Blog 9 AZ

I feel that the narrator in the short story "The Madagascar Plum" is an unreliable narrator. In the first paragraph of the introduction it states that "The Madagascar Plum takes place in a cafe, where a former officer of the Sai Gon army recounts the cause of his post-traumatic stress". So from the very begining we realize that the narrator is suffering from PTSD and is having a hard time dealing with real life after the war. In the first paragraph we see that he freaks out after being offered a madagascar plum. This is not typical behavior after being offered a piece of fruit. Also, the fact that the narrator is a former officer of the Sai Gon army indicates that the story may be biased.

Another factor that leads to the unreliableness of this story is that the narrator is drunk or drinking throughout most of the story. For example he says "Pour me another drink, and when I've finished it, I'll tell you the story". This quote shows that in order for the narrator to tell the details of a story, he needs to be under the influence. He also states later that the night where he killed the girl "if I hadn't been under the devilish influence of alcohol it wouldn't have turned out the way it did". This quote indicates that the narrator was extremly drunk that night and when one is that drunk they often black out, or remember things differently than how they really happened.

The narrator is also bitter from the fact that is was a child that the cook found instead of a dog. The narrator says "Wouldn't it be better to have found a dog rather than a child?" (3).This shows us that from the first instance where he was introduced to the child, she had done nothing at all, and he already dispised her. He tries to make the reader think that she is bad, before she has even made a movement or even muttered a word.

Also the fact the narrator was seeing things makes his story less reliable. For example he says that he saw "the two dear faces of Nam and Phong" in the child's face. This shows that the narrator was a little out of his mind and not seeing things clearly.

Seeing the narrator as an unreliable source makes me view the story as a piece of fiction. It makes me hesitant to take any sort of fact or description he tells as the truth. It also makes me question his thoughts and instincts about the whole situation. First of all, any war story is subject to unreliability. Secondly a war story coming from a soldier that suffers from PTSD is custom to even more unreliability. Also the fact that this incident took place under the influence of alcohol makes the whole picture even foggier and unreliable.