Split Inconsistent Narrative: The Story Changes Horses in Midstream

“Split Inconsistent Narrative” is a name I am trying out for a phenomenon I have previously discussed in relation to such novels as The Third Man by Graham Greene and You Must Remember This by Joyce Carol Oates.

In such novels, there is a marked discrepancy between the first half and the second half. In the two mentioned, there is a character with multiple personality in the first half, but this is completely forgotten in the second half, and there is no apparent reason.

In contrast, an unreliable narrator may be quite purposeful. The prototypical example is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, in which the narrator turns out to be the murderer.

However, an unreliable narrator whose unreliability has no such obvious purpose may be a sign of the writer’s multiple personality, because when an author switches from one personality to another, he tends to provide inconsistent points of view. An example would be Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.

How does a Split Inconsistent Narrative get written? An author’s editorial personalities may look at the first half and decide it is too good to discard, but they don’t like where it is going.