Unreliable Narrator is a character who tells the reader a story and whose credibility has been seriously compromised. This may be because the point of view of character is insane, lying, deluded or for any other reasons.
The phrase “unreliable narrator” was first used by the literary critic Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction in the early 1960s. The technique has been around as long as literature itself has been though. In fact, prehistoric humans probably sat around fires knowingly listening to one hunter who always exaggerated his feats.
Sometimes the narrator is unreliable by nature. In other words, some narrators are such terrible people that they cannot tell their stories objectively. In general, even people who commit the worst crimes justify their actions to themselves. A classic example is the murderous narrator of the Edgar Allan Poe story “The Telltale Heart”.
Perhaps one of the most famous is Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man with a predilection for underaged girls. In Lolita, Nabokov signals Humbert’s unreliability to the reader in a number of ways. Such as his outrageous claims, his endless justifications for shocking acts and his contempt for others. Alex from A Clockwork Orange is another example of a reprehensible character sharing his unreliable narrative with the reader.
Dishonest narrators can also be used to great effect in stories of crime and mystery. It can be difficult to discuss these types of narrators without spoiling the story, but both Agatha Christie’s classic novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and the recent Gillian Flynn best seller Gone Girl employ unreliable narrators whose lack of trustworthiness is crucial to the construction of both novels’ mystery. Often in books like these the reader starts trusting narrator at beginning. But only as the story goes on, they realise that something is amiss.
This type of narrator is not always deliberately deceptive. Sometimes, a narrator is unreliable due to youth or naïveté. The young autistic narrator of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon or the five-year-old narrator of Emma Donoghue’s Room are simply reporting the world as they understand it. These books rely on readers to make inferences based on clues given by narrators who do not always accurately interpret events.
The unreliable narrator is particularly useful for horror and supernatural fiction writers who want readers to question the line between fantasy and reality. The classic 19th century tale The Yellow Wallpaper is one famous example of this type of narrator. A more modern example is Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi. In this book, readers wonder increasingly about the truth of events described by the narrator.
There is sub type of narrator that differs from those listed above. This narrator is unreliable due to having incomplete or incorrect information. For example, the narrator of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier initially misunderstands nearly everything she learns about her new husband’s dead wife, and therefore, the reader does as well.
One particularly skillful use of the unreliable narrator that combines several of the above types is Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. Besides withholding information from the reader, the narrator’s report of events is ambiguous. Unlike some of the unreliable narrators listed above, Shriver leaves much of the judgement up to the reader. Is Eva a bad mother, is Kevin a bad child or are both of these things true?
There are dangers in using this type of narrator. Readers do not always understand that a narrator is not the final voice of truth and authority. They may even confuse the narrator with the author. The unreliable narrator is most obvious in mystery plots. In mystery books, the narrator’s unreliability is generally revealed as part of the resolution. In other cases, it’s important to plant clues along the way to ensure that the reader understands and perceives the situation in a way the writer does not.
Sometimes, the unreliability of the narrator is only gradually revealed. The reader may in fact trust the narrator through much of the novel. With this approach, it’s important to layer in clues throughout the first part of the novel without making them obvious. This ensures that in looking back, the reader does not feel cheated by the switch.
Who are some of your favorite unreliable narrators in fiction?
and how have you used the unreliable narrator in your own writing?
Interesting!