The incident in the library when Joe gets the feeling he is being watched by Jed raises questions as to whether Jed is stalking Joe or not. Again making him seem more menacing by giving it more mystery and suspense because one of the scariest things is not knowing. Next, Joe agrees to meet Jed as he has been phoning from a phone box down the road. At this point Joe and the reader learn that Jed believes that the glance they exchanged immediately after the balloon accident had a special meaning “Something passed between us, up there on that hill…It was pure energy, pure light” Jed thinks that they are meant to be together so that Joe can find God. Then Jed suggests that the three of them need to ‘talk’, this really scares Joe and he leaves. This incident really defines Jed’s character as menacing and possibly dangerous.
The way McEwan introduces doubts into the readers mind about the danger Jed apparently represents is by having an unreliable narrator in Joe. The reader is only reading Joe’s viewpoint, which is slightly limited because we then do not know what Clarissa and Jed really feel and think. Joe’s unreliability also defines Jed’s character in an objective way.
As the reader Joe’s account of events they get to learn a lot about the way he thinks and feels. Therefore, they soon know that Joe is a rationalist and this can put doubts in the readers mind that Joe is reliable. As for example when he is recalling the balloon incident because he is rational he maybe taking things too seriously and. In addition, when Joe thinks Jed is watching him in the library because he sees the white trainers with red laces as he did on Jed at the balloon incident. He may be unreliable because he feels unease even before, and when, he thinks he sees Jed, which maybe incorporated because what happened the day before and his feelings of guilt or because of fear of Jed after the phone call.
Even Clarissa is unsure of Joe’s reliability and wants to see the evidence, prove of Jed’s stalking. However, as Joe lied to her about the phone call, which was a serious mistake, and didn’t tell her about Jed and the stalking till much later, she probably has reason to doubt him. Joe seems extremely worried about Jed but when he tells Clarissa, she laughs it off and makes fun of it, “a love affair with a gay Jesus freak”. In chapter 9 Joe has erased all the thirty answer phone messages from Jed making Clarissa unsure about whether what he tells he is the true or not. She also seems to think that a lot of the time he is just being paranoid.
Then McEwan tries to offer us evidence of Joe being reliable or evidence to raises doubts about Joe’s reliability again by allowing other characters to
An example of when he does this is when Clarissa returns home in chapter 9; Joe changes from narrator and writes the chapter through her eyes.
The main one of these is in chapter 11, which is written as a love letter from Jed to Joe and confirms Joe’s reliability. The reader now knows for sure that what Joe has been experiencing is stalking and that Joe has not exaggerated about the danger Jed represents. We see that from Jed’s point of view, Joe immediately sensed the love between them at the balloon incident and Joe felt rejected when he did not sense it straight away. So Jed is turning things around to suit himself by making out Joe started it and not him, which makes him seem scary. “I already know a lot about your life. I’ve made it my job. My mission.” Jed tells us in his letter showing the reader that he is completely obsessed with Joe in an unhealthy way. This obsession does pose a danger because at the moment nobody knows how far he will take it. From Jed’s letter the reader can tell that Jed thinks he is in love, although these feelings are directed through powerful religious believes.
In conclusion, the means McEwan uses to present Jed as a menacing character are an perhaps unreliable narrator giving his account of what Jed says, does, Jed’s behavior and Joe’s own personal views and feelings about Jed. Which successfully build up Jed’s menacing character by making each incident more weird and scary so that Jed seems to become more dangerous as his obsession grows. Also, by using Joe’s reactions to Jed’s behavior and to Jed’s letter. And by using Jed’s’ letter to broaden our viewpoint and let us see what Jed is really thinking and if he really represents the danger Joe apparently think he does, which confirms Joe’s account.
