Discuss the view that in "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" and "Catcher in the Rye" Holden and Ruby can be regarded as unreliable narrators

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Julia Christie

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Discuss the view that in “Behind the Scenes at the Museum” and “Catcher in the Rye” Holden and Ruby can be regarded as unreliable narrators

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In both “Behind the Scenes at the Museum” and “Catcher in the Rye” there are obvious signs that Holden and Ruby are troubled and unreliable characters. The informal conversational tone that Holden uses is meant to be spontaneous and unrehearsed; so instead of getting a focused autobiography, we get a scanty account of a few days that often trail into other stories that are what we use to draw a picture of Holden. Holden states his intentions from the beginning. He has no intentions of telling his ‘whole goddam autobiography or anything’ and states clearly that he doesn’t want to write ‘all that David Copperfield kind of crap’. This also suggests that Holden has no concern with what has happened previously, which we later see is not the case. “Catcher in the Rye” is only spread over a few days unlike “Behind the Scenes at the Museum” which can be seen as more of a bildungsroman and appears to be a child’s viewpoint in an adults voice. This is characterised by the use of vocabulary and descriptions and also marked by the use of parenthesis. Parenthesis often follows descriptions such as after the description of the guest bed Ruby adds in brackets ‘much nicer than the camp bed’ which emphasizes the idea that it is not just a child speaking. This technique draws the reader’s attention to the artificiality of this fictional work. This is unlike “Catcher in the Rye” that in some ways could be regarded as non-fictional, as Salinger does not emphasize the fact that it is fiction. However, it could be argued that the style of “Catcher in the Rye” and the context make it obviously fiction, for example, the detailed regurgitated conversations which would be not a characteristic of non-fictional work. However, considering Holden’s situation and the circumstances it is possible to see him as an unreliable narrator.

In the first paragraph in “Catcher in the Rye” we know that something has happened to Holden and he has been hospitalised for quite some time, suggesting some form of psychological disturbance. However, although we know that Holden is reflecting on events that lead to his psychological breakdown, we do not feel that when he is telling the story it is though the eyes of someone who we cannot trust and whose judgement may be impaired. Likewise with Ruby, who as an omniscient character seems most reliable until we are informed of Ruby’s repression of the death of her twin sister Pearl and Ruby too has suffered from psychological trauma and repression. This offers reasons for the gaps in the narrative that the reader had to piece together, which may cast doubt on her reliability as a narrator. However, we are not fully aware of this until the end of the novel. Small hints are given throughout, for example when Bunty always says ‘my Gillian, my Pearl’ and at the very beginning of the novel when Ruby says that she can sense a ‘shadow’ behind her in the womb.  

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The omniscience of Ruby as a narrator allows her to have hindsight which does suggest that she is a reliable narrator, for example on the day of Gillian’s death. It must be considered however that Ruby in all honesty doesn’t appear to particularly like Gillian to begin with, as Gillian is often cruel to her, for example the rocking horse incident. However, it must be taken into account that not only are we unaware of the death of Pearl until the end of the novel, so is Ruby as she represses the memories. If we had known about Pearl ...

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The writer is articulate and very engaged, showing some interesting points of comparison and contrast between the novels. With more focus on technique and less on relaying content, this essay would have achieved a top rating. ****