The monologic Self as first-person narrator: Nadine Gordimer's “Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants”

Abstract

Abstract There are many types of unreliable first-person narrators. This article shows that there is a certain kind of unreliable I-narrator who could be termed monologic in the Bakhtinian sense of the term. Bakhtin (1895–1975) saw monologism as closed, static and finalized in the sense that it is limiting in its denial of an Other. In her short story, “Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants” (Gordimer, Gollancz, 1983 [1965]), Nadine Gordimer has created a first-person narrator whose unreliability is prominently active in the construction of meaning. The analysis focuses on this narrator's mind style, which is shown to be self-contradictory, faulty and limiting in such a way that it can be called monologic. Monologism is seen as a quality of the discourse and, it is argued, a monologic Self can be distinguished from other unreliable Selves by means of how they relate to other people and by their degree of stasis, closure and lack of development.