Unreliable narrator

I think we're just talking past each other at this point. I've already conceded that what I'm talking about isn't textbook "unreliable narrator." That's fine. That's not my point.

What I'm not conceding is that 3rd person narration is always the author's voice. If that were true, there'd be no such thing as close 3rd, because the entire point of close 3rd is that it uses that character's voice in the narration rather than relying on an objective narrator.

@archer88i makes a good point that the character may not be lying, per se, since the character believes it. But the text itself, the 3rd person narration, is still coming from the character.

This doesn't jive for me because it assumes that the narrated text is being spoken by some objective narrator. Jill saying "why did the narrator say you took it" doesn't make any sense, because the narrator isn't saying he took it. Jill is saying he took it. The text is relaying Jill's thoughts. It's just doing it without the filter of some third-party voice. That's what close 3rd is all about.

If it were distant 3rd this would be an entirely different story, and I'd agree that the narrator would be more objective. But that's not what my example was.

Regardless, this is starting to get off-topic, and I'm really just repeating myself at this point.

 

People do lie to themselves ALL the time.

But are you saying that the thing about the pens is lying or being mistaken?

 

I am saying that "John took my pen" makes sense as internal monolog if the character believes it. "John took my pen, that bastard!" doesn't make sense (i.e. the reader won't forgive you for it) if the character does not believe it.

In the end, that's what matters. The reader can be pissed off at a character. I was constantly angry at Mr. Potter. But you can't let the reader get mad at you, the author. That cuts down on book sales and repeat readers.

If you can pull it off without pissing off the reader, great. But I'll say what I always say: if you're that skilled, you don't need to be asking permission here.

Edit: @ChickenFreak sorry on my phone

 

1st person: I'm telling you this story about me.
2nd person: I'm telling you this story about you.
3rd person distant: I'm telling you this story about someone as I would have seen it.
3rd person close: I'm telling you this story about someone while pretending to be them.

Your narrator is always a voice and everything is filtered through them. Only in first person is the character and the narrator the same person.

 

But in third person close, the narrator is often effectively the same as the character, at least to the extent that mistakes are the character's mistakes, not the narrator's.

 

Well, if you're going for the "pretending" thing, wouldn't it be:

1st person: I'm telling you this story about someone I'm pretending to be?

(Unless it's an autobiography.)

Which sounds very much like your description of 3rd person close...

 

But he doesn't refer to himself in the 3rd person, does he Smeagol?

 

I don't think I've ever done an unreliable narrator for an entire story, but I often use close third to make it clear to the reader that my character is lying to himself...

I really don't see the difference between, for example, writing about a character being crazy about his girlfriend, having his girlfriend dump him, and then writing:

I wasn't upset, of course. Sheila was right. We weren't good for each other, and we never would have worked out, and honestly, I'd been getting kind of sick of her. It was a relief that it was over with, and it was good that she was the one who actually said the words. I would have broken up with her after the dance, probably, but she'd saved me the trouble. She'd done me a favour. Yeah, it was all good.​

and:

Johnny wasn't upset, of course. Sheila was right. They weren't good for each other and they never would have worked out and honestly, he'd been getting kind of sick of her. It was a relief that it was over with, and it was good that she was the one who actually said the words. He would have broken up with her after the dance, probably, but she'd saved him the trouble. She'd done him a favour. Yeah, it was all good.​

 

No, the pronouns are different. That's about the only difference I see between first and third person. They can both be distant, both be close, both have distinct or generic narrative voices... both have unreliable narrators...

 

I never said they couldn't be unreliable, I just said that unless in the first person the narrator is a different voice than the protagonist and the author can't outright lie to the reader. They have to establish the voice they're reading is unreliable in some way so the reader can follow along. Otherwise it's like trying to play superheroes with a 5 year old where new powers exist and disappear at will, no one understands what's going on and, everyone ends up getting frustrated and cranky.

 

Fair enough - I think maybe it was more archerii I was responding to? Although you did say "As said above, unreliable narration is done, as far as I can find, in first person."

And I disagree with your assertion that "3rd person is always in an authors voice". Close third often takes on the voice of the POV character, which means I don't see a problem with the voice being less than reliable.

 

Yeah, I can't remember reading or hearing of any books that do any seriously unreliable narration in third person, if you know of any, I'd like to read it to see how it's done. And, yeah, I was mistaken in saying 3rd person is in the authors voice, but I do maintain that in 3rd, it's still a different voice than the characters.

 

The idea of an unreliable narrator isn't so much to 'trick' the reader (in fact, as Archie suggested, people don't like being 'lied to' when they read a book), but give the reader some room for interruption.

Since I have it in Front of me, let's use Poe's the Raven (a quick, simple read). In the first Stanza, the character informs us that he is 'napping,' giving us the possibility that everything he is telling us might be a dream. Even if it is not, we are left with the question of, is the Raven really there to taunt him? Is the speaker sliding into a sort of madness? Or is it just a bird that happens to know how to speak one word? We don't know because the narrative is not grounded.

-

I'm not entirely sure if it is possible to write 3rd-person UN, in fact, I read an article -maybe 6 months ago?- that suggested that the only reason a person should write in 1st is if they want to have an unreliable narrator.

 

That's an important distinction. Mistakes are the character's mistakes, but lies are an entirely different kettle of fish.

 

ETA: This in response to @The Dapper Hooligan's request for examples...



Has anyone got a copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest handy? I remember the unreliable narrator part, but I can't remember if it's in first or third.

I've heard theories about Lord of the Rings being unreliable, since it was apparently "written" by Frodo, and certain parts of it make Frodo look good in a way that's a bit hard to believe...

I feel like Master and Commander might do it? Is that the one where the author shows the same events from different perspectives and they're barely recognizable as being the same? It's been quite a while since I read any of that series...

Maybe Song of Ice and Fire? Anything with a child POV character, really, could show children misunderstanding what's going on around them due to immaturity and conveying that misunderstanding to the reader in a way that isn't the long-term, twist-ending style of unreliable narrator but that certainly covers the basic principle. But also with the multiple POV characters in ASOIAF we can see characters seem totally unlikeable from someone else's POV and then much more sympathetic once we see the character's own POV on the same scene. Maybe something similar in the Wheel of Time books?

 

I believe it is first.

 

Yeah, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is in First person.
I've heard the theory about Bilbo being an unreliable narrator before, but it was in reference to The Hobbit, as Bilbo really didn't have much wherewithal in LotR. Mostly it was in reference to how he obtained The Ring, saying things didn't quite add up and that it seemed likely that he did in fact steal it from Gollum. As far as it goes, there's not really much evidence that counters any of the claims that Bilbo would have actually made in The Hobbit and there's evidence in the the appendices to LotR that confirms some of it, so having Bilbo as an unreliable narrator is kind of up for debate.
I also don't remember there being too many different perspectives in Master and Commander (assuming we're talking about the Patrick O'Brian books) but I only read the first few in that series and that was more than a few years ago.

 

Thanks for all the responses. I think I got my answer, and some new perspective. It's my MC who is becoming more and more unreliable, but the narrator (me) is honestly telling the story. So my question was a bit off point. But it did stimulate a bit of conversation, hey?

 

I thought this was interesting. According to Wikipedia, an unreliable is simply a narrator who is not credible, either because they are lying, mentally, or simply ignorant. In 1981, William Riggan identified several types of unreliable narrators:

• The Madman: A narrator who is either only experiencing mental defense mechanisms, such as (post-traumatic) dissociation and self-alienation, or severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia or paranoia. Examples include Franz Kafka's self-alienating narrators, Noir fiction and Hardboiled fiction's "tough" (cynical) narrator who unreliably describes his own emotions, Barbara Covett in Notes on a Scandal, and Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.
• The Clown: A narrator who does not take narrations seriously and consciously plays with conventions, truth, and the reader's expectations. Examples of the type include Tristram Shandy and Bras Cubas.
• The Naïf: A narrator whose perception is immature or limited through their point of view. Examples of naïves include Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield and Forrest Gump.
• The Liar: A mature narrator of sound cognition who deliberately misrepresents themselves, often to obscure their unseemly or discreditable past conduct. John Dowell in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier exemplifies this kind of narrator.

(All of the above is copied + pasted, none of that's mine.)