John Dowell in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier exemplifies this kind of narrator. The Liar a mature narrator of sound cognition who deliberately misrepresents themselves, often to obscure their unseemly or discreditable past conduct. Examples of naïves include Huckleberry Finn, Arthur Lestrange, Holden Caulfield and Forrest Gump. The Naïf a narrator whose perception or worldview is immature or limited through their point of view. Examples of the type include Tristram Shandy and Bras Cubas. The Clown a narrator who does not take narrations seriously and consciously plays with conventions, truth, and the reader's expectations. Caligari, 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, Charles Kinbote in Pale Fire, the unnamed protagonist of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, and Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. 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 in more recent literature are Moll Flanders, Simplicius Simplicissimus or Felix Krull. The Pícaro a narrator who is characterized by exaggeration and bragging, the first example probably being the soldier in Plautus' comedy Miles Gloriosus. Adapted from his findings is the following list: William Riggan analysed in a 1981 study discernible types of unreliable narrators, focusing on the first-person narrator as this is the most common kind of unreliable narration. Overview Classification Īttempts have been made at a classification of unreliable narrators. In some cases the narrator's unreliability is never fully revealed but only hinted at, leaving readers to wonder how much the narrator should be trusted and how the story should be interpreted. Such a twist ending forces readers to reconsider their point of view and experience of the story. In some cases, the reader discovers that in the foregoing narrative, the narrator had concealed or greatly misrepresented vital pieces of information. A more dramatic use of the device delays the revelation until near the story's end. For instance, a story may open with the narrator making a plainly false or delusional claim or admitting to being severely mentally ill, or the story itself may have a frame in which the narrator appears as a character, with clues to the character's unreliability.

Sometimes the narrator's unreliability is made immediately evident. While unreliable narrators are almost by definition first-person narrators, arguments have been made for the existence of unreliable second- and third-person narrators, especially within the context of film and television, and sometimes also in literature. They can be found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters. Tall tales, such as those of the Baron, often feature unreliable narrators.Īn unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. Illustration by Gustave Doré of Baron Munchausen's tale of being swallowed by a whale.

Narrator whose credibility is compromised

Credible narrator definition