An intellectual or a simpleton? The unreliable narrator in the curious incident of the dog in The night-time by Mark Haddon and Engleby by Sebastian Faulks

To begin from the beginning: the existence of the Unreliable Narrator in English literature for over 200 years at least, makes it possible to classify the characters playing that role. The two large groups are LIARS who distort the facts on purpose and SIMPLETONS who interpret the facts they relate in an inadequate way due to their simplemindedness. SIMPLETONS can be further subdivided into 1/ adult simpletons, usually uneducated people, often servants whose misinterpretation of facts and events in the story comes from their limited understanding (e..g. Thady in Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent) ; 2/ children, naturally lacking the experience of the world and thus unable to comprehend it correctly (e.g. Pip in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations); 3/ people with all sorts of mental and psychic deviations (e.g. Benjamin in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury ).¹

As for telling lies, both Christopher Boone and Michael Engleby seem very frank and honest in their narrations, though both can tell lies to other characters in the stories. Thus, Christopher intentionally does not tell the truth to his Father and excuses himself with a concept of a white lie. He does not see, however, that his situation is not that of a white liar, the latter not telling all of the truth because unimportant. He will not mention his talk with the neighbour Mrs Alexander which he knows is very important [Haddon 2004: 62].

Engleby likewise tells occasional lies to other persons (to his interviewers at Cambridge, to Stellings’ wife), yet is sincere with the reader. He may not be all that sincere when he tells the Police that Jennifer was his friend, or is he? The reader is left unaware concerning his ability to understand his relations with the girl. We are also unsure about his account of his father’s abuse; the psychiatrist suggests that the fact(s) may be exaggerated [Faulks 2008: 288]. Do we believe in his memory losses? I see no evidence of them being his clever invention. The finale of the novel is Engleby’s reconstruction of an entry from Jennifer’s diary dated the morning after her death. Telling lies? Hardly. ‘Until we can navigate in time, I’m not sure we can prove that what happened is real’, says Engleby [Faulks 2008: 340].

Both the narrators certainly belong to sub-group 3 in my classification, they are both people with mental or psychic disturbances. Christopher is also a teen-ager, his autism actually keeps him a child, so the reader expects to deal with what could be called double-simplicity, or simplicity in the second degree. Yet the subgroups of children and of people with mental problems – NN 2 and 3 in the proposed classification – have been included by me into the larger group of SIMPLETONS. Unlike Maud in Elizabeth Is Missing who may be said to have fallen into childhood due to the Alzheimer’s disease (and, indeed, unlike Benjamin in The Sound and the Fury, the prototype of the Unreliable Narrator with mental problems) neither Christopher nor Engleby can be easily referred to as simpletons. Christopher at fifteen passes the A level in Maths with the highest grade. Engleby, according to the psychiatrist, ‘is unusually well educated (grammar school, public school, Cambridge University) and has a high IQ (see test results, to be appended)’ [Faulks 2008: 285]. If these two narrators do not quite fit my classification based on the two-hundred-year-old tradition, does that mean a fallacy in the classification? Or are we possibly confronted with experimental Unreliable Narrators who are essentially and basically controversial? In what follows I am going to show that both of them are rather simpletons, but simpletons with a difference. It is this difference which determines Haddon’s and Faulks’s experimenting with their use of the Unreliable Narrator.

Christopher is intelligent and knows it. Or, rather, he thinks he is intelligent. The reader can only be sure that he is very good at Maths because he really gets his A grade at fifteen. To persuade the headmistress to give him that exam, though, his Father says: ‘Jesus, this is the one thing he is really good at’ [Haddon 2004: 57]. The one thing here is somehow not quite persuasive about his intelligence. The reader if {s}he is not a mathematician cannot check all Christopher’s mathematical solutions, yet in the question with one car and two goats behind three doors it looks like Christopher’s logic is wrong (I have consulted a few mathematicians) [Haddon 2004: 78–82]. Commenting on his solution he says: ‘And this shows that intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions’ [Haddon 2004: 82]. It is exactly his lack of intuition which makes an important component of Christopher’s infantile simplemindedness. This lack of intuition is apparent when he easily believes that his Mother is dead. As a very infantile simpleton he is not even aware that a death is followed by a funeral and a grave you then visit. This lack of intuition prevents him from interpreting correctly what he observes in the relationship between Mrs Shears and his Father. In the end, after all his logical constructions, he comes to the conclusion that the murderer of the dog Wellington must be Mr Shears. Playing at a detective, he is shown quite simpleminded, if not downright silly, when he is talking with neighbours. He is shocked when the real murderer just tells him the truth. I think partly his shock is caused by his having learnt, even though subconsciously, that he is no detective, and his intelligence is much doubted.

The way Christopher tells the story of his runaway to London shows his character as a curious mixture of an intelligent person and a simpleton. As an intelligent boy he sets the task and bravely and step by step deals with it. At the railway-station and then in the London Tube he behaves as an inexperienced simpleton. The episode in the Tube, especially when he jumps onto the rails to catch his pet rat, demonstrates what may be called the unreliable-narration technique: Christopher-the-Simpleton does not see the danger of being on the rails – but the reader does. Christopher tells us what the man in diamond-patterned socks says and does, yet is unable to interpret it or to feel grateful. It is the reader who understands that the man in fact saved the simpleton from death.

It is even more difficult to see a simpleton in Michael Engleby. Akin to Christopher Boone’s gift for Maths is his exceptional memory – he can easily memorise long texts by heart. After the first few terms at Cambridge he changes his subject from Literature to Sciences and catches up with no need for an extra year. Yet his intelligence shows serious limitations. He comes from a working-class background, but does not seem to know any social inferiority either at his posh school or at the University. It might be a good thing in itself, but with Engleby it is the cause of his total disability to adjust his behaviour. Apparently he does not understand why of all new boys at school he was the only one who used the word toilet and so got his nickname. Apparently he does not understand why, when he grew strong enough to bully and torture someone younger, he chose for his victim a loveliest boy from a much higher social standing. He describes the boy’s parents and their new car, he sees the attractiveness of the whole family, yet he never mentions his envy, either social or human. The reader, however, does feel that the narrator is envious. Apparently, at Cambridge, he does not understand how different he is, in both manners and appearance, from Jennifer and her friends, although again he tells us what he knows of the girl’s much better background. In his adult life he still has not learnt either easy manners or the way to dress (the fact is especially evident in the description of his behaviour and clothes at a dinner party – first by himself and then by his host). Neither does he want or is able to learn. This social stupidity is obvious in his narration, yet he is not aware of it.

His simplemindedness seems particularly striking when he is totally incapable to understand his insignificance for Jennifer and her friends. In Ireland, where students are shooting a film, he forgets his arrogance and is ready to help with all sorts of minor practical jobs, and it is clear to the reader – but not to him! – that the team hardly notice his presence. Later he steals Jennifer’s diary, so the reader sees – though he does not!– that she is nearly unconscious of his existence, while he is trying to be near her as much as possible – accompanies her to her lectures, visits her club and the parties where she is to be seen. Later, when interrogated by the Police, he says that she was flattered and pleased by his attentions and even hints that she was a kind of a girlfriend of his. For an intelligent man, Engleby does not understand too many things.

Several times Engleby mentions how he likes being alone and prefers pubs and bars where he can be left to himself. During his preliminary custody his only friend Stellings states:

...he was a loner… at college he was always on his own, he never seemed to be with other people. In the dining hall for instance he’d quite often sit apart. He’d get his tray if it was the self-service thing and go to the end of the table and if it was formal dinner, when it was laid and you sort of had to sit next to someone, then he’d sort of take his place. But he wouldn’t try to engage anyone in conversation.

He…he didn’t seem to have any friends that I was aware of either in college or out. Though I know that he used to go out quite a bit in the evening but I don’t know where he went to [Faulks 2008: 279‒280].

Did Mike appear remote, unengaged, distant from others? Yes, I think I would say that. Next, did he have a ‘loner’ view of life? Yes, I’d definitely say yes to that, in fact it was the first word I used about him. Did he avoid social situations? Yes, I suppose probably he did. Perhaps because he was shy, but also perhaps because he thought he’d be bored, I think [Faulks 2008: 282].

To sum it all up, Engleby seems to have an autistic type of personality which brings me back to his similarity to Christopher Boone.

To add to what has already been said, both characters have behavioral problems of which both are aware. The pedantic Christopher makes a list of them. Engleby knows of his uncontrollable fits of violence as well as of gaps in his memory. Both are quite unattractive both physically and as individuals, which they are not aware of but somehow let the reader know it. By this unawareness of the way they are, yet still giving evidence against themselves, they again show their simplemindedness. In Engleby, however, what the reader has already guessed from the narrator’s text is further supported and explained sc ientifically in the report of the psychiatrist [Faulks 2008: 285‒293].

Their ethical unattractiveness is determined by the two major features. The first one is arrogance. They are both sure of their superiority. ‘All the other children at school are stupid’, says Chrstopher [Haddon 2004: 56]. Or: ‘I am going to go to university and study Mathematics, or Physics…, because I like mathematics and physics and I’m very good at them. But Terry won’t go to university. Father says Terry is most likely to end up in prison’ [Haddon 2004: 33]. Engleby is similarly arrogant in a number of situations (never with Jennifer though). Thus, not yet even accepted to Cambridge, he comments upon the questions of his interviewer:

‘I thought he must be joking. … I looked at him carefully, but he sound as though it had been a reasonable question’ [Faulks 2008: 3]. The question ‒ ‘Would you care to make a comparison between Eliot and Lawrence?’ ‒ does not seem unreasonable to me, though. It is his limited understanding that makes it sound funny. ‘What a pair of frauds’, he thinks of the two dons [Faulks 2008: 5].

And I said, ‘Im going to get an A grade. And that’s why I have to go back to Swindon. Except I don’t want to see Father. So I have to go back to Swindon with you’.

Then Mother put her hands over her face and breathed out hard, and she said, ‘I don’t know whether that’s going to be possible.’

And I said, ‘But I have to go.’

And Mother said, ‘Let’s talk about this some other time, OK?’

And I said, ‘OK. But I have to go to Swindon.’

And she said, ‘Christopher, please.’

And I drank some of my milkshake. [Haddon 2004:

Of course, one cannot but see that in spite of his gift for Maths he is just unable to put two and two together, to connect his actions with their possible effects – like a simpleton, or else like an absolute egocentric. Christopher’s deficiency, obvious to the reader – not to himself! ‒ from his own text, finds its direct manifestation in the words of Mr Shears, his frustrated stepfather: ‘Don’t you ever, ever think of other people for one second, eh? Well, I bet you’re greatly pleased with yourself now, aren’t you?’ [Haddon 2004: 252]. It is at this point in the story that for me Christopher stopped being just a poor poor boy, but I saw his unhealthiness as his tool for manipulations. It is his great luck that at least three important people in his life – his parents and his supervisor Siobhan – love him enough to understand that he just cannot be otherwise.

A similar lack of empathy is apparent in the nature of Engleby. What we gather about it from his own narration/diary helps us to make certain judgements which are only too often opposite to the way he sees the facts and events. This discrepancy presents him as a nonunderstanding unintelligent person. The reader’s judgements are then supported in the psychiatrist’s report: Throughout his life… he has had difficulty in forming even rudimentary attachment to others [Faulks 2008: 285]. He responds little to the facial expressions of others. … He admits to having been indifferent to the praise or criticism of colleagues, teachers or friends at any stage in his life. He admitted that this was because he did not value their opinions [Faulks 2008: 286]. Narcissism is continually present in the Engleby journal. It is evident in all his accounts of the intellectual processes of others, which he views with contempt. Any failings of his own, on the other hand, are attributed to the poor judgement or misinterpretation of others. … His own intellectual processes, by contrast, pass unchallenged [Faulks 2008: 289].

Unlike Christopher, Engleby is not really loved by anybody. Still he is lucky to have Margaret, an understanding woman ready to make home with him, and he is lucky to have Stellings who, in his own words, is ‘going to stick by him even if it turns out for the worst’ [Faulks 2008: 283]. He is lucky not having been caught thieving or trading narcotics. In the end, he is tremendously lucky to have a merciful Justice and the Jury and finds himself not in a proper prison but at a Special Hospital for Criminals.

Another quality of a simpleton is underdeveloped speech. In both Christopher and Engleby it is also the effect of their unwillingness and inability to empathise with people. Although Christopher thinks about language and makes some linguistic observations (again showing his limited intellect or narrow-mindedness – he fails to see that language is often irrational), his own speech is simplified and devoid of contact-establishing phrases or expressions of politeness.1 Engleby may pedantically correct other people’s speech and be a success as a journalist, but, being over thirty, completely lacks small talk.

… Poor old Mike, I think of him at that dinner party, I mean, it was, it was very funny in a way, in a cruel way, watching him floundering, and trying to talk to these people, but yeah he wasn’t able to handle that’, says his friend Stellings [Faulks 2008: 283].

‘It never occurs to him’ and ‘do not appear to him’ are the keyphrases in the psychiatrist’s report on Engleby and they could be applicable to Christopher too. They are essential for the aim of the present paper – to show that the Unreliable Narrator, if he is not a liar, cannot be really intelligent. It is the mixture of what may be taken for an intellect with actual limitations of a simpleton which makes the creations by Mark Haddon and Sebastian Faulks innovative and experimental.