“The Madagascar Plum” written by Nguyen thi Minh Ngoc takes place in a café with a former Sai Gon army officer telling a story in order to explain his PTSD. Like most of the war stories there is the man I killed, but in this particular case it is a child whom the officer has killed.
Throughout the short story, the reader constantly wonders if the narrator is reliable or not, but as the tale unfolds it becomes clear that the Sai Gon army officer is not reliable. The first reason that the narrator seems to be unreliable is because of his dependence on alcohol. After the war many of the soldiers turned to alcohol to cope with their problems, and this narrator is no different. In the second paragraph he asks the waitress to pour him another drink so that he could forget what the color of the plum symbolized to him. As the story progresses there are several more examples that pertain to drinking such as, “The night that if I hadn’t been under the devilish influence of alcohol wouldn’t have turned out the way it did.”(5), “The longer I remained inside, the more I lapsed into a stupor and the foggier I became.” (6), and “My wife nags me that I’m an alcoholic…How can I forget if I don’t have liquor” (8). These are three different instances in which the narrator is under the influence of alcohol which can distort his perception of reality. With such a dependency on alcohol, it makes the reader question the validity of the narrator’s thoughts and feelings.
The second reason that the narrator can be portrayed as unreliable is due to the symptoms of his post-traumatic stress disorder. In the opening paragraph he writes, “Offer me anything but that fruit, please, I beg of you,” (1). Although it is just a fruit, the brown-red color from the fruit reminds the man of the child he killed and her brown skin. As a result of his PTSD, the narrator, “Mutilated [his] own body,” (8). If the man is able to cut off his leg because of the stress he suffers, his mind is clearly not rational. Therefore, everything that he has said must be taken with a grain of salt.
After reading the story, I found the narrator to be unreliable which influenced the way that I interpreted “The Madagascar Plum”. Instead of taking this work to be a personal account, I have taken it as a form of fiction because of his instability. In the section where Nam and Phong went to chase the small child, the narrator was in a drunken stupor. Most people who are drunk view the world differently and they tend to forget things that otherwise sober people would see and remember. This made it hard for me to believe everything that the narrator was saying.
The last thing that I noticed is the lack of detail in which the narrator divulges. Although this maybe a explained by his PTSD, the narrator does not tell the reader where the girl is coming from, why he thinks she is taking things, and what happens to her family after she is killed. This lack of detail brings the reader to just read the surface story and not the meaning that lies underneath.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
“The Madagascar Plum” written by Nguyen thi Minh Ngoc takes place in a café with a former Sai Gon army officer telling a story in order to explain his PTSD. Like most of the war stories there is the man I killed, but in this particular case it is a child whom the officer has killed.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the short story, the reader constantly wonders if the narrator is reliable or not, but as the tale unfolds it becomes clear that the Sai Gon army officer is not reliable. The first reason that the narrator seems to be unreliable is because of his dependence on alcohol. After the war many of the soldiers turned to alcohol to cope with their problems, and this narrator is no different. In the second paragraph he asks the waitress to pour him another drink so that he could forget what the color of the plum symbolized to him. As the story progresses there are several more examples that pertain to drinking such as, “The night that if I hadn’t been under the devilish influence of alcohol wouldn’t have turned out the way it did.”(5), “The longer I remained inside, the more I lapsed into a stupor and the foggier I became.” (6), and “My wife nags me that I’m an alcoholic…How can I forget if I don’t have liquor” (8). These are three different instances in which the narrator is under the influence of alcohol and this can distort his perception of reality. With such a dependency on alcohol, it makes the reader question the validity of the narrator’s thoughts and feelings.
The second reason that the narrator can be portrayed as unreliable is due to the symptoms of his post-traumatic stress disorder. In the opening paragraph he writes, “Offer me anything but that fruit, please, I beg of you,” (1). Although it is just a fruit, the brown-red color from the fruit reminds the man of the child he killed and her brown skin. As a result of his PTSD, the narrator, “Mutilated [his] own body,” (8). If the man is able to cut off his leg because of the stress he suffers, his mind is clearly not rational. Therefore, everything that he has said must be taken with a grain of salt.
After reading the story, I found the narrator to be unreliable which influenced the way that I interpreted “The Madagascar Plum”. Instead of taking this work to be a personal account, I have taken it as a form of fiction. In the section where Nam and Phong went to chase the small child, the narrator was in a drunken stupor. Most people who are drunk view the world differently and they tend to forget things that otherwise sober people would see and remember. This made it hard for me to believe everything that the narrator was saying.
The last thing that I noticed is the lack of detail in which the narrator divulges. Although this maybe a explained by his PTSD, the narrator does not tell the reader where the girl is coming from, why he thinks she is taking things, and what happens to her family after she is killed. This lack of detail brings the reader to just read the surface story and not the meaning that lies underneath.