Unreliable narrators
Feb. 13th, 2012 10:22 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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queensthiefQuestion:
I think everyone agrees that Gen is an unreliable narrator. I've seen the term thrown around a lot recently, though, and I'm wondering how exactly you all define that term.
I think, for example, that a narrator can be unreliable - meaning possessing a rather human trait - without being a specifically unreliable narrator - meaning one who conceals information for shock effect. I think Gen is both those things, and that's one reason why the twists in the books are so organic.
Am I misinterpreting a literary term, or is it one that is open to interpretation?
I think everyone agrees that Gen is an unreliable narrator. I've seen the term thrown around a lot recently, though, and I'm wondering how exactly you all define that term.
I think, for example, that a narrator can be unreliable - meaning possessing a rather human trait - without being a specifically unreliable narrator - meaning one who conceals information for shock effect. I think Gen is both those things, and that's one reason why the twists in the books are so organic.
Am I misinterpreting a literary term, or is it one that is open to interpretation?
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Date: 2/14/12 04:02 am (UTC)Hopefully that makes sense and helps answer your question. :)
Nice timing by the way---I was just thinking about unreliable narrators (and Gen and Odysseus) a couple days ago. :)
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Date: 2/14/12 07:07 am (UTC)On one level, all first-person narration is "unreliable" because it's subjective. It's one person's point of view, so it won't reflect an objective "reality". All we have to go on is the character's word. But when an author plays up this subjective characteristic, to the point where we have reason to question the character's word, then they can be considered unreliable. The characters may exaggerate, lie to themselves, paint the world the colour of their emotions, lie to us, leave things out due to embarassment or sneakiness, misrepresent themselves, present a perception that is impaired by visions or hallucinations, be too young to grasp and accurately describe what is happening, etc.
I think the fact that Eugenides is unreliable *on purpose* is actually part of what makes The Thief surprising. I expected him to be a classic unreliable narrator, because the narration seems subjective... or his particular way of seeing the world comes across loud and clear, anyway. But actually he's another kind of unreliable.
And then of course there's that other thing MWT does. Which is making her third-person narrators unreliable, too. Just... gah! But without making them lie of course. Her third-person narrators are so active, it's almost like an oral story, "the voice of the storyteller shaping and changing the words to suit an audience and a particular view of the world"...
Have people read other unreliable narrators of Gen's variety (i.e. unreliable on purpose)?? Please tell because I don't *think* I have and I would love to!!!
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Date: 2/14/12 07:33 am (UTC)I loved this description of what can make a narrator unreliable, especially because you're right--these are all ways that the vast majority of narrators I've come across are unreliable, but they just don't explain Gen's unreliability. He is a bird of a different color. (Bird, of course, because of canaries... and because I couldn't possibly call him a horse.)
As for reading other narrators like Gen...? I don't think I have, honestly. The closest I've ever come that occurs to me at the moment is Bobby Pendragon from D.J. MacHale's Pendragon series, but only because Bobby is aware of the fact that he's telling a story (he's writing journal entries to his friends back home) and he often deliberately withholds information because he wants to tell the story in chronological order, and he didn't know then what he knows now. And also sometimes because he wants to surprise his readers back home, which is fun, because over the course of his adventures Bobby becomes a noticeably more experienced storyteller, whereas it's clear the entire time that MacHale is manipulating Bobby's ability for his storytelling purposes. Very fun!
But nothing at all like Gen's variety of unreliability, really.
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Date: 2/14/12 11:29 am (UTC)I know! There's a part in Queen of Attolia where we see some of Attolia's conversations with the Mede or about the Mede, and the first time I read it, I thought we were just getting the usual sort of exposition by seeing things from a different POV (point of view) character that you would get in a normal novel. Upon re-reading it, knowing this time that Attolia is fooling the Mede, the scene had a totally different significance, and a totally different feeling to it. The first time, I was like "Uh oh, the plot thickens, this isn't good" and the second time I was like "Wow, Attolia's so clever in this scene. Good job!" So in a sense the third person voice or narrator of the story is leaving things out too, choosing which scenes to show to build up a certain impression. I was getting information about the development of the plot, but it isn't what I thought it was.
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Date: 2/14/12 06:32 pm (UTC)Edit to add: One of the remarkable things about Huck Finn, is that we tend to believe him anyway, even when it is clear that there are a few things he seems to be hiding or at the very least glossing over. (Like the question of whether or not he knew Pap was dead or not.)
I think the purposefully unreliable narrator is a lot harder to pull off, since it's hard to do it without making the reader feel cheated. (Like writing a mystery and having the protagonist solve it through knowledge the reader is never given.)
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Date: 2/15/12 07:07 am (UTC)I mean, there is this strong feeling I have, concerning Huck Finn, which can only be described as BURNING LOVE. Wouldn't it be the best thing ever to simply hang out with Huck Finn (preferably on a raft), and simply listen to him ramble on about things? It would be the best. Sometimes I have arguments with my sister about how much better he is than Tom Sawyer. (Obviously, that's MY side of the argument, not hers).
Um... yes. That had no point. Anyway, going on to what you said... I don't remember ever believing that he lied to us on purpose, or detecting the lies, anyway. I should read it again and keep an eye out.
I do remember not believing the conclusions he came to, especially about his own morals, but I believed that *he* believed what he said. We were supposed to see through his words in those instances. So he was unreliable in that way.
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Date: 2/15/12 08:16 am (UTC)It here are a couple of places where he... fudges things. Sometimes it could be because he's traumatized and / or doesn't want to admit things to himself. One of the places is the feud between the Shepherdsons and the Grangersons, and another is what he actually saw in the floating house.
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Date: 2/23/12 04:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/15/12 08:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/15/12 01:43 am (UTC)Often, they are not unreliable on purpose. See, I don't know the actual definition of an unreliable narrator. But I think part of having a first-person narrator is integrating those personal biases into the character's vision. I don't think that makes the narrator unreliable, I think that makes the character realistic.
I guess where I differentiate is, does the narrator believe he/she is telling the truth?
I see now, though, that a lot of people consider it to be a much more open category.
Unreliable on purpose - the only two I can think of are Liar by Justine Larbalestier and (the terrible, terrible) Evernight by Claudia Grey. I think Liar is more successful because the narrator is the traditional type of unreliable. (She warns readers not to trust her.)
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Date: 2/15/12 08:06 am (UTC)I think it makes them both! It makes them realistic, AND it means we can't neccessarily rely on them to deliver the (whole) truth. the question, for me, is whether the author makes use of or plays up that potential in such a way that it becomes an issue in the story. Because sometimes authors don't use that as part of the story they're telling.
I guess I see it as a sort of gradient. I guess I would ask, "Did I find myself having to question this character's words?" Sometimes no. The story could have been less about the personality of the narrator and more about the events happening around them, and even though I know I'm only getting their point of view which is probably biased, it was never an issue. Sometimes the answer is, "occasionally". Maybe the character sometimes exaggerated and we saw through it, for ironic effect. And then there's "Yes, there was an element of questioning going on the whole time, or I realized later there should have been (a la Gen!). I label them "unreliable narrators" if their credibility was an issue in the story for me. But I recognize that all first-person narrators are inherently somewhat unreliable.
About it being realistic, it's also truer to everyone's experience of life, which is necessarily subjective. You could argue that the third-person omniscient point of view, which we experience as being "the objective truth" of what happens in a story, doesn't exist in real life. We only have multiple subjective points of view...
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Date: 2/15/12 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/14/12 07:22 am (UTC)In the most literal sense, that means all narrators who aren't presented to the reader as perfect or omniscient--so basically anyone narrating in first person, even if they are honest and don't have a significant bias affecting what they see. They can't be everywhere at once, so there are necessarily things they can't know and therefore can't tell the reader. A good deal of third-person narration would apply as well, when it is "filtered" through a single character's thoughts, even if the character isn't speaking to the reader directly.
In a more general sense, though, it's probably only interesting from a literary standpoint to talk about unreliable narrators who conceal things or put a tangibly different spin on the story they're telling than an omniscient narrator would. No point of view is going to give the reader the entire story (that would be one heck of a long book), but if the narrator in question is unique among all the possible narrators in a given situation as the only one who would present the story in a particular way, because of how they view the world or what they wish to keep secret, then that's my idea of the working definition of an unreliable narrator.
Of course, in a certain sense, all narration (even omniscient) is unreliable because the author is ultimately controlling the flow of information to the reader. And we all know authors are capable of jumping through almost impossibly tiny hoops to create the reading experience they want their readers to have!
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Date: 2/15/12 01:50 am (UTC)Anyway, I really like a lot of your points, and would like to quote you (with your permission).
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Date: 2/17/12 02:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/17/12 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/18/12 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/19/12 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/19/12 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/14/12 03:54 pm (UTC)The first time I re-read TT, I wanted to kick myself, because I kept noticing things places where Gen all but tells you exactly what he's up to, and I never even noticed.
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Date: 2/14/12 04:58 pm (UTC)In The Thief we simply assume that we are his intended audience. Not so. There at the very end we see that we are being allowed a glimpse at the story as he wrote it for his Cousin Who is Eddis. He wasn't withholding or skewing information to mislead us, the readers. He was telling the story to someone who had a deeper knowledge than we did.
In aCofK , Sophos starts out telling "us" his father sacked another tutor, jokes that he sees we aren't surprised, drops a reference to the discovery of letters we -as readers -- don't know are being exchanged with Eddis, and at the end of his Narrative tells Eddis something to the effect of "and then I came here,and saw you, and you laughed at me." We weren't the ones he was telling the story to.
It's a beautiful approach to narration. It's a common thread throughout the series, this turning of assumptions on their heads. And it works on us over and over.
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Date: 2/14/12 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/14/12 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/15/12 01:38 am (UTC)I think your point is really valid, though, because it contributes to the series not leaving readers feeling cheated.
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Date: 2/15/12 08:13 pm (UTC)In aCoK, I assumed he was talking to Gen, becuase Gen said, "I want to hear about where you've been," but I noticed that he kept saying "Gen this" or "Eugenides that" so he couldn't be talking to GEn becuase he would have just said "you this or that." That gave me a hint, but still allowed me to see the story as Sophos saw it.
I'm not sure if I was coherent at all... I'm trying to avoid studing for a test ...
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Date: 2/14/12 06:21 pm (UTC)"We ordinarily accept what a narrator tells us as authoritative. The fallible or unreliable narrator, on the other hand, is one whose perception, interpretation, and evaluation of the matters he or she narrates do not coincide with the opinions and norms implied by the author, which the author expects the alert reader to share" (235). Abrams uses Henry James as an example for writing narrators whose "excessive innocence, or oversophistication, or moral obtuseness, makes him a flawed and distorting 'center of consciousness' in the work".
So, yeah. The narrator doesn't have to be purposely concealing information or misleading the reader and may just lack awareness of exactly how the information fits together, etc.
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Date: 2/15/12 01:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/15/12 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2/15/12 04:05 pm (UTC)Unless, of course, you mean that he's unreliable because he only narrated the first book and left the rest up to someone else.
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Date: 2/15/12 08:21 pm (UTC)To me, first person narration is by nature unreliable. It is told strictly through the eyes of that person, so told through the slant of their feelings, and doesn't neccessarily include all the facts, because the narrator is not aware of them ... The best example is "Crown Duel" by Sherwood Smith. The narrator, Mel, is not aware of alot of things that are going, so her account of events is slewed in that manner.
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Date: 2/16/12 10:22 pm (UTC)