Point of View

Molloy is written in the form of a first-person monologue – the first part, or chapter, is written from the perspective of Molloy himself, and the second is written from Moran’s perspective. Both Molloy and Moran’s narratives self-reflexively indicate that they are “writing” what they narrate; Molloy says he is writing “pages” that a man picks up on Sundays, and Moran explains that his story is a “report” he is writing for his boss Youdi. Despite this, both sections “read” like interior monologues, and as a result, sometimes it is unclear whether events that are relayed happen outside the consciousness, or whether they are merely extensions of it. As a result, both Molloy and Moran are “unreliable narrators,” albeit in a more extreme and unconventional sense – it is not necessarily that they may be relaying false information in their monologues, but rather that there...