The most dramatic consequence of this shift occurs in Joe’s narration in
chapters 19 and 20 of Clarissa’s birthday lunch and its aftermath. Jed, angry
that Joe has not acknowledged his love, hires two men to shoot Joe in the res-
taurant where Joe, Clarissa, and Clarissa’s godfather are celebrating her birth-
day. But Jed’s plan goes awry when the killers mistakenly target a man at the
next table. Here is an excerpt from Joe’s account of the event:
The two men who had stopped by the table next to ours seemed to have suf-
fered burns to the face. Their skin was a lifeless prosthetic pink, the color
of dolls or of Band-Aids, the color of no one’s skin. They shared a robotic
nullity of expression. Later we learned about the latex masks, but at the time
these men were a shocking sight, even before they acted. The arrival of the
waiter with our desserts in stainless steel bowls was temporarily soothing.
Both men wore black coats that gave them a priestly look. There was cer-
emony in their stillness. The flavor of my sorbet was lime, just to the green
side of white. . . .
A variety of [possible explanations for the presence of the two men]
unspooled before me at speed: a student stunt; vendors; the man, Colin
Tapp, was a doctor or lawyer and these were his patients or clients; some
new version of the kissogram; crazy members of the family come to embar-
rass. Around us the lunchtime uproar, which had dipped locally, was back
to level. When the taller man drew from his coat a black stick, a wand, I
inclined to the kissogram. (184–85)Notice the power McEwan gives to Joe’s perspective at the time of the
action. Although Joe the narrator knows that the men were wearing latex
masks, he describes them as having suffered from burns, as having skin the
color of no skin. What’s more, although Joe the narrator knows that the man
withdrew a gun from his pocket, he calls it a wand, and he does not include
a clarifying remark from his perspective at the time of the telling analogous
to the one in the description of the men’s faces. In fact, he goes on to say that
the man “pointed his wand” at the man at the next table, Colin Tapp, and he
only implicitly reports that the wand is a gun when he notes that “the silenced
bullet struck through [Tapp’s] white shirt at his shoulder” (185).
McEwan further emphasizes that Joe’s perspective at the time of the nar-
ration governs his telling in chapter 20, when Joe records his dialogue with
the police who are investigating the shooting. First, the authorial disclosure
across the two scenes reveals discrepancies between Joe’s account of the event
and the account offered by the waiter:
FUNCTIONS OF NARRATIVE SEgMENTS • 243