The Rise and Rise of the Unreliable Narrator
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Whenever I meet new people in real life, I always start out with the assumption that they’re perfectly pleasant individuals. Even when I might have heard other people’s opinions about them, I figure it’s only fair to give them the benefit of a clean slate and it’s only right that I should form my own judgement based on my experience with them, not simply perpetuate someone else’s adoration or resentment, which might be completely prejudiced.
I’m the same when I pick up a book and start reading. I don’t read reviews beforehand so that I can avoid being consciously or subconsciously influenced and I begin with the assumption that the person telling the tale is telling it truthfully (not factually, because that’s a different thing, but truthfully, which means honestly to the best of their recollection). After all, why wouldn’t they? The narrators are fictional characters and will never need to worry about any reader’s judgement.
Of course, in both cases, there are plenty of instances of people who don’t always disclose the absolute truth or the complete story. Sometimes they’re frustrating as hell (in the case of real people, especially when you figure out you’ve had the wool pulled over your eyes), sometimes they’re exactly what’s needed (more likely in the case of a fictional character only). In the real world, we would call them liars but in the fictional world, they’re known as unreliable narrators.
Wayne C Booth, an American literary critic, coined the term “unreliable narrator” in his 1961 book, The Rhetoric of Fiction. His obituary in the New York Times explained that he felt “literature was not so much words on paper as it was a complex ethical act” and his “lifelong study of the art of rhetoric illuminated the means by which authors seduce, cajole and more than occasionally lie to their readers in the service of narrative”. A pretty good description of what it is the unreliable narrator does.
Types of Unreliable Narrator
There are actually quite a few types of unreliable narrator:
*The deliberate liar: The deliberate liar is, of course, the most obvious one. The deliberate liar has an agenda and will do and say whatever it takes to achieve it, even if it has no resemblance to the truth and no matter how many other people get hurt along the way.
*The half-truther: The half-truther shares some things in common with the deliberate liar and has an agenda as well but tries to achieve it by simply leaving out the parts of the story that don’t suit them.
*The self-deluder: The self-deluder is convinced that things are other than they seem to everyone else. The relationship that’s actually more of an acquaintanceship. The significant events that others believe are innocent coincidences. The connection that exists only in their mind.
*Someone who sees things differently: There are two sides to every story, right? This is the other side, the perspective less commonly considered, the unconventional view as opposed to the mainstream.
*Someone with medically-induced unreliability: Amnesia, multiple personality disorder, psychotic breaks, substance abuse – all can result in a narrator unsure of themselves and the real story.
*The absent narrator: There’s nothing more unreliable than someone who is trying to relate a story they don’t actually have any first-hand knowledge of, someone who wasn’t even there. In non-fiction, it requires huge amounts of research to overcome; in fiction, characters are more likely to jump to conclusions rather than go to all the effort of finding out what happened.
As you can see, not all types of unreliable narrator are trying to deceive. Some of them are actually desperate for the truth.
Revelation of Unreliable Narrator
An unreliable narrator is not always immediately obvious. In the case of medical-induced unreliability or someone who was completely absent from the event that the novel is based around, it’s apparent upfront. But with the deliberate liar, the half-truther, the self-deluder and the narrator who simply sees things differently, their unreliable status may not be revealed until very close to the end of the book. Often with novels such as these, the instinct of the reader is to want to read the book again immediately in order to reassess everything they took on face value when they first read it.
Examples of Unreliable Narrator
*The deliberate liar: Amy in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn can’t keep it up for the entire book but she does everything she can in the first half to make the reader feel sorry for her. By the second half, the reader realises she’s not the one who should be getting our pity.
*The half-truther: Pi in Life of Pi by Yann Martel undergoes a miraculous journey, trapped on a lifeboat and lost at sea for 227 days with a spotted hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan named Orange Juice and a tiger named Richard Parker. By the end of the book, Pi reveals he hasn’t been entirely truthful and gives the characters he’s been narrating his story to two options. He will reveal the absolute truth to them and they can decide which version they prefer. Unsurprisingly, once you know them both, they decide they prefer the half-truth version.
*The self-deluder: Changez in The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid suffers from ideological self-delusion. “I am a lover of America,” he states at the start of the book but as he narrates his story, and particularly as he cheers the falling World Trade Centre towers on 9/11, it becomes clear that this is not the case.
*Someone who sees things differently: Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon has Asperger’s (or if you keep up with medical bureaucracy, which says this condition no longer exists, he is on the autism spectrum). In his neighbour’s front yard in the middle of the night, he discovers the body of a murdered dog with a large garden fork sticking out of it. He decides he will find out who killed the dog so that the perpetrator can be punished. And so begins a book completely lacking in emotion but entirely logical – in Christopher’s mind, anyway – as he begins his detecting. About half the book has absolutely nothing to do with anything as Christopher goes off on scientific and mathematical tangents, which help him stay calm in a chaotic world. About one quarter of the book focuses on his murder investigation and the other quarter of the book follows him as his world unravels around him when he finds out who the murderer is. The main character thinks a lot about stabbing people with the Swiss Army Knife he always has with him and tells the reader that his best dream is the one where everybody on earth who isn’t on the autism spectrum has died and he can go anywhere he wants without hardly running into anyone else.
*Someone with medically-induced unreliability: Rachel in The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins is an alcoholic who suffers from blackouts – sometimes entire chunks of her memory go missing when she’s been drinking heavily. When a woman she knows only by sight goes missing, she involves herself deeper and deeper in the lives of the main players until the police start to think she might have something to do with it. It’s even revealed she was in the area the woman was last seen and at the same time but Rachel can’t remember what happened. She can barely remember even being there or even why she was.
*The absent narrator: Diedrick Knickerbocker in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving tells the story of Ichabod Crane and his encounter with the Headless Horseman. There is a note at the beginning of the story and a postscript describing how it was found in Knickerbocker’s papers after his death. It is an interesting device because I kept wondering who he was and why he was so interested in this story. But that is part of the story’s brilliance. It feels like so much is left explicitly unexplored so that readers wonder about the importance of what they aren’t being told.
Choosing to Use an Unreliable Narrator
Some have posited the theory that all narrators, other than the omniscient kind, are unreliable in one sense or another. But it’s important to make the distinction between outright lies, sneaky omissions, forgotten acts and selfish perspectives (which all perspectives are – not in a mean sense but in an awareness sense). And it’s not just a matter of intentional misdirection. This is the nature of all stories: everyone remembers them slightly differently. Just ask the police when they’re interviewing witnesses.
The important thing for a writer when choosing to use an unreliable narrator is that you must keep track of two stories: the one the narrator reveals and what actually happened. And then you have to decide how many of the narrator’s inaccuracies will be exposed at the end of the book. You also have to be careful about how you do it. If the entire book has had only one narrator who has lied all along, then a sudden and complete revelation by that narrator of the truth might seem inconsistent. A sudden and complete revelation by an entirely different narrator might also seem forced since they’re only being used for that purpose. It’s a very difficult balancing act.
But it’s one that more and more writers are attempting and succeeding at. If you’re having a go at writing one, good luck to you. And if you come across one in a book you’re reading, enjoy the ride. It’s not about lies or even damned lies, it’s just a rising statistic.
