The form of narration is always determined by the type of narrator and depends on its expression in the text. Different points of view on the depicted events are expressed in narrative types, characterized by a different degree of subjectivity on the one hand, and a different degree of approximation to the object of the image, on the other. Each of the participants in the narrative speaks in the first person, which in turn is already considered unreliable. Because the narrator, with such human limitations of perception, memory, and judgment, can easily miss, forget, or misinterpret specific incidents, words, or motifs. Given Ward’s complex system of characters, the narrative can no longer be built traditionally without violations. Each character has a mental trauma, which greatly affects the course of the story. First-person narration is, therefore, always at least potentially unreliable.
Everything in Catriona Ward’s novel is old, dirty, or broken, which you can also think about the psyche of the characters in the book. The terrible dilapidation of the outside world reflects their mental state. Nobody is what they seem to be, and this fact eludes them. Ted, for example, is a stranger to himself: I took the mirrors down some years ago because they upset Lauren. However, I do not need a mirror to know how I look (Ward 50). Additionally, knocking down is the talking, educated cat Olivia, who is deeply religious. The Last House on Needless Street causes suspicion and distrust for each character as a result of the use of denarration by the author.
Denarration in The Last House on Needless Street
In the beginning of reading the book, it can be challenging to understand that kindness is really what the writer pursued in her work. Initially, the reader is presented with the crazy, awkward world of Ted Bannerman, who is considered a kidnapper and a murderer. However, all is not as it seems in The Last House on Needless Street. In fact, Ward’s most impressive feat here is that she keeps readers guessing from page one to last, even after revealing the truth that changes everything. In the end, readers realize that Olivia is part of Ted. Olivia is a cat that talks, reads, and believes in God and therefore believes in humanity since God bequeathed “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Mark 12 31). It forces readers to rethink the entire book at the end from the very beginning in order to understand the author’s intent.
The Last House on Needless Street is not the kind of horror, or even quasi-horror, story that relies on gore or jump scares to scare its readers. Instead, its darkness is primarily rooted in more mental fears: unreliable narrators, depressingly narrow viewpoints, and almost unbearable tension permeate even the most explicit scenes. Readers are thrown off balance by sequences they do not fully understand and cannot fully trust, armed with only partial and imperfect knowledge.
Denarration takes place when events or other aspects of the artistic world are denied or canceled in the process of narration. Even though one is talking about changes not of an epistemological nature (the narrator remembered, discovered a mistake, and others), but of an ontological nature. The transformation of the traditional category into an ‘unnatural’ one is carried out by expanding the first one by including new subclasses in it, which are fundamentally different from the existing ones. The Last House on Needless Street does this by switching between narratives: for each chapter, a different narrator is determined, who ‘lies’ to readers in a new way.
Denarration, moreover, manifests itself in the fact that the reader does not understand whether this or that part that he or she reads is the memory of one of the characters or a reality in which dissociative disorder is present. People with this disorder often have gaps in their memory of the personal history of both past and present events. Amnesia is often uneven. More passive identities have more limited memories, while more hostile, controlling, or ‘protective’ identities have more complete memories.
It is possible that a person who is not currently under control may attempt to gain access to consciousness by causing auditory or visual hallucinations, such as a voice giving instructions. It happened with Little Teddy appearing and capturing Big Ted’s attention, causing a dialogue of personalities, though more of a conflict. “I’ve been TRYING to show you, Little Teddy says. But you didn’t want to know. His memory hurtles towards me, carried on the pain” (Ward 251). It is noteworthy that this process is associated with a feeling of pain. Olivia indirectly mentions it as well, as noted in the last section.
The effect of using denarration can fundamentally change the character and perception of history. As the plot develops, the reader is waiting for the so-called narrative denials, which lead to a remake of the narrative world. Catriona Ward’s novel The Last House on Needless Street is complex and layered; as a result, it feels more like a multiverse than a story of real people connected by the same story. This strategy allows readers to plunge into reflective space to understand the reason why the story is told in multiple versions.
In the author’s comments at the end of the book, Catriona Ward leads readers to the correct understanding of the novel. Based on the writer’s information from personal experience with people with dissociative identity disorder, a narrative is formed in the book, which comes from different personalities. It is a kind of distinction between them because each time, the reader sees everything from a new perspective, which does not overlap with the previous (de)narrator. Most likely, this is why Ward chose Olivia as the second person, because she is a cat, and her feelings cannot be understood by a person, even though this cat speaks.
In work, this thought is also clearly defined, and this happens, oddly enough, during the narration of Olivia herself. “Sometimes we’re a great team, and sometimes we fight. It’s just the way it goes. The TV says you have to accept everyone, teds and cats alike, for who they are. But you also have to have boundaries. Boundaries are important. That’s enough for now. Feelings are very tiring” (Ward 26). The cat talks about the importance of separation between personalities, as do real people who live with DID. Just as people with demarcated lines live in the same body, characters each lead their own story in The Last House on Needless Street, which is not particularly connected.
Characters
Ted
In the gothic novel, the previous structure of the literary work is reversed – the main character is the villain, and all the plot images and motifs of the gothic novel merge into the figure of the villain. That in addition happens to all emerging characters of The Last House on Needless Street: they are all connected by one, at first glance, negative character Ted Bannerman. The protagonist lives with his beloved cat Olivia, who comforts him despite the fact that he has taken a young girl named Lauren and kept her captive. However, Ted did not look like a murderer or kidnapper: throughout the book, the author continued to find pockets of compassion for him. His story was like suffering and survival, not that of a criminal. Ted is an unemployed alcoholic who suffers from several undiagnosed mental health issues. Lauren, his daughter, comes to visit from time to time, but they never go out with her, and their relationship is always tense and often violent.
Catriona Ward creates a rather sinister atmosphere in the book, especially around Ted and his house. The reader immediately understands that the main character is not all right. Ted “lost time but not too much” and frequent nightly forays into the nearby woods (Ward 17). He boarded up all the windows and can see outside only through the small eyes he has drilled into the boards. He seems obsessed with his dead mother, whom he refers to as “mommy.” Even more disturbing is his relationship with his daughter Lauren. Ted sends her away whenever she misbehaves, leaving the reader with many questions. From Ted’s first-person narration, he’s dealing with quite a few issues, though it is unclear which ones.
The reader might think that Olivia, Ted’s cat, is serving him as a reminder of his little daughter, as an indirect comparison is made. “When she was a kitten she would run for the door whenever I opened it,” he says of Olivia and then calls Lauren “kitten” when she also comes to the door to leave. Olivia cannot leave the house, she is forbidden; given Ted’s constant thoughts about his mother, with whom the relationship resurfaces, this can be interpreted as Ted’s attempt to give his child the best. However, Lauren is the kidnapped girl; the reader will understand this if he or she puts the different parts of the book together. For example, from the very beginning, you start to wonder how such a secretive person who lives in a house with boarded-up windows for obviously many years (“I… nailed plywood over the windows”) has a child.
In addition, Ted keeps a newspaper clipping with a girl who went missing many years ago, which he carefully hides from his “daughter.” “I put Little Girl With Popsicle – the newspaper with her picture in it, I mean – in the closet under the stairs” (Ward 13). “I unlock the closet where I keep the art supplies, and I hide the list (of possible murderers) carefully under an old box of chalk that Lauren never uses” (Ward 18). Apparently, Lauren never saw the missing girl in the newspaper. When Olivia was left alone in the house, she began to look for food and said a phrase that once again confuses readers: “No blood, and not even the scent of Lauren” (Ward 133). Thus, perhaps even Olivia, who is closely associated with Ted and watches everything in the house, knows something.
Olivia
Olivia did not act like a cat at all; she did have feline qualities, but her voice seemed neither human nor feline, but something else. She seemed to be a part of him, as did Lauren, the girl who supposedly was Ted’s hostage. Olivia seems to be the most conscious in the book. She reads the Bible and even encourages others to believe; that is, she really strives for goodness. If the reader considers that the DID always strives for good, this will help confirm and prove this point.
It is interesting that many in society deny the existence of DID, and Catriona also talks about this. There are people in the therapeutic community and around the world who firmly believe that this disorder does not exist. DID seems to threaten people’s worldview. Maybe because it interferes with the idea of the soul – the idea that there can be more than one person in the body is somehow terrifying. It, certainly, violates the fundamental principles of many religions. However, in his work, Ward directly denies this idea with the help of a strongly religious heroine, the cat Olivia.
When the reader realizes at the end that there was probably no Olivia in the first place, he does not understand why all the chapters were written on her behalf then. However, when it realizes that Ted has DID, it becomes clear that Olivia is only part of Ted. The reception of dennarization, in this case, helps the reader to understand one of the sides of the protagonist: if Olivia is one of Ted’s personalities, then there is something good in him too, which, however, is well hidden, literally and figuratively.
Dee
In addition to those who live with Ted, a young woman, Dee, believes that Ted is involved in the disappearance of her younger sister Lulu. Although this unresolved event happened eleven years ago when Dee was a teenager, she is determined to fix the mistake at any cost now, many years later. She believes that after the loss of her sister, her life went awry. Dee takes matters into her own hands because her persuasion by law enforcement officials to reopen and continue the investigation of her sister’s disappearance is unsuccessful.
She rents a house next to Ted’s, feeling an all-pervading tension comparable to the level of stress. Like Ted, she relaxes through escapism: Dee reads Wuthering Heights. It is only a couple of pages from the end. When she finishes, she opens the book at random in the middle and continues reading. Like her obsession with one book, the reader observes an obsession with investigating her sister’s case, who disappeared many years ago.
Initially, Dee seems to be the only character to trust in this story, but her obsession with one book and her sister’s business suggests otherwise. The heroine most likely goes crazy at one point: she is afraid to sleep because she thinks that angry birds are chasing her; she is also afraid of Ted. Ward shows the events of Lulu’s disappearance from two different perspectives and other plot points. The reader can read the chapter from Olivia’s point of view and what she observes from inside the house. The next chapter will be from the point of view of Dee, who is in a neighboring house and watches the same event unfold. As a result of this, and the interruption or change in the narrative from one character, a denarration technique confuses readers.
Sense of Denarration in The Last House on Needless Street
The book’s narrative is designed to make readers feel like they know what is going on. They have already guessed what twists and turns lie ahead, but this is interrupted by an unreliable narrator and his denarration. Thematically, The Last House on Needless Street is a story about trauma and survival, about hope, guilt, revenge, and resilience. While most of these elements are explored explicitly, some are left up to the reader, who can interpret and draw conclusions from the character’s experiences and actions.
A split view of the personality ‘from the inside’ and ‘from the outside,’ from the individual’s point of view: in his soul, a distance is formed between ‘I1’ and ‘I2’. But along with this endoscopic situation, dissociative identity disorder is exoscopic. In this case, a person’s objective social image does not coincide with his idea of himself. It is a collision of a look at a person from the inside (‘I’) and a look from the outside (‘He’). The most obvious means of expressing split personality is the use of lexical and grammatical means. In The Last House on Needless Street, this happens either by moving from one chapter to another or directly by the direct mention of a new character responsible for a particular person.
Time in this story is not always linear, so flashbacks to Dee and Ted’s childhood interrupt today’s tense storyline. While in other cases, it is not clear if someone is evoking or creating a memory. Like all the other characters in the novel, Ted is an unreliable narrator. Moreover, one of Ted’s personalities, Olivia, who reads the Bible, assists the author in maintaining the denarration, therefore, it is hard to believe any of what is being described.
Works Cited
Gillig, Paulette Marie. “Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Controversial Diagnosis.”Psychiatry (Edgmont (Pa.: Township)), Matrix Medical Communications, 2009.
“Mark 12.” NIV, Bible Gateway, 2011.
Ward, Catriona. The Last House on Needless Street. Thorndike Press, 2022.
Wright, Angela. “Britain, France and the Gothic, 1764–1820.”Cambridge UP, 2017, pp. 35–38.