Doctor O'Connor in His Labyrinth: Unreliable Narrators in Nightwood Sarah G Neumann College

In response to the horrors of World War I, the modernism movement rose and rejected previous movements like 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 mind. However, a theme not often discussed is the insincere nature of modernist characters which is partly due to unreliable narrators. Characters like Doctor O’Connor from Nightwood (Barnes 1936) never truly say or do what they mean, and it is this deceptive nature that makes the characters insincere. So, through an unreliable narrator characters from Nightwood are exhibited as inauthentic which leads to an emotional disconnect between readers and characters.

In Nightwood, Doctor O’Connor is the most inauthentic character who says things just to say things but it’s unclear if he has any meaning behind any of it. Nora Flood directly addresses this when O’Connor is talking to Felix and she asks, “are you both really saying what you mean, or are you just talking?” (Barnes 21). Doctor O’Connor’s Surrealist monologues serve multiple purposes like revealing hidden truths and forcing both...