The Narrator In The Invention Of Morel

How do we know the things we are seeing or experiencing is actually real and not a figment of our imagination? This is a very important question, especially, when we are taking something that can affect or distort our reality. Drugs and alcohol are something that can distort our reality and have us struggle with trying to separate what is real and what is a figment of our imagination. In the novella The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, the narrator is struggling to tell what is real and what is not, thus making him an unreliable character. Many elements of fiction makes this person a unreliable character, from the POV of the narrator, the setting of the island, and the characterization of the narrator, all within in the plot of the

story.
One element of fiction that helps make the narrator become an unreliable character is the POV of the story. The narrator is an unreliable character who is a criminal, which causes suspicion of his behavior and thoughts. The fugitive is accused of duplicity. He is not someone we can rely on because he has some criminal behaviors and he can use it do his advantage. The narrator states, “I shall try to make statements that can be verified so that no one, knowing that I was accused of duplicity, will doubt that they condemned me unjustly,” (Casares 12). This makes him a more unreliable character because he was in trial for having a two face, it could easily imply that he was a spy of some sort. He does not have a country or a home to fall back on, his country is looking for him to imprison him and the country he may have spied for would not want him because he was caught, he was burned. The island he decide to stay on is dangerous and unhealthy. This shows how he has no place to go except for a place that is uninhabitable and brings death. The merchant even told him that the only he can go is place of death and has no other being living there. So he must have done something very treacherous for him to be in island where there should be no others. Which implements that whatever he has done, he is not someone we can know that will tell the truth, he can hide many things and lie, so, it can benefit him. On our conscious mind, we can easily bring out behaviors that are acceptable, while in the unconscious mind can hide our faults. In Saul McLeod’s article, he states, “According to Freud (1915), the unconscious mind is the primary source of human behavior. Like an iceberg, the most important part of the mind is the part you cannot see,” (McLeod’s, par. 6). So, the journey the narrator is writing is going through the conscious mind, while the unconscious mind is hidden. The narrator only states what benefits him and his character. This helps the POV become an unreliable character because the narrator says he will show his character but he can easily hide the ugliness inside his unconscious mind.
One element of fiction that helps make the narrator become an unreliable character is the setting of the story.

The island was left abandoned by some people, the merchant said, “men built a museum, a chapel, and a swimming pool on the island. The work was completed, and then abandoned,” (Casares 10). People were working at this island, it was going to be a place for people to stay or even visit but whatever the island held, it made the people run away and abandon it. They left all the hard work they put on to become a home. The merchant even says that even the Chinese pirates and the white ship of the Rockefeller Institute never goes to the island, they try to stay away from it. So, if the most smartest and the most criminal people try to stay away from it and not use it for their own benefit, there must be something wrong with the island. The merchant also states that the island “is known to be the focal point of a mysterious disease, a fatal disease that attacks the outside of the body and then works inward. The nails drop off the fingers and toes, the hair falls out,” (Casares 10). This shows signs of some type of radiation going on with the island. This can easily be a cancer growing in the body. Cancer is division of abnormal cells that spread throughout the body, it brings death and destruction. In Peter Jacob and Daniel O. Stram article, Late Health Effects of Radiation Exposure, it states “on radiation exposure in relation to risk of breast, thyroid cancer, and leukemia, cardiopulmonary events, and other late effects,” (Jacob and Stram

673).