Unreliability Under The Cover Of Fantasy In Slow Man

Nobel laureates in Literature and Booker prize winner J.M.Coetzee is a famous contemporary writer from South Africa. He has various literary styles. In Slow Man, he put seemingly ordinary details into an extremely simple story. However, he uses these details to hold up significant subjects of life, such as aging, disability, sense of belonging, family, desire, etc. to encourage readers to thinks about the ultimate meaning of life.At home or abroad, studies of Slow Man is not very much. Most of them use Slow Man as one of the examples of Coetzee’s fictions to analyze the ethics, cultural identity and humanity, etc. in his story. Because Coetzee is from South Africa, many of his fictions are analyzed from the perspective of post-colonialism. Several of them are themed by the dialogical relationship, narratological analysis, artistic characters and meta-fiction interpretation. There is almost no papers that focus on the analysis of unreliable narration in Slow Man. This thesis aims to explore new meanings by applying unreliable narrative methods.Studies of unreliable narration are divided into two parties:rhetorical scholars that focus on author and texts and cognitive scholars that focus on readers. Each of the two approaches has strength and weakness. The combination of these two approaches has become a trend. This papers aims to make the best of both worlds. First, it summarizes the complicate developing history of unreliable narration, and then adapts the concept of implied author from the former and the concept of reader from the latter to do the research. It examines Costello’s existence and her purpose of coming into Paul’s life. Proof will be listed in the paper to prove that Costello is just an alter ego of Paul. Paul’s involvement with the Jokic family is only a breeding ground for his imaginary role as a protector and spiritual godfather. It gives him the wrong impression that he is still strong, powerful and reliable. His lack of love and sense of belonging that intensified by his accident is also analyzed. Apart from that, the author will discuss the illusion of love and sex through Marianna, Marijana and Costello. Evidences are found to prove that Paul is indulging in his illusions after the accident. By doing this, this paper reveals the unreliability under the cover of Paul’s fantasy.In the last part, the literary effects of unreliable narration from the perspective of both distance control and narratology are both mentioned in this paper to show the significance of this writing technique. Then, this paper analyzes the reliability of unreliability. In Slow Man, the narrators are both reliable and unreliable as the story advances, drawing from which the conclusion that unreliability is not absolute.By revealing the unreliability under the cover of fantasy in Slow Man, the themes of Coetzee’s story becomes more prominent. And, we can have deeper understanding of unreliable narration and its literary significance.