The same scrupulous fidelity restrains me from altering the manner of Mr. Collins's narrative to adapt it to the precepts of my own taste; and it will soon be perceived how essential that narrative is to the elucidation of my history. (179)

Discovering truth in Caleb Williams is a theme that begins with the alternate title to the novel ("Things as They Are") and ends with Caleb's assertion:

Alas! I am the same Caleb Williams that, so short a time ago, boasted that, however great were the calamities I endured, I was still innocent. (433)

Is Caleb Williams innocent? The reader must assume that when Caleb makes this statement contradictory to the direction of the rest of the novel, that he refers to a moral innocence he lost in endevoring to prove Falkland's guilt in the murder of Tyrrel. It is unclear, however, exactly what he means by "innocent". He finishes by proclaiming his desire that "the world may at least not hear and repeat a half-told and mangled tale" (434). Throughout the book, Caleb insists on his innocence as Falkland does in the murder of Tyrrel. Could his efforts to tell the other half of a "half-told and mangled tale" (434) be similar to Collins' narrative which tells half the story of Tyrrel's murder?

In his essay "Rhetoric, History, Rebellion: Caleb Williams and the Subversion of Eighteenth-Century Fiction," Donald Wehrs proposes a hegemonic reading of truth in Caleb Williams, one which associates validity with social standing. Authority believes Falkland, Wehrs argues, because of his class. When Godwin portrays confidence in the social hierarchy as misleading, Wehrs argues, he inherently challenges the overarching relationship between power and truth that thriving in 18th century England.

In "Godwin from "Metaphysician" to Novelist: Political Justice, Caleb Williams, and the Tension between Philosophical Argument and Narrative," Evan Radcliffe writes:

Much of the incompatibility between Political Justice and Caleb Williams can b seen as arising from the conflict between the austerely logical approach of Political Justice and the narrative account of Caleb Williams. Political Justice proceeds as if proper (largely utilitarian) principles will enable us to make moral and political choices almost mathematically, as if we will be able to judge situations and persons in a straightforward way; it avoids narrative thinking. But Caleb Williams shows that situations and persons are understood by way of narratives, and (unlike Godwin's next novel, St. Leon [1799]) it emphasizes the problems inherent in constructing and assessing narratives. (528-529)

Radcliffe's (Evan's, not Ann's) characterization of the narrative difficulties in Caleb Williams applies to the Gothic novel in general. In her book The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick writes:

The self and whatever it is that is outside have a proper, natural, necessary connection to each other, but one that the self is suddenly incapable of making. The inside life and the outside life have to continue separately, becoming counterparts rather than partners

...

And the lengths there are to go to reintegrate the sundered element - finally, the impossibility of restoring them to their original oneness - are the most characteristic energies of the Gothic novel. (13)

It is exactly this incompatibility of the Gothic that Evan Radcliffe is refering to when he discusses the differences between Political Justice and Caleb Williams: the treatise does not create the self in the same "doubleness" as does the Gothic novel and is therefore more amenable to "mathematical" interpretations. The Gothic novel has always precluded such simple evaluations, as Robert Hume puts it, "the writers of Gothic never offer intuitive solutions" (289).