The Narrative Dilemma of the Double Self: Three Dimensions of the Unreliable Narrator in The Sympathizer

Abstract

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer (2015), has become a milestone in contemporary Asian American literature and Vietnam War literature due to its unique narrative voice and complex exploration of identity politics. This paper aims to analyse the construction mechanism and profound implications of “the Captain” as an unreliable narrator from a narratological perspective. Drawing on Wayne C. Booth’s classic definition and James Phelan’s rhetorical narratology theory—specifically his division of unreliability into three axes (fact/event, knowledge/perception, and value/judgment)—this study proposes that the protagonist’s unreliability presents a “three-dimensional” structure corresponding to these axes. The first-dimension stems from the concealment and distortion of factual reporting caused by his double-agent identity (unreliability on the fact/event axis). The second dimension arises from the cognitive limitations and parodic deconstruction of the East-West binary discourse viewed through the lens of a postcolonial diasporic subject (unreliability on the knowledge/perception axis). The third-dimension touches upon the repression of traumatic memory and the internal conflict of value judgments (unreliability on the value/judgment axis). Through a detailed textual analysis of these three dimensions, this paper argues that the unreliable narration in The Sympathizer is not merely a technique for plot development but a formal representation of Vietnam War trauma, Cold War ideological conflicts, and the identity crisis of the diasporic subject. The narrator’s “unreliability” constitutes the only reliable path to historical truth and ethical reality; through constant self-negation and reconstruction, he reveals the alienation of humanity by war and the perpetual fluidity of identity.