process
of narrating the story. The narration can be directly presented to the audience or mediated by
someone called a narrator (Abrams 172). Abrams further explains that there are two types of
narrator; which are the first-person narrative and third-person narrative. In a first-person
narrative, the narrator speaks as “I” and it is to a greater or lesser degree a participant in the story.
In a third-person narrative, the narrator is someone outside the story who refers to all the
characters in the story by name, or as “he,” “she,” “they” (Abrams 231). A narrator has a big influence on the story because the narrator determines how the story tells as well as does its
functions of telling (diegesis) and showing (mimesis) to make the story more alive and real
(Chatman 146). As a result, readers’ knowledge and understanding of the events depicted in the work are much shaped by the narrator. For example, a broken engagement narrated by the
woman will very likely be different from the one told from her ex-fiancé’s perspective.
As in real life, a narrator may be trusted (reliable) or distrusted (unreliable) (Chatman 2).
Chatman further explains that a narrator may be unreliable when there is a conflict between the
narrator’s presentation and the rest of the narrative which makes readers suspect his or her
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Wasmuth 2). In other words, a narrator may be unreliable when incompatibility exists between
the narrator’s statements and perceptions and other information given by the text (Olson 93). To
identify if a narrator is reliable or not, readers should read critically. According to Paul and Elder,
critical reading is reading a paragraph which involves finding the main idea of the paragraph and
how it is related to other paragraphs (qtd. in Zahibi 182). Tedjasudhana elaborates that critical
reading is not only understanding the surface meaning of a text, but also reading what is not
printed; what the message is, why the author wants to give the readers the message, and how he
or she conveys the message to the readers (1).
However, the discussions of literary works in the classroom are often focused on
understanding what the works are about. Such discussions lead students to comprehend the
works as they are narrated by the narrator. Therefore, this study would like to read a literary
work in a different way. One story which triggered the writer to question its narrator’s reliability is “Mr. Naidoo’s Hundredth Birthday” by Norman Silver. This work has been selected to be the
subject of this study because the narration and narrator are the guide to the readers’
understanding of the story, which is narrated from “I,”one of the character’s point of view. Since
“I” is sometimes involved in the events he narrates and he also interacts with the other characters,
his objectivity needs to be questioned. Therefore, this study would like to examine how the
narrator perceives the events and other characters in the story and if the narrator is reliable by
using Rimmon-Kenan’s aspects of unreliability.
As the one who tells the story, a narrator may also be a character of the story who has his
or her own perception toward the main protagonist and other characters. A narrator can be
reliable or unreliable. According to Booth, a narrator is reliable when the narrator speaks for or
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Olson says that a narrator is unreliable when the narrator expresses values and perceptions that
are strikingly diverged from those of the implied author (qtd. in Wasmuth 2). This unreliability
can be found based on personal experience, second-hand information, common sense, suspicion,
or stereotypes (Donelson-Sims 90).
Because this study was aimed at examining the narrator’s perception of the events and other characters in the story and if the narrator is reliable, the findings are expected to make the
readers aware that a narrator may not be reliable so that they should be more critical in reading a
story. They are expected to be alert on how their opinion or understanding of the story is shaped
by the narration. Besides, readers who are literature teacher will be able to guide their students to
read literary works more critically.
An examination on the previous study on this topic brought the thesis writer to the work
of Hogan Carringer, who examined the unreliable narrator in The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn by Mark Twain. The thesis writer focuses on the story above because the narrator in the
story is in young age. Since Carringer used a different research subject, this study has never been
done before.
Theoretical Discussion
Unreliable Narrator in Literary Work
Narratology refers to the ways that narratives structure our perception of both cultural
and artifacts and the world around us (cla.purdue.edu). In short, narratology is the study of
narration or narrator. Both a narration and narrator may be reliable or unreliable. An Unreliable
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narrator is one whose perception, interpretation, and evaluation of the matters he or she narrates
do not coincide with the opinions and norms implied by the author (Abrams 235).
To identify a narrator’s reliability or unreliability, there are three aspects to be examined
as specified by Rimmon-Kenan; i.e the narrator’s knowledge, personal involvement in the story, and the presence of the implied author. A young, inexperienced, or unintelligent narrator may
have a limited knowledge and understanding. Besides, when a narrator displays a personal
involvement the story, such as when s/he has an ulterior motive, the characters or events will be
portrayed in a subjective way (qtd. in Wasmuth 2). Rimmon-Kenan illustrates that the character
Rosa in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! narrates in great detail Sutpen’s fight against his
negroes in the presence of his children, and then adds: ‘But I was not there. I was not there to see
the two Sutpen faces…looking down through the square entrance to the loft’ (Rimmon-Kenan
103). Rosa’s explanation that she is not witnessing the events she has just narrated should make
readers question whether she is actually there or whether her description of the fight is unbiased.
Rosa’s narration is suspected not only because of her limited knowledge but also because
of her personal involvement, her hatred of Sutpen, her undying sense of injury resulting from his
insulting proposal that he would marry her only if they succeed in having a male child first.
Consequently, she presents him as a demon, a characterization clearly distorted by her subjective
rage (Rimmon-Kenan 103). The illustration shows that a narrator can be personally involved
when he or she includes his or her emotion or feeling toward the characters. The narrator
evaluates the characters’ acts rather than the events that he or she should be reported may be
called as personal involvement (Rimmon-Kenan 103).
The third aspect which indicates a narrator’s reliability or unreliability is the presence of
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designated as ‘the author’s second self’ (qtd. in Wasmuth 4). This implied author will be considered morally questionable if she or he does not share the narrator’s moral values (qtd. in
Wasmuth 2). In short, there is a gap between the implied author and the narrator. There are some
factors that may have indicated the gap. First, when the facts contradict the narrator’s views, the
ending is judged to be unreliable. Moreover, when the outcome of the action proves the narrator
is wrong, a doubt is retrospectively (related to the past time) cast over his reliability in reporting
earlier events. Last, when the narrator’s language contains internal contradictions; double-edged
images, and the like, it may have a boomerang effect, undermining the reliability of its user
(Rimmon-Kenan 104).
Rimmon-Kenan gives an example taken from Ambrose Bierce’s ‘Oil of Dog’:
My name is Boffer Bings. I was born of honest parents in one of the humbler walks of life, my father being a manufacturer of dog-oil and my mother having a small studio in the shadow of the village church, where she disposed of unwelcome babes….
It had been my custom to throw the babes into the river which nature had thoughtfully provided for the purpose, but that night I did not dare to leave the oilery for fear of the constable. ‘After all’, I said to myself, ‘it cannot greatly matter if I put it into this cauldron. My father will never know the bones from those of a puppy, and the few deaths which may result from administering another kind of oil for the incomparable ol.can.; a name of medicine that I’s father ever made, are not important in a population which increases so rapidly.
(Rimmon-Kenan 104)
In the story, the narrator threw the babes into the river which nature had provided for the
purposes. This seems unreliable because it can be questioned how nature can provide something
that is considered as a bad thing to do (throwing innocent babes into river)? The sequel of action
shows that the Bings family does immoral things (Rimmon-Kenan 105).
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‘untrustworthy’ suggest that the narrator cannot be trusted on a personal level and it is implicit in
the text (qtd. in Olson 96). In contrast, fallible narrator does not reliably report on narrative
events because they misjudge or misperceive events or are biased (Olson 101). According to
Fludernik, narrators can be unreliable because of their factual inaccuracy, lack of objectivity as
first-person narrators, or their ideological unreliability (qtd. in Olson 100). Moreover, narrators
can be untrustworthy when their accounts have to be altered in order to make sense of their
incompatibles (Olson 104).
In summary, according Rimmon-Kenan, a narrator’s unreliability can be determined from
three points of view, i.e. the narrator’s limited knowledge, personal involvement to the story, and questionable morals. The narrator’s limited knowledge and personal involvement occur when
s/he is young and inexperienced or uneducated. The reader judges the narrator’s unreliability based on the textual signals, and then moves beyond a literal reading of the text, and attributes
fallibility or untrustworthiness to the narrator. A narrator may be unreliable, untrustworthy, and
fallible. The terms unreliable and untrustworthy suggest that the narrator cannot be trusted on a
personal level and it is implicit in the text. On the other hand, an unconscious and fallible
narrator does not reliably report on narrative events because they may misjudge or misperceive
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Discussion
The Narration in “Mr. Naidoo’s Hundredth Birthday”
“Mr. Naidoo’s Hundredth Birthday” is narrated by I, one of the characters in the story. In
this story ‘I’ describes the other characters and what he experiences, particularly in relation to his father and Boola, who has worked as a handyman for his father, the owner of Valhalla Furniture,
for years. Boola lives with his halfwit daughter and her five children. Because of his daughter’s being halfwit single parent, he is responsible for fulfilling their daily needs.
In narrating the events and characters of the story, ‘I’ may be unreliable because of his
age. According to Rimmon-Kenan (103), age is one factor that determines a narrator’s reliability. The story depicts how old the narrator is in the following quotations:
“In my last year of school I had a Saturday morning job at Valhalla Furniture. …”
(Silver 1)
“…when I must have been about twelve or so, …” (Silver 6)
Since the narrator mentions two towns in the Africa; Cape Town and Port Elizabeth (Silver 6 to
8), so that based on the Angloinfo The Global Expat Network South Africa, Africa education
starts at the age four to five until fifteen to sixteen
(<http://southafrica.angloinfo.com/family/schooling-education/school-system/>). Since the
Africans generally finish their school education at the age of fifteen to sixteen, the narrator is
most probably sixteen years old when he narrates the story. However, he also includes his past
experiences with Boola, as reflected in the above quotations, in which he recalled what happened
and what he thought of the event or experience when he was twelve years old. Narrating what
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definitely an adult world, “I”, who is not an adult himself, may not act as a reliable narrator because he live in and may not have enough experience about adults’ world.
From the paragraph above, as Wasmuth (2) argues, a narrator’s reliability may be questioned if the narrator is at a young age because the person is usually lack of experience and
knowledge about adults' world. As Wasmuth states, the narrator’s unreliability because of his young age can even be identified since the beginning of the story, particularly when he narrates
the time he was asked to help his father in the shop, as reflected in the following quotation:
“Naturally, I didn’t do this job out of my own choice – I had better things to do on
a Saturday morning than bringing light into people’s lives. But my dad insisted I
did this work. And it was he also who was responsible for the lousy pay I
received.” (Silver 1)
What the narrator says implies that he does not want to do the job but he cannot refuse it because
he does not have enough authority, especially because he deals with his father. His inability to
refuse what his father would like him to do implies that he is still considered too young to be
permitted to decide things for himself or that he is young enough for his father to force him to do
things he does not like to do. Besides, the narrator’s complaint about the lousy pay he received
and that he thinks it was his father who was responsible for it and the statement that he had better
things to do on a Saturday morning (Silver 1) reflects that he is still childish and immature. It is
natural that children help their parents. However, the narrator is paid by his father. His father
may do it; about the lousy pay that the narrator received (Silver 1) to make his son happy and
stop grumbling or to make the boy realize that he is working instead of just helping his parents so
that he should be a responsible worker.
Moreover, the narrator’s claim that he has better things to do than bringing light into
Vicky - 10
helping parents is a boring activity which makes them unhappy. The narrator’s dissatisfaction
also reflects that he is not aware of his responsibility. Instead, children still think of spending
their time having fun with their friends, which is a characteristic of a child. The quotation (Silver
1) also reflects the narrator’s selfishness. A selfish individual is not mature yet because he only thinks about himself and does not care about others. The narrator is selfish because he thinks that
his father has made him unable to do what children usually do during the week, i.e playing with
friends, hanging around or doing things they like.
However, readers who do not read critically may think that take pity on I and think that
the father is demanding and inconsiderate. Only a critical reading of the quotation will make
readers realize that the narrator is unreliable because he sees things from his own interest, blames
his father and gives excuses to justify himself. In other words, what he narrates about his
experience of ‘working in the shop’ may be biased.
The narrator’s unreliability is also portrayed in his perception of other people,
particularly Boola.
“But on that occasion I never guessed what Boola had done. Nor another time
long ago, when I must have been about twelve or so, and Boola helped me with my school woodwork project.” (Silver 6)
The quotation explicitly mentions that the narrator is in his young age which is about twelve
years old. Referring to when he was 12, the narrator describes Boola as a helpful and smart
person in handling tools and cutting woods, and the narrator’s woodwork mark was great
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in dealing with something which is not typically children’s activities. Generally a twelve year
-old child does not use tools well to work with woods.
The narrator’s superficial understanding of the adults’ world is also reflected when he tells readers about his father’s new job after he got bankrupt.
“But the bankruptcy came quickly and was over and done in a jiffy, and soon after,
my dad got the job at the Plaza cinema, and he’s never looked back, because he’s
always loved films and knows who acts in every one and who wrote the music
and who directed it and so on.” (Silver 3)
To be bankrupt is something any businessman does not want to experience. The narrator’s father’s experience is very saddening because he is not only bankrupt, but he also has to work as an unskilled worker in the cinema after he has gone bankrupt. However, the narrator fails to see
the ‘disaster’ and his father’s unhappiness just because his father loves films and he works at a
cinema. The narrator’s idea about his father when “I” says that his father never looked back
about the bankruptcy (Silver 3), which is judgmental, may make an uncritical reader think that
his father is somewhat irresponsible. In fact, the narrator is reflecting his own idea and a child’s perspective that doing a job which suits his interest will make him happy no matter what the job
is because it is like playing instead of working.
Besides, the narrator also seems unreliable when he expresses his opinion about Boola
although he first sounds neutral and wise. The narrator recalls:
“Yes, looking back, it is easy to see that even while Boola was helping me with
that jigsaw, I had no idea of the person who was sitting there so kindly helping
me.” (Silver 6)
The words “Yes, looking back” show that the narrator is more aware and mature so that he can
Vicky - 12
nothing about him. By saying that he has no idea about the person who is kindly helping him, the
narrator is making an objective statement. Several years after Boola helped him with the jigsaw
when he was twelve years old (Silver 6), the narrator learned that Boola had forged his father’s
signature for the pension so that he realized that he has had a wrong idea about the old man.
Before knowing about the forgery, he must have thought that Boola was a good man because the
man kindly helped him with the jigsaw. His opinion about Boola may be shaped because he does
not realize that Boola was helping his boss’ son, so that he certainly would do it kindly. A worker will be doing good in front of his or her boss so that his or her boss will see them as a
good worker.
The quotation above represents another aspect that shows that the narrator is unreliable;
that is his personal involvement. As Rimmon-Kenan argues, a narrator’s personal involvement can be identified when the narrator includes his or her feeling or emotion or opinion or in short
he or she describes an event in a subjective way; i.e personal opinion or others’ opinion and
evaluating other characters’ acts rather than telling the event; in short, the narrator does not reporting the events of the story (103). In the above quotation, the word ‘kindly’ expresses the
narrator’s personal opinion.
Another aspect of a narrator’s unreliability because of his being inexperienced is
represented by the quotation below:
“Working on that job I got to know Boola quite well. But really I think you have to put yourself in someone else’s skin before you can understand them properly,
wouldn’t you say? … At any rate, that’s what my ma always says about the handicapped people she works with at the Woltemade Centre.” (Silver 1)
The first two sentences above show that the narrator does not have the same opinion about the
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Boola superficially but he assumes that he has known Boola well. However, he also says that he
“really thinks …”, but later he says that “that’s what my ma always says …”. Therefore, the narrator is unreliable because he includes his mother’s opinion, which he adopts. This reflects his
young age and being inexperienced to understand about other people just like children usually
imitate or adopt what adults say or do. He completely adopts what his mother says since he
maybe is shocked realizing that what he believes about Boola proves to be wrong.
This superficially characteristic is also reflected in the beginning of the story, when the
narrator said that his mother was interested in Boola’s daughter because she worked with
handicapped people and that she always took time to talk to Boola about how his halfwit
daughter is doing (Silver 2). ‘that’s what my ma always says about the handicapped people …’ (Silver 1), implies that he usually listens to adults around him. This is a child’s characteristic which indicates that he may be an unreliable narrator.
The narrator’s different opinions about the protagonist are also represented by the
following quotation:
“It’s funny, now I look back on all the time Boola worked for my dad, I would
never ever have guessed that he was the sort of person to do what he did. Even
though once or twice I spoke to him about his life.” (Silver 5)
The above sentences contain contradictory ideas. The first statement ‘I would never ever have guessed that he was the sort of person to do what he did’ (Silver 5) indicates the narrator’s
unreliability. He thinks that he knows Boola quite well so that he ‘would never ever guessed’
Boola could forge his father’s signature for his pension. It also shows that what he believes in the
past does not the same from what he see. However, he is judging Boola because he does
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spoke to him about his life’ (Silver 5) reflects the narrator’s confusion because Boola has talked to him about his life once or twice. This reveals the narrator’s superficial understanding or way
of thinking since he has only spoke to Boola several times, but he concludes that he knows him
well.
The quotation also shows that the narrator completely changes his opinion about Boola
based on one event; i.e. Boola’s forging his father’s signature for his pension. When he went to
Boola’s house and met Boola’s family, he judges that Boola is not as good as what he thought
before. However, his statement reflects that he does not consider the condition of Boola’s family.
This is a judgmental attitude because he does not think rationally why Boola might have forged
his father’s pension after he has seen Boola’s house. He does not tell readers that Boola may
have done it because his wage as a handyman is not enough to feed his daughter and five
grandchildren and that he has no other choices because of his age. As a result, readers may have
a negative, even a completely negative, opinion about Boola. This reflects his unreliability
because his judgment is only based on what he thinks happens, which means he perceives things
superficially.
The narrator’s being superficial is also portrayed in the following quotation:
“I remember once old Boola asked me about the Woltemade Centre where my ma
worked. I think maybe he secretly wanted to know if they could help his daughter
Meena in any way.” (Silver 5)
That narrator does not judge Boola when he explicitly includes his opinion, which is represented
by the words “I think maybe” (Silver 5) he only assumes that Boola is a responsible father and
grandfather to his children. However, when he later found out that Boola had forged his father’s
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Boola’s difficult life, his old age and responsibility to fulfill his daughter and five
grandchildren’s needs. He only sees that Boola has done a bad thing that good people will not do.
Those conflicting opinions also reflect that the narrator’s assumption and opinion about
Boola are based on a single event. He assumes Boola may want to see how the centre can help
his daughter just because Boola once asked him about the centre. When he changes his opinion
about Boola, it is also based on knowing that Boola has forged his late father’s signature for his
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Conclusion
The discussion has led this study to its goal; i.e to find out how the narrator of “Mr. Naidoo’s Hundredth Birthday” perceives the events and other characters and if the narrator is
reliable or not. The discussion reveals that the narrator, which is one of the characters of the
story, ‘I’, is unreliable because of his young age, being inexperienced and personal involvement. I’s young age makes it difficult for him to understand adults’ problems thoughts. Because he perceives the adult’s world from a child’s point of view, his narration is biased and; therefore, unreliable, as reflected in his description of his working at his father’s furniture shop as well as
his opinion of Boola and his own father. His young age and unreliability is also reflected when
he completely adopts his mother’s opinion about Boola and understanding other people.
The narrator’s being inexperienced and personal involvement can be seen in his changing opinions about Boola, which are based on single events. By doing so, the narrator’s opinions are
superficial and judgmental. They also reflect his immaturity and being inconsiderate. Therefore,
a critical reading on the story and the use of Rimmon-Kenan’s aspects of unreliability has proved that the narrator is unreliable. From this study, the thesis writer is expected the readers to be
more critically in reading literary works so that the readers can discover different point of view
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express the greatest gratitude to Sang Buddha for His amazing grace and power
working in my life, so that I can finish my thesis. I wish to express sincere appreciation to Ibu
Lany Kristono, M. Hum for her invaluable supervision, advice and guidance in helping me
finishing my thesis; and also Danielle Donelson-Sims, my second reader. This thesis would have
never been completed without the encouragement and devotion of my family, especially my
beloved sisters and family who always support me. Special credits I give for Mama and Papa in
heaven who bless and guide me and have been take care of me since I birth, and also EDers 2008
for the wonderful togetherness. I will not forget to say thank you to my special friends: Sylviani
(Chila), Rut Arsari (Yem), Lucy, Renata, Wido, Eta, Faris (Panjul). Thank you for being my new
Vicky - 18
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