Craziness

So the book was pretty much crazy. The end was a bit more so. But, like we discussed in class, Gould's craziness is justified by his experiences and the dehumanizing things he has gone through. However, it is still unknown exactly how much of his narrative is true, since his aliases include many of the characters in the novel, including characters that supposedly tormented him. It is possible that he made up these identities and said that they tortured him so that even when he was tortured, he believes that he is also the torturer, which gives him power in some place in his mind. Gould's descent into madness is hinted at throughout the book, and becomes more and more apparent as the novel begins to end. The point at which I realized that everything was in his head was when Gould found his own story and the registry papers stating that he was mad, but burned them instead of investigating them further, as they clearly had information about him (336). At this point, Gould's craziness and his denial of the deterioration of his mental health. Of course, it is quite possible that the escape from the prison where he went on a quest to find Brady was also all in his head.

The unreliability of Gould's narrative makes this book very hard to read. I, for one, am accustomed to being able to at least believe the events that the narrator is talking about actually occurred, though possibly with a bias. However, this novel puts a whole new twist on the concept of unreliable narrators. Because Gould does not himself know what is happening, as his mental health is very poor, it is very difficult for the reader to decipher what is real and what is not. This inability to know what we can believe caused many of the difficulties in reading the book. Though what Gould narrates is not reality, he sincerely believes it is real, so we can read this novel in his perspective and gain insight into his way of thinking by accepting what he says as true.