Furthermore, how can one reconcile Kesey’s awareness of how whites mis-
treated Indians in the American Northwest with his apparent trading in ste-
reotypes in the way he uses the Chief ’s narration to represent the African
American orderlies on the ward? More generally, how do one’s answers to
these questions influence the overall ethical assessment of the novel? If one
finds—as I do—significant deficiencies in the novel’s ethical positioning of its
authorial audience, how much does that undermine one’s overall assessment
of the novel? I will not offer a definitive answer to these questions, because
I believe that different rhetorical readers can find good reasons for markedly
different answers, but I would propose that the discussion should take into
account both the positive and negative aspects of Kesey’s positioning of the
authorial audience through the bonding unreliability.
The second, third, and fourth common subtypes of bonding unreliability
are well illustrated by passages in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, so I will consider them together and then make a few remarks on their
global effects.^4 The second subtype is what I call playful comparison between
implied author and narrator. In this technique, the implied author humorously
and good-naturedly uses unreliable narration to call attention to similarities
or contrasts between himself as teller and the narrator as teller. Depending on
how the implied author develops the relation between himself and the nar-
rator, playful comparison can have either estranging or bonding effects. If,
for example, the implied author has the narrator overestimate his abilities as
a storyteller, we most likely have estranging unreliability. The first paragraph
of Twain’s novel provides an excellent example of playful comparison with
bonding effects.
You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of “The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made
by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which
he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen any-
body but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow,
or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the
Widow Douglas, is all told about in that book—which is mostly a true book,
with some stretchers, as I said before. (32)Huck is a reliable reporter about The Adventures of Tom Sawyer here, but
the question of reliability gets more interesting when we consider his roles
as reader and regarder. On the one hand, Huck is a clear authority on that
- This discussion of Huck’s narration has some overlaps with the discussion Peter J. Rabi-
nowitz and I offer in Narrative Theory (Herman, et al.).
ESTRANgINg UNRELIABILITY, BONDINg UNRELIABILITY • 105