Unreliable narrator

The unreliable narrator is a device associated with prose fiction and, to a lesser extent, cinema and television. Unreliable narrators are usually features of literary works written in the first person, and they are defined by their lack of credibility regarding plot events depicted in the narrative. In some cases, this lack of credibility may be immediately apparent. In others, it surfaces gradually as the reader gains additional information that contradicts earlier statements made by the narrator. Characters that serve as unreliable narrators may present such contradictions intentionally, unintentionally, or both.

Unreliable narrators are found in both literary and popular fiction. In literary fiction, they are often used as vehicles to examine or reflect the inherent fallibility of human perception and memory. They may also be used for thematic, philosophical, or metacommentary purposes. In popular fiction, unreliable narrators are frequently employed as sources of misdirection, guiding and shaping the reader's incomplete and inaccurate understanding of the plot for the purposes of creating effective twists that upend audience expectations.

Background

While the unreliable narrator has a long history in fiction and storytelling, prominent American literary critic Wayne Booth coined the term in his 1961 book The Rhetoric of Fiction. The treatise is notable for challenging conventional approaches to literary theory and criticism, and it includes oppositional examinations of several principles that largely defined literary scholarship during the first half of the twentieth century.

In the book, Booth questions the idea that authors should take objective approaches in their treatments of stories and characters. In rejecting this notion, he embraces the power of subjectivity as an authorial tool, which he considers an important observational lens that creates meaning and gives a work its own unique perspective.

Booth also issues a similar challenge to the then popular idea that art by its very nature exists independently of its audience. He considers the idea that works of art occupy a neutral space unconcerned with the support or approval of an audience to be false. For Booth, embracing subjectivity is a superior critical modality—one that requires engagement between the author and his or her audience.

In addition, Booth looks at how a reader's expectations affect the reception of a story. For example, a reader may be able to predict how a story will end, yet greatly enjoy seeing exactly how that ending evolves and arises out of the circumstances of the plot. Booth considers such instances to establish a kind of communication between the author and the reader, and he uses it to lend credibility to his rejection of authorial objectivity and artificial divisions between the writer and the audience.

Booth's groundbreaking ideas became the hallmark of a modern approach to literary criticism, and The Rhetoric of Fiction continues to be used as a standard text in the field. To Booth, the unreliable narrator is a natural product of the authorial subjectivity he championed, and the device highlights the limitless possibilities created by the engagement between writer and reader.

Overview

For Booth, an unreliable narrator is one who tells lies, omits or misrepresents important information, or presents inaccurate interpretations of events as objective truth. Booth's ideas were retroactively applied to many classic literary works, some of which have since become prime examples of the concept. Examples include Gulliver's Travels(1726) and Wuthering Heights(1854), among others. In a larger sense, Booth understood unreliable narrators as part of the interplay among the author, the work, and the reader. Booth considered this interplay an important source of a work's meaning and value.

While unreliable narrators appear in many literary works that predate Booth's coining of the term, some authors consciously created such narrators as literary devices after his ideas entered the critical mainstream. In general, unreliable narrators can be divided into two categories: unintentionally unreliable narrators and intentionally unreliable narrators. Unintentionally unreliable narrators often present events from a skewed and undependable point of view due to factors such as age, lack of experience or understanding, or outsider status. As a literary device, unintentionally unreliable narrators are often deployed as an implicit means through which the author challenges the reader to think critically about the narrator and the world he or she inhabits. Intentionally unreliable narrators often have secret or sinister reasons for presenting inaccurate representations of story events. For instance, the narrator Humbert Humbert in Lolita(1955) is hiding deep degrees of guilt, while the unnamed narrator in the classic horror short story "The Telltale Heart" (1843) is a victim of his own insanity.

In popular fiction, unreliable narrators have been prominently featured in mystery, suspense, and crime stories. Authors working in these genres frequently use unreliable narrators to deliberately muddle and confuse the reader or to create a misdirected set of expectations that will be toppled when the truth, or something close to it, is later revealed. The classic murder mystery The Murder of Roger Ackroyd(1926) is a popular example, with a well-known and more recent counterpart in Gone Girl (2012). Unreliable narrators also populate prominent contemporary novels, including The Wasp Factory (1984), Fight Club (1996), The Three (2014), and The Girl on the Train (2015).

While they are less common in visual media, unreliable narrators can also be used to great effect in film and television. The celebrated mystery drama Rashomon (1950) is a well-known examination of the effects of perspective and point of view on the perception of truth. Films such as The Usual Suspects (1995), The Sixth Sense (1999), Memento (2000), and Shutter Island (2010) also incorporate narrator unreliability as essential story elements. Television shows such as True Detective (2014–) and Mr. Robot (2015–) use the device in the construction and presentation of important plot events as well.

Bibliography

Atkinson, S. "11 Movies & TV Shows with Unreliable Narrators That Made You Question Everything." Bustle, 18 July 2016, www.bustle.com/articles/173056-11-movies-tv-shows-with-unreliable-narrators-that-made-you-question-everything. Accessed 27 Nov. 2017.

Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. U of Chicago P, 1961.

Caletti, Deb. "8 Tips to Writing Unreliable Narrators." Writer's Digest, 21 Dec. 2015, www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/8-tips-to-writing-unreliable-narrators. Accessed 27 Nov. 2017.

D'Hoker, Elke, and Gunther Martens. Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel. Walter de Gruyter, 2008.

Nunning, Vera. Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Walter de Gruyter, 2015.

Pinborough, Sarah. "Top 10 Unreliable Narrators." Guardian, 4 Jan. 2017, www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/04/top-10-unreliable-narrators-edgar-allan-poe-gillian-flynn. Accessed 27 Nov. 2017.

Rouda, Kaira. "Top 10 Unreliable Narrators." Strand Magazine, 19 Sept. 2017, strandmag.com/top-10-unreliable-narrators/. Accessed 27 Nov. 2017.

Wiehardt, Ginny. "How to Recognize and Create an Unreliable Narrator." The Balance, 10 Nov. 2017, www.thebalance.com/the-unreliable-narrator-in-fiction-1277141. Accessed 27 Nov. 2017.