In response to the horrors of World War I, the Modernist movement grew and rejected earlier movements such as Romanticism. Alienation, fragmentation, and shell shock influenced modernist writers to create complex characters, stream of consciousness, and satirical plots. This later influenced surrealism and the exploration of the complex unconscious. However, a theme not often addressed is the insincere nature of modernist characters, which is partly due to unreliable narrators. Characters like Nightwood's Doctor O'Connor (Barnes 1936) never really say or do what they mean, and it is this deceptive nature that makes the characters insincere. Thus, through an unreliable narrator, the characters in Nightwood are presented as inauthentic, which leads to an emotional disconnect between the readers and the characters. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In Nightwood, Doctor O'Connor is the most inauthentic character who says things just for the sake of saying things, but we don't don't know if there's any meaning behind it. of it. Nora Flood directly addresses this topic when O'Connor speaks to Felix and she asks, "Are you two really saying what you mean, or are you just talking?" (Barnes 21). Doctor O'Connor's surreal monologues serve several purposes, such as revealing hidden truths and forcing the reader and characters to find meaning in his ramblings. It is for this reason that Doctor O'Connor is the melancholy narrator of Nightwood who rejects the authority of the third-person omniscient narrator. Barnes' third-person narrator is the one the reader is first introduced to and accustomed to trusting. It is the narrator that “we continue to read, hoping for the narrator’s “shaping order,” a guide beyond the novel’s problematic storytellers and abject figures” (Fama 44). However, Doctor O'Connor constantly disrupts this narrator by claiming his role and speaking for himself. O'Connor is aware that "people desire the authority of narrative function, preferring both deception and narrative submission to disorder" (Fama 47). Thus, he rejects the power of the main narrator and himself takes on the role of forcing the reader to submit to his vision of the plot. It also complicates the novel and what we can believe through its incoherent ramblings. He tells Nora (and the reader), “I have a story, but you will have to find it” (Barnes 104). Overall, O'Connor offers readers only "a blend of insight and detail that defies the filtered, ordered, plotted action of finite meaning" (Fama 26), and he rarely advances the plot during his ramblings. And it is through this that Doctor O'Connor becomes not only the important voice of the narrator, but also the deceptive narrator that the reader cannot rely on. O'Connor's melancholy narration is the lens that shapes how the reader perceives many of the characters. like Robin, Felix and Nora. He manipulates the other characters by “[guiding] them toward an expression of mourning and the uses of melancholy” (Fama 46). When Felix, Nora, and O'Connor first meet, O'Connor begins his ramblings almost immediately. During one of his speeches, O'Connor offers Felix a drink. Felix replies that he doesn't drink and O'Connor says, "You will" (Barnes 26). Then he goes on to say that “there is one thing that has always troubled me…this question of the guillotine” (Barnes 26). For modernist characters, it isrunning to drink away his sorrows and his problems. By encouraging Felix to drink, O'Connor guides him toward the popular form of mourning for his own problems. O'Connor then continues a melancholy speech about death and execution. Additionally, Nora again emphasizes O'Connor's role as a melancholic narrator when she states, "you discuss sorrow and confusion too easily" (Barnes 25). O'Connor's ramblings often take a dark turn toward grief, like the story of the guillotine. This not only creates confusion in the meaning behind his stories, but also a lack of sincerity in his words, especially when he talks about other characters. However, due to its insincere dialogue, there is an emotional disconnect between the reader and these characters. The reader is forced to be less empathetic towards the characters based on the vision O'Connor presents to them. After meeting Robin Vote, Felix sits down with O'Connor in a cafe? and starts thinking about marriage. He reveals to O'Connor that he wants a son who, like him, is deeply attached to the great past and nobility. O'Connor responds with a long dialogue about nobility that ends with: "the last muscle of aristocracy is madness – remember that...the last born child of aristocracy is sometimes an idiot" (Barnes 44) . Throughout his speech, O'Connor almost mocks Felix's desire to have a son to carry on his legacy. His tangent also leaves the reader perplexed as to the meaning of his speech, in addition to suggesting that Felix's son would be "the last muscle of the aristocracy." This distracts the reader from the significant hopes that Felix reveals and with which a reader might normally sympathize. O'Connor's tool for confusing the reader removes the emotion from Felix's desires, making it difficult for the reader to sympathize with him. This also shows O'Connor's ability to deceive the reader and be unreliable when it comes to portraying characters. Additionally, characters like Nora and Felix struggle to make sense of O'Connor's dialogue: "Felix reinterprets the doctor's text and Nora asks for its meaning" (Fama 47). However, very often these characters fail to fully achieve their goal. Because O'Connor's dialogue is melancholic and confusing to the characters, Felix tries to reinterpret it in terms of nobility, a subject that is meaningful to him. During one of O'Connor's monologues, Felix attempts to imitate his melancholy speech by stating: "I love the prince who was reading a book when the executioner touched his shoulder and told him it was time , and he, rising, placed a letter opener between the pages to keep his place and closed the book” (Barnes 25). Felix turns the topic of church into discussion of the prince to try to translate what O'Connor is saying into terms he can better understand. Felix succeeds in distracting from the meaning that often follows O'Connor's speeches. However, Felix's story does not entirely match O'Connor's melancholy and is much easier to understand than the doctor's stories. This also does not seem to fully relate to O'Connor's previous dialogue, showing that Felix cannot fully understand O'Connor's ramblings despite his own words. Felix later tries again to reinterpret the doctor by stating: "his manners were those of a servant of a defunct noble family, whose movements recall, albeit in a degraded form, those of a departed master." Even the doctor's favorite gesture—plucking the hairs from his nostrils—felt like the 'popularization' of what was once considered beard plucking” (Barnes 33). Felix tries to evaluate the complex doctor in terms of nobility so that he can understand hismanners and dialogue. However, Felix's interpretation is not entirely correct because he does not understand O'Connor as a melancholic narrator. Nora, on the other hand, asks O'Connor for some sense and understanding about Robin. One particular night, Nora comes to O'Connor's room and explains, "Doctor, I have come to ask you to tell me everything you know about that night" (Barnes 86). However, Nora doesn't mean "night" literally, she wants to know more about Robin who wanders the streets at night. But O'Connor either doesn't understand this or ignores it by going on to say: “have you…ever thought about the peculiar polarity of times and epochs; and sleep? (Barnes 87). Nora's sad search for meaning is interrupted and distracted by another melancholy monologue from O'Connor. It's also another example of how O'Connor's distraction from a character's struggles contributes to the reader's loss of emotional attachment and empathy for him. Under normal circumstances, a reader might sympathize with Nora's pain and love for Robin abandoning her. However, O'Connor's ramblings mislead the reader about the purpose of Nora's visit, causing a disconnect in the meaning and emotion behind Nora's grief. O'Connor also misleads the reader when it comes to characterizing Robin Vote, who on the surface is arguably the second most inauthentic character in the novel. She “reveals herself a target for the aspirations of the narrator and other characters” (Fama 48). Robin is criticized for being a movie vamp who “possesses the ability, usually described as masculine, to separate her sexual behavior from her capacity to think and feel” (Levine 278). She switches from Felix to Nora and finally to Jenny as sources of partners and leaves them to wander the streets at night. She shows no permanent attachment to any of the characters who, conversely, are depicted as being in love with Robin. Instead of trying to explain Robin's actions, O'Connor plays on this idea, especially when he "comforts" Nora. O'Connor states that "every bed Robin carelessly leaves fills his heart with peace and happiness" (Levine 278). O'Connor portrays Robin's love and actions toward other characters as inauthentic lies that bring him joy. To further this point, when Nora asks him, “Was it a sin for me to believe her?” ", O'Connor responds, "Of course it made his life false" (Barnes 149). O'Connor deceives Nora and the reader by telling them that Robin's actions are simple and have no deeper purpose. As Fama states, "as a counterpoint to the novel's narrator, O'Connor will not play Freud in Nora's Dora." O'Connor, as an unreliable narrator, fails to reveal that "Robin's will is nonexistent" (Levine 279). Her deception forces the characters to “perceive in her the vampire to whom she is only getting closer” (Levine 279). She wanders because she is constantly bending to the will of other characters and is desperately trying to find her own will. When Felix asks Robin to marry him, “he was surprised to find himself accepted, as if Robin's life contained no desire for refusal” (Barnes 46). This results in Robin having a child she doesn't really want and leaving Felix to later find Nora. However, this shows that Robin is actually not as cruel as O'Connor portrays. She does not accept Felix's proposal to look forward to leaving him later, she accepts because her lack of will forces her not to refuse his offer. Robin's wanderings and Felix's departure mark his journey toward her, slowly rebuilding his will throughout the novel. Additionally, readers fail to see the meaning of Robin's wanderings.. 39–56.