point where Jed’s presence has already seriously disrupted Joe’s relationship
with Clarissa and at a point where rhetorical readers’ relationship to Joe and
his judgments about Jed need some shoring up. Prior to the letter, McEwan
has used Joe’s account of his own behavior (e.g., concealing from Clarissa Jed’s
first phone call to him the night after their chance meeting, erasing Jed’s many
messages from the answering machine) in conjunction with scenes of dialogue
between Joe and Clarissa, including their serious row in chapter 9, to show
how deeply and negatively Joe the character is affected by Jed and to open
the possibility that Joe the narrator is at least partly unreliable in his inter-
pretations of Jed as a dangerous stalker. While the letter does not resolve all
the audience’s questions about either Joe’s behavior or his reliability, McEwan
uses it both to confirm that Joe is right about Jed’s obsession with him and
to demonstrate that Joe’s efforts to correct Jed’s perceptions of him are futile.
Since the audience’s sympathies lie strongly with Joe, Jed’s expression of his
delusional attachment functions as an instance of estranging unreliability that
deepens the audience’s connection with Joe and further distances it from Jed.
Jed’s letter in Appendix II, however, exists alongside—and after—the two
other segments of the novel rather than inside one of them, and as a result,
its formal similarities to the first letter have different, more layered effects.
Coming to it at the end of the novel, McEwan’s audience once again registers
the colossal nature of Jed’s delusion as reflected in his unreliable reporting,
interpreting, and evaluating. Every claim Jed makes about Joe lacks connec-
tion to reality in the storyworld. Joe has no interest in being led to God. Joe
does not love Jed. Joe does not accept Jed. Joe does not recognize what Jed is
doing. Joe does not communicate with Jed. As a result, the unreliability again
has estranging effects.
But McEwan’s audience also recognizes that Jed’s delusion enables him
to rise above the unsavory conditions of his life in the institution, and this
recognition leads to some bonding effects. Indeed, there is something deeply
touching about Jed’s effusions, something simultaneously uplifting and sad: he
experiences a deep, even enviable joy, yet that joy depends on a delusion so
powerful that he belongs in this secure hospital.
On the ethical level, Jed’s unreliability also has both estranging and bond-
ing effects. Since the audience has seen the consequences of Jed’s obsession,
we can’t help but find something disturbing in Jed’s emphasis on the duration
of his love (one thousand days with no response). At the same time, because
the audience knows from Appendix I that Jed’s letter will never be delivered
and that Joe and Clarissa have reconciled, we can find something admirable
in Jed’s expression of the continuing purity and intensity of his unselfish love.
In this respect, Jed’s letter conforms to the description of a possible letter from
FUNCTIONS OF NARRATIVE SEgMENTS • 255