DECONSTRUCTING UNRELIABLE NARRATION IN KAZUO ISHIGURO’S A PALE VIEW OF HILLS

Abstract

Unreliable narration is a recurring feature in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels, particularly in his debut work, A Pale View of Hills. By combining rhetorical narratology (Booth - Phelan) and deconstruction (Derrida), this paper demonstrates that unreliability is not merely a device but a central narrative strategy shaping reception and narrative ethics. Close readings of key scenes (the cable-car trip, the rope motif, the drowned kittens) map three axes - perceptual (distorted memory), evaluative (misaligned judgments), and ethical (divergence from the implied author’s norms). The gap between Etsuko’s telling and the implied author’s horizon is produced by semantic slippage/deferment, inviting the authorial audience to co-construct meaning. Thus, unreliable narration can be understood as an open structure that both guides readers’ reception and exposes the inherent limits of any attempt to fix meaning in the act of reading.