Untrustworthy Storyteller: A Recounting Story

A good novel entertains the reader. An excellent novel entertains and enlightens the reader. Set in a Cajun community in the late 1940’s, A Lesson Before Dying is a heart-warming tale of injustice, acceptance and redemption. A Lesson Before Dying by Earnest J. Gaines is an excellent novel. Not only does Gaines inform the reader, he entertains will his effective storytelling. His use of symbolism, voice and stylistic devices keeps the reader enticed to the very last page.

Sometimes an author uses an untruthful person in their writings, called an unreliable narrator. In the stories by Poe, he used a such narrator to add elements of humor and suspense. For example in “The Raven”, the untruthful narrator states, “Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, though its answer little meaning-little relevancy

A unreliable narrator is someone who lies and deceives, the reader. In addition to that a narrator who is insane is also a unreliable narrator. In the short stories that we have read, including Strawberry Spring, by Stephen King where a mentally ill college student starts going on a killing spree during the strawberry spring where the winter warms and there is a lot of fog.The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is which is about a hallucinating woman in a large estate where she is being held by her husband and being captivated in a room for her 0“sickness” of having oppressive thinking and ideas., and A Tell Tale Heart, by Edgar Allen Poe which is about a madman who watched a old man sleep for 7 days straight in the night and then killed him on the 8th because of his “vulture eye”. All of the narrators are mentally insane, therefore rendering each narrator unreliable. Each of which being in their own way. The most unreliable narrator is from A Tell Tale heart by Edgar Allen Poe because he is in denial about his mental health and rationalizes criminal behavior.

A unreliable narrator is a character whose telling of story isn’t completely credible due to problems with the character’s mental state. First, throughout the book our narrator tell us his story almost in a satirical sense, “calmly” as if it was something casual.

The narrator in “The Shunned House,” can fit in the unreliable category. As the story continues, the narrator admits to lying to other characters, and presents a rather unreal story. The narrator says, “..Later I told Harris only through sheer necessity, and because he had heard odd tales from old people which disposed him ever so little toward belief,” (Lovecraft. V. 8.).

An unreliable narrator is one who cannot be trusted to tell the story in a factual manner. Their narration should be taken with a grain of salt. Often, the story will be told in first person, but not always. A narrator straight up admitting to frequently lying is an immediate red flag. The reader is now unable to trust what they say. If the narrator is inexperienced and naive, and/or is unknowledgeable, they might not interpret situations successfully. Similarly, that might happen if their mental health is questionable. The reader might question their reliability if there is evidence of a skewed moral compass, their emotions run rampant, or their actions are inconsistent with their words. Books such as the spectacular The Great Gatsby, and The Bell Jar contain an unreliable narrator. It may be difficult to distinguish between what is unreliability and not, but through careful reading and paying

Print. “Unreliable Narrator.” Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia, November 19, 2015. Web.

Wayne C.Booth is the first introducer of the term ‘unreliable narrator’ back in 1962. In his perspective, a narrator is “reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work, unreliable when he does not” (1983: 158–59). In a nutshell, an unreliable narrator gives the readers either incomplete or inaccurate information. In the literary context, authors use this type of technique to add a twist to the plot or the ending of the story for it creates mystery.

In the story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator is a crazy and psychotic person who murders an old man. The reason behind the murder is because the old man’s eye makes the narrator go crazy. This is a classical type of an unreliable narrator that cannot be trusted. The narrator leads the readers to create their own interpretations of what really was going on. He goes on and tells the story in a most peaceful way you can imagine as if what he did was really nothing horrible.

The narrator in “The Rememberer” is the main character, and her boyfriend, who is devolving, serves as the only other real character. I sympathize with the narrator more than the boyfriend. He was “always sad about the world” as a human, and says, “We’re all getting too smart” (64). He’s probably better off as a turtle or an ape, where he cannot worry so much about being sad about being human. I don’t sympathize with him, because there’s no reason why he’s sad.

Narrator is the person (perspective) which is chosen by the author to tell the story (literary work, movie, play, verbal account, etc.) to the readers (audiences). Traditionally, the narrator is supposed to be reliable, since he/she/it is the only connection between the readers and the fiction world. But occasionally, authors would use unreliable narrator to be the perspective of their story.

The ending of The Storyteller is contrasts the rest of the story in quite a few ways. It has quite a deflated tone as it ends with tension between the aunt and the bachelor. The bachelor makes a prideful comment on his ability to entertain the kids better than the aunt. He also makes observations about the aunt's character and amuses himself in the knowledge that he’s changed the children and their new expectations for stories they may be told in the future.

In the article, “The Unreliable Narrator in Fiction”, by Ginny Wiehardt, the author states that an unreliable narrator cannot be trusted. The reasons behind this statement are rather simple. An unreliable narrator will, more often than not, speak with a bias, make mistakes, or even lie. Moreover, the author explains that a narrator who is unintentionally unreliable gives the reader an opportunity to better understand the way adult characters behave toward each other. Furthermore, the author states that an intentionally unreliable narrator is rather frightening in comparison to an unintentionally unreliable narrator.

An unreliable narrator is a narrator that necessarily cannot be trusted by the way they talk, and or the way they describe the way certain events occurred. You cannot believe everything an unreliable narrator says. Edgar Allan Poe’s narrators in “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are unreliable because they are both mentally ill or have a serious problem with drinking. When reading a story you want to know all the details correctly and an unreliable narrator can change your understanding of the story, which both of the narrators do in the two short stories. The narrator's show a lot of evidence that they are both unreliable because of their sicknesses.

Ofelia Zepeda offers an intimate account of the Sonora people, which relies on the narrative of a family interaction. She also emphasizes the vicarious learning occurred within the home. Meanwhile, Wendy Rose presents an open-ended quest to revive the progressively losing Hopi 's history, stressing the need to proselytize or propagate the Native American 's history outside the boundary of the family. Therefore, both poems diverge in the imagery used to validate their messages.