Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

Ramblings on perspective and how it makes an unreliable narrator of us all. On taking charge of your story the best you can, all while accepting that it'll always be up for interpretation.

This post contains many big questions, few concrete answers and a pretty thorough spoiler-filled discussion of the book Poor Things (1992). (Also... Yes, the title of this post is a Hamilton reference).

The unreliable narrator is either deliberately deceptive or unintentionally misguided, forcing the reader to question their credibility as a storyteller. 

One of the hardest things I’ve had to grapple with as I’ve gotten older, and the world has grown so much wider for me, is the fact that I continue to exist to people even when I’m not in the room.

Until this day, when people mention that they were either thinking about me or talking about me with someone else, I find myself stiffening, controlling the urge to wince, swallowing down questions such as why or what the hell did you say? I have vivid memories of me being younger, laying down in bed and then hearing one of my parents mentioning my name while they were on the phone (because the walls in my family home have always been papery-thin, and a Nigerian on the phone has always been impossibly loud). I remember jumping up out of bed, running down the stairs to then watch my parent throughout their entire conversation, trying to glean what it is they were saying about me without my say so, without my input, without my involvement. I like to think that I’m not a shitty person. I like to think that in rooms that I do, in fact, stand in, I show up as authentically as myself as possible, but this reaction is one I’ve found that I can’t suppress. Almost always, no matter how much healing I do on the matter, I find myself mildly triggered by the fact that people speak of me when I’m not there.  

Could this stem from a certain degree of insecurity? Possibly. But I think it has more to do with the whole “control freak” aspect of myself that I’m always battling with. How can I control the narrative of me when I’m not around to do so? How can I trust that the person speaking about me, or for me, when I’m absent is doing a good enough job of it? How can I control the story of who I am, when a large part of existing in any form of a community is the fact that people are destined to go out there, in the world, and tell the story how they see fit?  

I’ve done a lot of journaling trying to wrap my head around this, trying to teach myself to unclench and become more comfortable with it all. One of the main things I’ve had to confront is that, try as I may, someone is destined to go out there and tell a story about me that paints me in a bad light. It’s easy to hear that someone dislikes you and to cast them as being a) bitter, or b) misguided in their final judgement of you. It’s easy for me because it makes me the victim, makes me the wronged protagonist, the wounded hero that journeys through life with the intent of proving them wrong, with the intent of besting all those that stand against me. I would be lying if I said that I don’t drag myself through very difficult days, half out of ambition and half out of unresolved spite.  But I’ve also come to understand something else: I can be the hero in my own story and the villain in someone else’s and both stories can be true.  

I’ve reached the conclusion that the above statement makes sense because there is no objective truth. Most, if not all, “truth” is filtered through the worldview of whoever it is that is spewing it. Things are left out—consciously or unconsciously. Other things are left in, and the things that are left in can easily be embellished, even without the speaker intending to do so. Behaviour that is perfectly normal and kind to one person, can be interpreted as hateful and malicious by another.  

Have you ever gone on a night out with a friend and then debriefed afterwards? There are things that you bring up, moments that you remember so vividly that your friend completely brushes over when it’s their turn to speak. There are things you added no importance to that your friend makes the centrepiece of their entire memory of the night before. Do you want to know what the two of you are? Two unreliable narrators, entirely innocent in your intent but unreliable, nonetheless. You attempt to merge together your differing experiences of the night prior but, even then, the image won’t be whole. There will be blurry bits, sections of the photograph that will always exist just beyond both of your lines of vision.

All of this, of course, comes down to perspective. Perspective guides what people deem to be true.  

I’m a writer and a reader so, of course, I find the concept interesting. Whenever I encounter a story—whether it’s one I'm telling or one I’m being told—I become preoccupied with understanding not just who is telling the story but how and why. What biases do they speak from? What life experiences? What gaps in knowledge do they have that they might not even know they possess? I’ve found that it’s important for this sentiment to stretch well past literature, as well. The story you’re being told on a phone call with a friend, the story you’re being told in the news, the story you’re telling yourself about yourself is all filtered through a certain perspective. Is any story ever truly whole? What work should be done to get as close to that outcome as possible?

As per usual, I don’t have the answer to these questions. Instead, I offer you three media recommendations (two books and a movie) that explore the theme of perspective, the fickle nature of “truth,” and the different roles one person can play in multiple people’s stories.

Poor Things (2023) vs Poor Things (1992)

… except I focus more on the book because a) it’s more interesting, and b) you can read how I feel about the movie here.

Truthfully, this whole post started off as being a review of the Poor Things movie in comparison to the novel, but I had this near-uncontrollable urge to cast my net wider and I found that the differences between the film and the book, and the reason why I enjoyed the latter more than the former links closely with the theme of perspective and its pitfalls. 

One of the most glaring differences between the source material and the film adaptation is the perspective from which we are introduced to the story.  

In the novel, Alasdair Gray weaves a metafictional narrative. The novel begins with an introductory chapter which mentions the (fictional) discovery of potential archival matter: a series of journal entries written by a doctor, Dr. Archibald McCandless, who died in the 1911. We are told that Alasdair Gray isn’t the author of this novel, but he is, instead, the editor of this collection of entries and that these entries were found by his good friend, a historian named Michael Donnelly, a real-life friend of his. Confused yet? Well, it only gets twister from here. 

For a large portion of the novel this is how we access the story, through these apparently very real entries that an apparently very real doctor left behind after his death. As the “editor,” Alasdair Gray entitles this portion of the book “Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D. Scottish Public Health Officer.” Here, we read McCandless’ recount of how he first met Godwin Baxter (“God”) during his college days, and how their odd friendship soon developed into God trusting him enough to let him into his lab, allowing him access to his newest creation: a woman with the mind of a child. From here, the story evolves into a story about the woman, a Miss. Bella Baxter, a woman who is learning about the world for the first-time while occupying the fully grown body of an adult, a woman who was once named Victoria but now goes by Bella, a woman that McCandless falls deeply in love with.  

If you’ve watched Poor Things (2023), what you saw on the screen wasn’t too far off from what’s in this part of the book. Bella and McCandless get engaged; Bella runs off to explore the world with a sleazy lawyer named Wedderburn; Bella goes on a cruise and learns more about the world and its politics; Bella joins a brothel to make ends meet; Bella eventually returns back home—to God, to McCandless, and to the man that was married to the woman’s body that the child’s mind now inhabits.  

We learn about Bella’s adventures when she’s away from home because of the apparently very real letters written by Wedderburn, which were sent to God and McCandless during his excursion with Bella. We are told we have access to this letter because McCandless kept it amongst his journal entries. Alasdair Gray entitles this portion of the book “Wedderburn's Letter: Making a Maniac.” Wedderburn is the one that tells us about Bella, about her addiction to sex and how he believes that her libido is one created by witchcraft and her workings with the devil. In short, she wants to fuck him too much and the fact that he can’t keep up is terrifying to him.  

However, once we’ve read both McCandless’ and Wedderburn’s depictions of Bella the book moves us on to a new section, a section with the heading of “a letter from Victoria McCandless M.D. to her eldest surviving descendant in 1974, correcting what she claims are errors in ‘Episodes from the Early Life of a Scottish Public Health Officer’ by her late husband, Archibald McCandless M.D. b. 1857—d.1911.”  

This letter comes after the end of the book, or should I say after the collection of journal entries and letters. And I mean that literally. You read the bold FINIS, flip two more pages and the letter is sitting there, waiting.  

In this letter, Victoria sets the record straight. She states that nothing McCandless wrote should be believed; she asserts that she doesn’t have the mind of a child she once carried, in fact there was no child at all because at the time of meeting Godwin and McCandless, she had been suffering from several “hysterical (false) pregnancies.” To further discount the absurdity of the story that McCandless weaved concerning her, she pens out her life experiences in the letter. She writes of her very rough upbringings, of her being sold off to marry an infertile man, about her running to a doctor named Godwin Baxter for help, about how she fell in love with Godwin and spoke with him about all the troubles she’d faced, about how they both devised a plan for her to run away from her previous marriage and take on a new identity. She tells us that Bella was a creation but not one of Frankenstein-esque origins. Rather, Bella was a creation concocted by a woman tired of being trapped by the expectations of her gender and a kind, lonely doctor that wished to give her freedom.  

Bella speaks of her uninterest in McCandless. She tells us she loved Godwin, truly loved him, but settled for McCandless because Godwin had no intention of marrying her. She tells us about the flavour of their marriage, about how she succeeded in her medical career, gave birth to McCandless’ children, and watched her husband grow ill and bed bound. She writes that McCandless spent his last years not only attached to his bed but also attached to his pen and paper, writing things that he would not let her see, only for her to later find out that it was this, this fantastical account of her life. She says the story was influenced by McCandless’ insecurities and feelings of emasculation, not only because of her own medical career that quickly surpassed his, but also because of his knowledge that he was never truly the person that she loved. 

But then, of course, the book doesn’t stop there. There’s another section entitled “Notes: Critical and Historical.” This section is written by the “editor” Alasdair Gray and acts as a postface for the book. At first, it’s exactly what it says on the tin. There are reference marks dotted throughout the text and this is the section of the book where we see all the footnotes. After the footnotes, there’s an editor’s note listing very real (note how I haven’t italicised it this time) facts about 19^th century Scotland and its medical landscape. I remember reading this section of the book, confused and honestly slightly bored by the drastic tonal shift. But then, right at the very end, when the book is about to truly end there was this: 

Dr. Victoria McCandless was found dead of a cerebral stroke on 3^rd December 1946. Reckoning from the birth of her brain in the Human Society mortuary on Glasgow Green, 18^th February 1880, she was exactly sixty-six years, forty weeks and four days old. Reckoning from the birth of her body in a Manchester slum in 1854, she was ninety-two. 

— Poor Things (1992) 

And that is why I enjoyed Poor Things (1992) far more than I enjoyed the movie. Alasdair Gray doesn’t only give us one unreliable narrator. Instead, he gives us multiple, and he casts them all in a shroud of doubt, leading us to not really know who has the account of Bella’s life that’s wholly true.  

The Frankenstein story is told to us through the journal entries of a man who struggled with not just cabin fever but his insecurity, yet it seems to be supported by science.  The story of Bella’s sexual exploits and travels are told to us through the letters of a man who believes strongly in witchcraft, who ends up locked away in an asylum. The structure this book takes on explicitly reminds us that every part of the story that we are told is being told to us through the filtered worldview of a certain character who has certain belief systems, certain ailments, certain prejudices. Ultimately, we’re hearing from men about how a woman lived her life. Even outside of this, the whole conception of the book is shrouded in doubt. You’re reading a book that you bought from the FICTION section at your local bookstore but Alasdair Gray mentions time and time again that everything is real, that these people and the documentation that they left behind are real.  

So, “who do I believe?” you may ask?

I don’t bloody know. In all honesty, I don’t think this book is about that. Gray calls you to question not only the various narrators within in the novel, but he also calls you to question the validity of scientific and historical truths. Can you really trust information just because of the way it’s formatted? Who collected this information and what blind spots do they have? What information has been left out or strategically placed to help strengthen the believability of a particular account, a particular point of view?

The Death of Vivek Oji (2020) by Akwaeke Emezi 

This novel is very different to Poor Things (1992) but they do both have one major thing in common: each book focuses on the story of one character, as told through the voices of multiple others.  

Where we “learn” (for lack of a better word) about Bella Baxter through the letters of the men in her life, we learn about Vivek Oji through the recounts of people that knew him while he was alive. There are chapters centring his father, his mother, his cousin, and his neighbours and they—like us, the readers—spend the book trying to piece together what exactly happened to result in Vivek’s death. 

In many ways, this book is a lot like a mystery novel. The tragedy is the inciting incident that we find out about it barely 10% into the story, and then we follow along with the narrative, trying to unearth clues as to what happened. However, instead of these clues being fingerprints or riddles, these clues are an exploration of the perspective characters, a sampling of their upbringings and current worldviews, memories that they have of Vivek and how their perspectives affect not just how they treated Vivek in life, but also how they speak of him in death.  

What I really enjoyed about this book were the chapters where Vivek would interject from beyond the grave. Akwaeke does this a lot in their works. As an avid follower of Igbo Spirituality, Akwaeke holds the belief that time is a man-made concept and death is not the end of all things, but rather a new beginning. With this in mind, they have crafted a novel where Vivek observes the other characters from beyond the grave, existing in a plane far beyond the living world. Still, he can hear as they speak of him and see how they react to his passing, as though he, too, is reading the novel. Whenever he feels the need to provide further context to what someone has said or completely disagree with them, Akwaeke gives him a chapter to come in and speaks.   

I'm not what anyone thinks I am. I never was. I didn't have the mouth to put it into words, to say what was wrong, to change the things I felt I needed to change. And every day it was difficult, walking around and knowing that people saw me one way, knowing that they were wrong, so completely wrong, that the real me was invisible to them. It didn't even exist to them. So: If nobody sees you, are you still there? 

— The Death of Vivek Oji (2020)  

Ultimately, I left this book with one main message: it’s important to speak your truth and live your truth before you no longer can. Unlike Victoria “Bella” Baxter who was alive and well to slip her letter into the collection and correct everything said about her by her husband, nothing Vivek says to correct what someone has said about him reaches the ears of the people he’s left behind. No matter how many times he chimes in to speak to us, the readers, his family and friends are left unsure, confused and forced to piece together the very little information left behind by him.  

It’s far too easy to accept that people will misunderstand you to a point where you allow them to run wild with their assumptions—whether that be out of laziness, or out of an overall fear of confrontation—but by keeping quiet and allowing the views of others to out-trump your truth, you’re not honouring yourself. Vivek’s situation is a little different and a lot more difficult given that his truth is centred around his queerness all while being born in a traditional, Christian household in a country that doesn’t treat queer people kindly, but throughout the novel there’s an undercurrent of yearning in his voice. Although he is at peace and has come to accept his death, he still yearns to be able to have his voice reach into the living world. He yearns to explain himself to the people who didn’t understand him, who’s perspectives of him weren’t given the chance to change because he was never authentically himself around them. He yearns for the ability to say things that he swallowed down in life, to take back things he didn’t mean to say before his grave. He regrets not taking full opportunity of controlling his own narrative while he lived. 

If you didn't tell other people, was it real or was it just something the two of you were telling yourselves?

— The Death of Vivek Oji (2020)  

Monster (2023) dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda  

This movie also examines perspective and the inherent blind spots they possess but, ultimately, it looks at the consequences of acknowledging these blind spots too late. 

I went into this movie knowing very little. All I’d seen was the poster: two young boys, faces dismayed, smeared with mud and dirt. And then, of course, there’s the single-word title and all the connotations attached to it. I expected a movie fraught with tense, something equal-parts high energy as it was heart-breaking. So, imagine my surprise when the movie started off not only mundane but, dare I say, slow. 

We start the movie following a widow, Saori. We watch her as she goes to work, as she does the chores throughout the house, and as she cares for her only child, Minato. Everything seems so simple at first but then she notices that Minato comes home with only one shoe. On another day he comes home with his drinking flask full of dirtied water. Next, he comes home with a cut on his ear and, finally, when she comes home to him having a drastic haircut, she decides that the abnormalities have gone too far. Her first assumption is that he may be getting bullied—not by a fellow student but, instead, by his new teacher. For a moment the answer is clear, we finally know who the monster of this movie is but then the perspective then shifts, and we’re placed into the life of the teacher-in-question and then we find out that what Saori—what we—first assumed may not actually be what’s going on. And then, the perspective shifts again.  

I don’t want to say much else about the way this story progresses because I think you appreciate what is done in this film a lot more when you witness it first-hand (Also, I’m trying to keep this as spoiler-free as possible and I hit my spoiler quota in the Poor Things section of this post lmao). Still, I’m sure you can glean from what I’ve mentioned so far that this movie tackles what I mentioned early: the fact that a hero in one story can easily be the villain in another. 

Who is the monster? Who is the monster? Who is the monster?  

Minato chants this question several times throughout the film and it’s this exact question that hangs over your head as you watch. As the movie progresses and the tragedy unfolds, however, you become less interested in finding an indisputable answer to the question. This movie isn’t about who the monster or who the angel is, this movie is about the harm that a narrow perspective can create and how honing one’s focus down on a personal assumption can make them blind to other details that could better help paint a whole picture on what is going on. It calls you to question what you are ignoring to better craft the story in your head. Who are you harming by doing so?

So, what’s the takeaway from all this? Is it that you need to acknowledge the limitations of your own perspective? Is it that you need to remain aware of everyone else’s? Is it that you need to understand that what makes heroes and villains differs between individuals, and that you can easily fit into either category by just existing? In truth, I think it’s all of these… but, then again, that’s just my perspective.