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A passenger on a road journey is in the hands of a driver.
A reader embarking on a book is in the hands of a narrator.
Romesh Gunesekaera
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| ASIN: B07RKLNKH7 |
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In any story we rely on the narrator to guide us. In third person, we don't always think about the narrator (I know I don't). But in first person stories, the role of the narrator is very important.
We trust an army officer recounting a story about a war they fought in, we trust a parent telling us a story about when their child was born, in fact we pretty much trust any narrator implicitly. We have no reason to question the narrator’s version of the story, but perhaps we shouldn’t be quite so gullible.
There is a plot device sometimes used called the unreliable narrator. This is where the narrator’s credibility has been compromised. It could be that the narrator is delusional, insane, lying, a child, or any number of other reasons.
Although such narrators have been around probably for as long as story-telling has been around (how often have you been told about the fish “that big” that got away), the phrase only came into being in 1961; the American literary critic Wayne Clayson Booth coined it in his book The Rhetoric of Fiction.
Examples of unreliable narrators range from Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” (because she misunderstands everything about her situation), to Paula Hawkins “The Girl on the Train” (because she is perpetually drunk and suffers from black outs), to Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw” (whose governess narrator is probably delusional and going through a nervous breakdown).
One of my personal favourite uses of this device occurs in the Stephen King short story “Strawberry Spring”.
The unnamed narrator tells the story of a murder spree, committed by someone who came to be known as Springheel Jack, that occurred during an early spring heatwave eight years previous. The murderer was never caught, and the ending of the book implies that the unnamed narrator is actually Springheel Jack, though he has no personal memory of committing the murders and believes that he was actually have an affair while the murders were happening.
So the next time you read a novel, don’t implicitly trust the person behind the wheel.
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The next time you read a story here on WDC, spare a thought for the narrator. Is there anything that suggests you are dealing with an unreliable narrator? Why do think that? And don't keep it to yourself. Let me know, and I might feature it in a future Newsletter.
The next time you write a story or poem consider using an unreliable narrator, and see if it throws a different perception on your item. |
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Short Stories: March 15, 2017 Issue [#8178]
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