The dystopian counterfactual world and unreliable narration in The Sound of His Horn
Raghunath, Riyukta (2020) The dystopian counterfactual world and unreliable narration in The Sound of His Horn. In: Possible Worlds Theory and Counterfactual Historical Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 149-179. ISBN 978-3-030-53452-3
Abstract
The Sound of his Horn presents two worlds—the world that the protagonist Alan originates in (TAW1) and a counterfactual dystopian world that Alan travels to (TAW2). TAW1 is set between 1941 and 1946 and can be conceived as an epistemological extension of our actual world. TAW2 is set 102 years after Hitler wins the war and so far removed from a reader’s experience of the actual word, that it challenges readers’ conceptualisation of this world. The text further complicates this by presenting Alan as a potential unreliable narrator. In this chapter, I show how the concept of RK-worlds can be used to posit how readers determine the plausibility TAW2 and as such also decide whether or not Alan is unreliable. In doing so, I also explore how Possible Worlds Theory deals with unreliable narration to demonstrate the manner in which readers process multiple worlds with seemingly different ontological statuses created within a text.
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