Part of me really hates how unreliable/mistaken the narrator is in The Invention of Morel while another part of me doesn’t blame him. We simply can’t trust the fugitive. He’s a paranoid, mentally-unstable man who is hiding from the law because of a crime he may or may not have committed. I decided not to trust the narrator early on because he expressed some pretty questionable opinions in addition to relating questionable facts. For example, after speaking about how much he loves Faustine, the fugitive then says that “[he] thinks [he] shall kill her, or go mad, if this continues any longer.” Call me crazy, but I don’t think you should want to kill someone you’re in love with. We also can’t trust the fugitive’s facts because he’s in a hallucinogenic state throughout the novella. As early as page 22, we are encouraged to mistrust the narrator because he can’t recognize coconut trees. From an investigative perspective, it’s very frustrating that we can’t trust the narrator because we can never be totally sure of the happenings on the island. From a literally perspective, I see the benefit of an unreliable narrator. The narrator’s hallucinogenic perspective makes it very hard for the reader to distinguish between what is real and what is illusion. We can’t tell what’s actually going on and what’s on in the fugitive’s mind. The unreliable narrator benefits the post-modernism that Casares is embracing in The Invention of Morel because he encourages us to embrace the chaos that is his perception/reality.