In response to the horrors of World War I, the modernist movement arose and rejected earlier movements such as Romanticism. Alienation, fragmentation, and shock influenced modernist writers in creating complex characters, stream-of-consciousness, and satirical plots. This later influenced surrealism and the exploration of the complex unconscious mind. However, a theme not often discussed is the false nature of modernist characters, partly due to unreliable narrators. Characters like Doctor O'Connor in Nightwood (Barnes 1936) never really say or do what they mean, and it is this deceptive nature that makes the characters insincere. Then, through an unreliable narrator, the characters in Nightwood are shown as inauthentic, which leads to an emotional disconnect between readers and characters. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In Nightwood, Dr. O'Connor is the most inauthentic character who says things just to say things, but it's unclear if he has any meaning behind it. Nora Flood directly addresses this topic when O'Connor is talking to Felix and asks, "are you both really saying what you mean or are you just talking?" (Barnes 21). Dr. O'Connor's surrealist monologues serve multiple purposes, such as revealing hidden truths and forcing both the reader and characters to find meaning in his ramblings. It is for this reason that Dr. O'Connor is the melancholy narrator of Nightwood who rejects the authority of the third-person omniscient narrator. Barnes' third-person narrator is the one the reader is introduced to first and is trained to trust. This is the narrator who “we continue to read, hoping for the narrator's “formation of order,” a guide beyond the novel's problematic narrators and abject figures” (Fame 44). However, Dr. O'Connor constantly interrupts this narrator by claiming his role and speaking for himself. O'Connor is aware that “people desire the authority of the narrative function, preferring both deception and narrative submission to disorder” (Fama 47). Thus, he rejects the power of the main narrator and takes on his role to force the reader to submit to his vision of the plot. It also complicates the novel and what we can believe through its incoherent digressions. He tells Nora (and the reader), “I have a narrative, but you will have to find it” (Barnes 104). Overall O'Connor offers readers only "a mix of insights and details that defy the filtered, ordered, and plotted action of finite meaning" (Fame 26), and rarely advances the plot during his digressions. And it is through this that Dr. O'Connor not only becomes the prominent narrator, but also the deceptive narrator that the reader cannot rely on. O'Connor's wistful narration is the lens that shapes how the reader sees many of the characters. like Robin, Felix and Nora. He manipulates the other characters “[guiding them] towards an expression of mourning and uses of melancholy” (Fama 46). When Felix, Nora, and O'Connor first meet, O'Connor begins his ramblings almost immediately. During one of his speeches O'Connor offers Felix a drink. Felix responds that he doesn't drink and O'Connor states, "You will" (Barnes 26). He then goes on to state that “there is one thing that has always troubled me…this business of the guillotine” (Barnes 26). Drinking away one's sorrows and problems is common for modernist characters. By encouraging Felix to drink, O'Connor is leading Felix into the popular form of mourning his problems. O'Connor then continues a melancholy speech about death and execution. Furthermore, Nora points outagain O'Connor's role as a melancholic narrator when he states, "you discuss pain and confusion too easily" (Barnes 25). O'Connor's ramblings often take a dark turn toward pain, like the story of the guillotine. This creates not only confusion in the meaning behind his stories, but also insincerity in his words, especially when talking about other characters. However, due to its insincere dialogue, there is an emotional disconnect between the reader and those characters. The reader is forced to be less empathetic towards the characters based on the point of view presented by O'Connor. After meeting Robin Vote, Felix sits down with O'Connor at a bar. and begins to think about marriage. He reveals to O'Connor that he wants a son who has a strong feeling for the great past and nobility like him. O'Connor responds with a long dialogue about nobility that ends with "the last muscle of the aristocracy is madness - remember that...the last born son into the aristocracy is sometimes an idiot" (Barnes 44). Throughout his speech O'Connor is almost making fun of Felix's desire to have a son to carry on his legacy. His tangent also leaves the reader confused as to what the point of his speech is, as well as suggesting that Felix's son would be "the last muscle of the aristocracy." This distracts the reader from the significant hopes that Felix reveals and with which a reader might normally sympathize. O'Connor's device to confuse the reader removes the emotion from Felix's desires making it difficult for the reader to empathize with him. This also demonstrates O'Connor's ability to deceive the reader and be unreliable when it comes to portraying characters. Additionally, characters like Nora and Felix struggle to make sense of O'Connor's dialogue: “Felix reinterprets the doctor's text and Nora demands its meaning. meaning” (Fama 47). However, very often these characters do not fully succeed in achieving their goal. Because O'Connor's dialogue is melancholy and confuses the meaning of the characters, Felix tries to reinterpret it in terms of nobility, which is a topic that makes sense to him. During one of O'Connor's monologues, Felix tries to imitate his melancholy speech by stating: “I like the prince who was reading a book when the hangman touched him on the shoulder and told him it was time, and he, rising, placed a letter opener between the pages to hold its place and closed the book” (Barnes 25). Felix turns the topic of the church into a discussion about the prince to try to fit what O'Connor is saying into terms he can better understand. Felix manages to provide the distraction from the meaning that often follows O'Connor's speeches. However, Felix's story does not fully match O'Connor's melancholy and is much easier to understand than the doctor's stories. It also doesn't seem to be completely related to O'Connor's previous dialogue, showing that Felix fails to fully understand O'Connor's ramblings despite trying to put them in his own terms. Felix later tries again to reinterpret the doctor by stating: "his manners were those of a servant of a deceased noble family, whose movements resemble, albeit in a degraded form, those of a deceased master. Even the doctor's favorite gesture – plucking the hair from the nostrils – seemed like the “vulgarization” of what was once thoughtful plucking of the beard” (Barnes Felix tries to evaluate the medical complex in terms of nobility so that mannerisms can be understood and the doctor's dialogue.However, Felix's interpretation is not entirely correct because he does not understand O'Connor in terms of a melancholic narrator one nightparticular Nora comes to O'Connor's room and explains, "Doctor, I came to ask you to tell me everything you know about that night" (Barnes 86). However, Nora doesn't literally mean "night", she wants to know about Robin wandering the streets at night. But O’Connor either doesn’t understand this or ignores it as he goes on to say, “have you…ever thought about the peculiar polarity of times and times; and about sleep?" (Barnes 87). Nora's painful search for meaning is interrupted and distracted by another melancholic monologue from O'Connor. This is another example of how O'Connor's distraction from a character's difficulties contributes to the reader's loss of emotional attachment and empathy for him. Under normal circumstances, a reader might sympathize with Nora's pain and love for Robin abandoning her. However, O'Connor's ramblings mislead the reader regarding the purpose of Nora's visit, which causes a disconnect in the meaning and emotion behind Nora's grief. O'Connor also misleads the reader when it comes to characterizing Robin Vote, who on the surface is probably the second most inauthentic character in the novel. She “proves to be a target for the aspirations of the narrator and the other characters” (Fame 48). Robin is criticized for being a cinematic vampire who "possesses the ability, usually described as masculine, to separate her sexual behavior from her ability to think and feel" (Levine 278). He goes to Felix, to Nora, and finally to Jenny as sources of partners and leaves them to wander the streets at night. He does not show a permanent attachment to any of the characters who are instead described as being in love with Robin. Instead of trying to explain Robin's actions, O'Connor plays with this idea especially when "consoling" Nora. O'Connor states that "every bed Robin leaves, without worry, fills his heart with peace and happiness" (Levine 278). O'Connor describes Robin's love and actions towards other characters as inauthentic lies that bring her joy. To further this point, when Nora asks him, “was it a shame that I believed her?”, O'Connor replies, “Of course, it made her life wrong” (Barnes 149). O'Connor deceives Nora and the reader by telling them that Robin's actions are simple and have no deeper purpose behind them. As Fama states, “as a counterpoint to the novel's narrator, O'Connor will not play Freud to Nora's Dora.” O'Connor, as an unreliable narrator, fails to reveal that “Robin's will is nonexistent” (Levine 279). Her deception forces the characters to “perceive in her the vampire she only approaches” (Levine 279). He wanders because he constantly bends to the will of other characters and desperately tries to find his own will. When Felix asks Robin to marry him, “he was surprised to find himself accepted, as if Robin's life contained no desire for rejection” (Barnes 46). This results in Robin having a child he doesn't really want and leaving Felix to later find Nora. However, this shows that Robin is actually not as cruel as O'Connor describes her. She does not accept Felix's proposal to receive the joy of leaving him later, she accepts because her lack of will forces her not to deny his offer. Robin's wanderings and Felix's abandonment mark his journey to slowly putting his will together over the course of the novel. Additionally, readers do not see the meaning behind Robin's wanderings and see her as more than a vampire until the end of the novel. This is also a part of the novel where the third-person narrator takes back control of the story from O'Connor. The narrator reveals that Robin, at the end of his wanderings, finds himself in a church with a dog. He starts behaving like the dog and runs around. 39–56.