fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2485 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2485 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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02.

[Sleepy Hollow]

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03.

[Twilight]

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04.

[Lana Del Rey / Marina and the Diamonds]

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05.

[Long Way Round, Long Way Down]

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06.

[Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]

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07.

[Star Trek: The Next Generation]

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08.

[Pacific Rim]

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09.

[Game of Thrones]

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10.

[Captain Marvel]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 034 secrets from Secret Submission Post #355.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Is any narrator who clearly has a biased/overly-personal perspective, or is telling a story pragmatically in order to focus more on what they deem to be important and downplay what's unimportant (eg, Dr Watson, Nick Carraway, Huckleberry Finn) considered unreliable? Or do they have to be clearly deliberately trying to deceive the reader, or deluded, or naive/young/ignorant enough that they don't understand as much as the reader does (eg, Humbert Humbert, the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart, Oskar Shell from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) to be officially considered "unreliable"?

I like to think any really good first person narrator is unreliable. As characters, they should have biases, and as literature, those biases should speak in a way that tells the story, whether it's in the said or unsaid. At any rate, I'd consider all of the above unreliable to some extent, though some are obviously more deliberately unreliable than others.

I wouldn't necessarily count a naive/young/ignorant narrator as unreliable. They might not understand what's going on, but they can still narrate the events reliably so the audience can understand them. Take Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird - she was too young to understand some of the elements in the world around her, but she could still convey them in a way that the audience gets the idea.

To me, an unreliable narrator doesn't have to be deliberately unreliable, just enough so that the events/characters/story is distorted from their/the audience's viewpoint.

When I think of an unreliable narrator, I think of the many different narrators in House of Leaves, all unreliable for different reasons - memory worn away by age, hallucinations brought about by drug use/schizophrenia, and a filmmaker whose job is to present a cinematic story, not the true story.

Johnny Truant.

I guess anyone who tells the story that is colored by their own perspective, instead of just the facts ma'am. Most narrators are unreliable to some extent.

But I feel like the gold standard of unreliable narration was Leverage. Doggone show took great pleasure in conning its audience. lol

I'd say all narrators should be somewhat unreliable to be believable. A narrator that is so unreliable to be actually described as unreliable, I think, only counts if the narrator's unreliability is a key part of what makes the story work. For example, Lolita just wouldn't be Lolita if Humbert Humbert was reliable -- it'd be a totally different story. Not so with The Great Gatsby -- Nick's biases add to the story because they make it feel like he's a real person observing another real person, but don't drastically alter it.

Or, say, contrast the narrator of the Tell-Tale Heart with the narrator of The Black Cat. The Black Cat's narrator is not 100% reliable, but he's self-aware and flat-out says that he was acting irrational, and tells the reader certain things might have just been his imagination, not claiming that his actions were logical or that the gallows-shaped patch was real, and his unreliability as a narrator is not central to the story, it's just enough to make it believable that a guy who did that stuff is telling this story. Whereas one of main points of The Tell-Tale Heart is that the narrator is batshit insane and is convinced, and continually trying to convince the reader, that he's not.

Of course, there are some narrators who fall in the middle or whose reliability can be interpreted very differently by different people. Like, everyone disagrees about how much information Watson was exaggerating or twisting or hiding in his stories.

I think really any time the story that the narrator is telling you with their words is different from the real story, that's enough for them to be considered an unreliable narrator whatever their reason.

Also, the greatest unreliable narrator of all time is Severian from Book Of The New Sun (because of course he's reliable! he has an eidetic memory! he tells you so himself!)

[ SECRET POST #2485 ]

What do you consider counts as an unreliable narrator?

Re: What do you consider counts as an unreliable narrator?

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Re: What do you consider counts as an unreliable narrator?

Re: What do you consider counts as an unreliable narrator?