Unreliable Minds in ‘Is this Your Day?’

[PASSAGE REMOVED FOR COPYRIGHT. FOR FULL REFERENCE SEE, VALENTINE [2009] 2012: p. 273, ll. 234-242]

P2. I don’t think we are supposed to believe Randall

P3. What, surely not? Oh actually, never mind. He’s lying, obviously

P4. N/A

It is interesting here that, despite participants not having any contact with each other during this process and responding individually to the text from separate spatio-temporal locations, there is clear evidence of a shared response. All three participants report disbelief in both the text-world events and Randall’s character at this point, suggesting a sense of intrinsic unreliability. This sense of a shared interpretation continues in the following section of the think-aloud as Randall reveals more of the Department’s deceit:

[PASSAGE REMOVED FOR COPYRIGHT. FOR FULL REFERENCE SEE, VALENTINE [2009] 2012: p. 273, ll. 243-251]

It is particularly interesting at this point that all three participants model the mind of Liz during their reported responses. For example, Participant 1 infers that Liz is in danger and imagines possible ‘bargaining chips’ she may use to allay any repercussions. Participants 2 and 3, in contrast, both suggest a shared viewpoint with Liz, that Mr. Randall is lying, exemplified by the collective use of the adverb ‘too’ (‘knew it. I’m glad she does too’, ‘Liz realises he is lying too’), which implies a shared sense of empathy and perception with her character. The participants therefore attribute cognitive processes to Liz, inferred from her free indirect thought at the end of the passage, in which she notes Randall’s ignorance of her full interaction with Johnny. In sharing Liz’s perspective, and modelling her responses, Participants 2 and 3 therefore conclude that Randall is an unreliable character.

The group’s overall responses to ‘Is this your day?’ ([2009] 2012), its unreliable characters and indeterminate worlds are summarised in the ‘additional thoughts’ section of the think-aloud, which allowed participants to reflect retrospectively on their experiences of reading the short story. The group’s feelings of estrangement remain present in these final commentaries evidenced by the shared descriptions of lingering confusion, doubt or concerns for a lack of narrative texture. The full concluding responses are reproduced below:

The participants also used this space to reflect upon their emotional responses to the narrative and provide closing evaluative comments on the experience of reading the text. These responses were notably varied and identified the participant’s preferences for plot structure, development and thematic concerns. Participant 2 concludes that the story was ‘terrific’ and that the ending in particular was ‘amazing’. In contrast to Participant 3, who felt the narrative was ‘rushed’ and did not like the ‘shortness’ of the story, Participant 2 felt the ‘lack of exposition was great’. Participant 3’s emotional responses veer more towards the negative, evidenced by additional evaluative adjectives such as ‘clichéd’ to describe the plot. She also directly reports having no emotional response to the narrative, which is interesting to note given her earlier empathic responses to Liz’s character. Although Participant 4 avoids any evaluative commentary concerning her enjoyment of the text, she does conclude that the narrative was memorable, noting: ‘the lack of answers or any real conclusion in the ending will definitely stay with me for some time’. In all four instances, the estranging nature of the narrative, particularly in terms of its unexplained world-building elements, produces some kind of emotional response in the reader and certainly affects their overall interpretations of the narrative.

The incorporation of think-aloud data to my overall discussion of dystopian reading developed this analysis further, as I examined the similarly estranging reading experiences of four postgraduate readers. By investigating their responses to the unexplained world-builders that populate the text-world and the lack of reliable content, I highlighted the emotional affects of estranging narrative techniques and the additional cognitive effort required of readers to engage with this particular narrative. I have also drawn upon the think-aloud data to reflect on the unreliable minds within the text and the particular unreliability of Liz’s clouded perspective.

‘Dead Fish’ zones-in on four interconnected events each of which presents the vulnerabilities of three such familial units as they struggle against the effects of environmental and social disaster. Each of the narrative events occurs at the same moment in time, on the same day of an unknown year. The events are spatially distinct and involve different sets of enactors, yet combine to present a unique vision of a cruel and dying future world. The key event which structures the narrative depicts a crime chase between a young boy and a group of police officers. Whilst following the crime chase, the reader is directed to observe three other interconnecting events, each of which present defamiliarising visions of future life: a mother trying to purchase the now stolen fish; a couple in the midst of an affair; and a poverty stricken family trying to stave off starvation on the edges of the city. It is only by moving through each of these text-worlds that the reader can conceptualise the world as a whole, which as a result of bombing and environmental decay is polluted and overrun by a carnivorous form of green algae, fungi and disease carrying spores.

Given such world-building elements and the environmental anxieties addressed by the narrative, namely the effects of nuclear warfare, pollution and agricultural decline, the text, like ‘Pump Six’, is representative of an ecodystopia (see Section 2.2.3). In a similar way to ‘Pump Six’, the narrative posits an array of possible future outcomes that are catalysed by ecological disaster and the neglect of environmental affairs in the ‘past’ of the current text-world. As Otto (2014: 181) astutely points out, the past of most typical dystopian narratives is representative of the reader’s real-world present, with ‘the story’s dystopian nova […] [cueing] us to think about this present as having a role in bringing about a certain kind of future.’ Like ‘Pump Six’, ‘Dead Fish’ posits an ethically encoded preferred response (see Section 6.2; also Stockwell, 2009), encouraging readers to reassess their own experiential discourse-worlds and inviting them to challenge the consequences of real-world environmental and political anxieties. In the analysis that follows, I argue that it is the combined experience of conceptualising the estranging text-worlds of ‘Dead Fish’ (in line with such discourse-text-world mappings), and the invitation to project into the text-world itself, that encourages the reader to engage with Marek’s eco-political message.
8.1.1 The Text-Worlds of ‘Dead Fish’
‘Dead Fish’ opens in medias res, in the middle of a crime chase between a young boy, Rupi, and a group of police officers. The boy has stolen a fish from a street market in an unspecified city on the border of a canal. The theft itself is the first indication that the world depicted is distinct from the reader’s discourse-world, given the inferred severity of the boy’s crime. The text-world fish, it is revealed, is particularly rare given the lack of edible meat protein or animal life within the text-world – a world in which ‘fisherman’s lines have hung dead for decades’ (Appendix F: 39-40), and all fish are resultantly ‘special’ (Appendix F: 37). The rarity of the fish is the first in several estranging world-building elements that, in Spiegel’s (2008) terms, prompt ‘deictic estrangement’ (see Chapter 5) as the fish, which is a common product in 2016 is an unfamiliar luxury for the text-world enactors. The fish is therefore an indirect part of the story’s iconic textual register (Moylan, 2000), and despite its not being a narrative novum (Suvin, 1979), prompts an estranged readerly response given the characters’ awed and untypical perception of it (see also, Otto, 2012: 9-10).

During the chase, the reader is directed towards the decaying backdrop of the unspecified city, with fleeting, albeit detailed references to the environmental trauma evident in this particular world, such as the various fungi and moss that cover the city’s crumbling infrastructure. The reader is also introduced to four other sets of enactors who inhabit four additional text-world locations: Alice; Morris and Danya; Rupi’s family; and his brothers. The first enactor, Alice, is shopping in the market from which Rupi is running, attempting to purchase the eponymous fish to cook for a dinner party later in the evening. Alice needs the fish to cook for her son’s future headmaster in order to secure both the master’s favour and a school place for her son at St. Nathan’s, five years in her relative future. The alternative is for her child to attend John Hopworth’s, an academy in which teachers have been ‘burned alive’ (Appendix F: 60) and are traditionally ‘balded’ (Appendix F: 62) by students on their first day. The fish is therefore given increased status during the ‘Alice strand’ of the story, as not only is the fish rare but also if purchased, could determine a safer future for Alice’s family.

The third narrative strand focuses on the actions of Morris and Danya, who occupy an indistinct apartment alongside the canal. The couple’s spatial location is implied by the use of the verb ‘linger’ – ‘indulge me for a second as we linger at an apartment window’ (Appendix F: 88-89) – which implies that the narrator has paused somewhere behind Rupi. The apartment is covered in moss and home to a multitude of fungal spores further evidencing the ubiquity of environmental decay within the text-worlds. The couple, who are depicted mid-coitus, appear to be suffering from a fungal-induced infection and highlight the societal fears of conceiving a child. The pair’s narrative therefore adds a further dimension to the decaying world of the text, highlighting themes such as the spread of contagion and concerns for population growth.

The fourth narrative strand zones-in on Rupi’s family, who occupy a small run-down property on the edges of the city, and depicts a landscape in an even greater state of environmental decline than the opening text-world. It is during these scenes that the reader is introduced to the contextual background of the narrative. It is revealed that that the city has been subject to a bombing, which has destroyed much of the city’s architecture, ‘brought underground rivers to the surface and made a misery factory of the suburbs’ (Appendix F: 115-6). Rupi’s family, who all share a ‘crumpled’ (Appendix F: 122) house, are struggling to find food in this environment, having access only to the ‘muddy crayfish’ (Appendix F: 40-1) that the rest of the city will not deign to eat. Between flashes of Rupi’s family home the reader is also introduced to Rupi’s brothers who are awaiting his arrival above the city’s canal. This is the fifth and final narrative strand. Upon reaching them, the boys ambush Rupi’s pursuers, ensnaring them in a net and drowning them in the canal. The story concludes as the boys drag the men out of the water and leave them unceremoniously on the canal-side.

Richardson (2015: 202) examines the relationship between such anti-mimetic first-person perspectives when discussing the alternating first-person/ first-person plural narrator in Joseph Conrad’s ([1897] 2007) The Nigger of the Narcissus, who appears to be both an omniscient form of consciousness and also a character aboard the ‘Narcissus’ (a merchant marine vessel). He argues that ‘if the narrator is a character on the ship, he cannot enter the minds of others or report conversations he has not observed; if he is omniscient, he is not a participant in the text’s story world’ (Richardson, 2015: 202). This poses some interesting questions about the narrative voice in ‘Dead Fish’, as the narrator most certainly acts as an omniscient voice, with access to the minds of other enactors, yet firmly positions himself as being internal to the text-world thereby violating, in Heinze’s (2008) terms, the mimetic epistemology of first-person narration.

In addition to posing such contradictions in terms of the narration itself, the narrator is equally ambiguous as a text-world enactor. He remains unnamed throughout the narrative and my use of masculine pronouns is reflective only of my own interpretation; the narrator’s gender, or lack thereof, is equally unspecified throughout. In addition to his ambiguous identity, the narrator is also ontologically equivocal, both in terms of his species and his overall vital status – seeming at once to be both dead and alive. He has the ability to project the thoughts and indirect speech of each text-world enactor and can move between the individual text-worlds at great speed, so much so that the city around him ‘blurs’ (Appendix F: 108). He is of questionable size, being able to ‘slide’ (‘slide with me down the seam of Alice’s long jacket’ (Appendix F: 69)) and ‘skip’ (‘skip straight over her ankle to her blister-red shoes’ (Appendix F: 70-71) over a human body unnoticed, adding additional characteristics of weightlessness and invisibility to my own construal of his character. Finally, he also possesses heightened senses, being able to see through windows ‘too greened up for anyone else to see […] inside’ (Appendix F: 89-90) and ‘smell the stolen trout stuffed inside [Rupi’s] jacket’ (Appendix F: 9-10), both of which distinguish him from the overtly human characters in the text-world.

‘Dead Fish’ is clearly presented, then, by what Iversen (2013: 97) has termed an ‘unnatural mind’ (see also, Alber et al., 2010: 119-124). An unnatural mind, he argues, ‘is a presented consciousness that in its function or realizations violates the rules governing the possible world it is part of in a way that resists naturalization or conventionalization’ (Iversen, 2013: 97). As previously outlined, the narrator of the story presents several such functions that violate the rules of Marek’s possible world, enacting unnatural material and cognitive processes (e.g. can move at inhuman speed, can see through opaque objects), which cannot be naturalised by the surrounding text-world. Although the text presents a fictional world that is, at its core, science fictional, the world provides no other significant textual cues that suggest the narrator’s behaviour is normal, expected, or a consequence of previous text-world events.

The combination of such an unusual narrative voice alongside the narrative’s anti-mimetic timeline arguably identifies ‘Dead Fish’ as being an ‘unnatural narrative’. An unnatural narrative, in Richardson’s (2011: 34) terms, is a narrative that contains a number of anti-mimetic features, ‘that conspicuously violat[e] conventions of standard narrative forms’ (see also Alber et al., 2013: 143-144). Alber (2009: 80) further restricts the term to ‘[denote] physically impossible scenarios and events, that is, impossible by the known laws governing the physical world’. ‘Dead Fish’ clearly fits with such definitions, violating the mimetic conventions of ‘natural’ narrative (see Fludernik, 2002), both in terms of the narrator’s impossible omniscience and his ontological ambiguity. As Alber et al. (2010: 114) go on to argue, unnatural narratives ‘may radically deconstruct the anthropomorphic narrator, the traditional human character, and the minds associated with them’. All three of these characteristics are evident in ‘Dead Fish’, which is not only communicated by a non-traditional, non-human narrator, but goes on to present an equally unnatural set of minds that are similar to the narrative voice.

To add further to this sense of unnaturalness, the narrator distinguishes himself throughout the narrative as part of a homogenous group of entities referred to by the first-person plural pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’. The ‘we’, in Richardson’s (2015: 201) terms, is ‘not universal but circumscribed’, denoting an inclusive set of beings that share a similar world-view and ontological status. According to Richardson (2006: 38), ‘virtually no first person plural narrative discloses its membership at the outset; there is always a bit of drama as the reader determines just who this “we” is’. This is certainly true of ‘Dead Fish’; the ‘we’ remain obscure throughout the narrative and are described in various stages of ‘empathic recognisability’ (Stockwell, 2009: 25), appearing at once to be abstractions (‘we are aberrations of light, symptoms of exhaustion’ (Appendix F: 189-90)), animal-like (‘perched upon the roofs’ (Appendix F: 142-143)), and human, in that they can talk and are fully sentient.

Stockwell (2009: 24-25) argues that human speakers and hearers (because of their familiarity and activeness) tend to be more figural during reading than animals, objects or abstractions. It is interesting, then, that the ‘we’, who move up and down Stockwell’s (2009) empathy scale, becoming more or less empathetically familiar as the narrative progresses, remained a salient textual attractor throughout my own reading of the narrative. Each additional character-advancing proposition used to describe the ‘we’ (e.g. ‘they are almost as invisible as we are’ (Appendix F: 136-137), ‘we are all so light we could not break the thinnest neck of the thinnest fungus’ (Appendix F: 143-145)) only increased my interest in who or what the beings were and added to the estranging experience of reading the narrative. The ‘we’ are also figured in the readings of several professional reviewers who vaguely describe the ‘we’ in terms of the paranormal, as a ‘bizarre group of seemingly supernatural entities’ (Morris, 2012: n.p.) who possess an ‘almost spiritual viewpoint’ (Balloch, 2012: n.p.). However, the use of words of estrangement within both these examples – ‘seemingly’ and ‘almost’ – exemplifies that such interpretations are speculative and cannot be confirmed within the linguistic parameters of the text. It is the ambiguity of the characters’ ontological status, rather than their being recognisable, that positions the ‘we’ as a strong textual attractor. In this instance, the characters’ ‘aesthetic distance from the norm’ (Stockwell, 2009: 25), in that they are both strange and alien referents, outweighs their lack of empathetic recognisability.

Such an argument is supported by the discussions of my reading group participants, who were consistently concerned with the identity of the ‘we’. Throughout their discourse the participants attributed a variety of impossible mind-styles to the characters, describing them in terms of supernatural beings (e.g. ‘ghosts’, ‘dead policemen’, ‘ghost spores’); animals (e.g. ‘birds’); non-human entities (e.g. ‘sentient fungus’, ‘spores’, ‘floating semen’, ‘a weird fungus hive mind’) and posthuman species (e.g. ‘spore people’). Each of these interpretations is suggestive of an unnatural form of consciousness that is ascribed to the ‘we’ on the basis of personal inferences. These inferences in turn are based upon each reader’s text-driven discourse-world knowledge, which is triggered by specific linguistic cues in the text. For example, the entities are described in line 142 as ‘perched’ (P8. ‘I wondered if they’re like birds’), in line 144 as ‘light’ (P8 ‘when I read that […] I’d written like ghosts or something similar to that’) and are seemingly non-corporeal (P6. ‘are we spores are we just like floating’) (see Appendix B for broader conversational context). The group’s discussions, like my own reading, produced no decisive interpretations and concluded with a similar sense of uncertainty – ‘are we a weird fungus hive mind?’, Participant 6 asks, ‘I just don’t know’.