In this paper I am going to explore the phenomenon Unreliable Narration and I am going to show that the narrator in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day, which was originally published in 1989, can be read as an example of this phenomenon. Restated thesis statement / Summary of main points Detecting Unreliable Narration in The Remains of the DayĤ. Unreliable Narrator and Narrative Situation in General Termsģ. The Maverick may be lying to save himself, trying to persuade the reader that what he has done is not wrong, or attempting to blame one of the other characters out of revenge.2. Examples: Geras from Enaro, Jakabok Botch from Mister B. Examples: Pandora in Big Brother, Briony Tallis in Atonement.
These are rare to encounter, but they tell a nuanced story and it's job of the reader to try to sort fact from fiction. Examples: The narrator in The Fight Club, Barbara in Notes on a Scandal, Humbert from Lolita, Patrick in American Psycho, or The Cervantes from Don Quixote. The Mad may have a mental illness or personality disorder. Examples: Pi Patel in Life of Pi, Chief Bromden from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Raoul Duke from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The Sad may suffer from hallucinations or dementia, or flashbacks caused by PTSD. Examples: Charlie from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye The Bad may be undergoing a difficult period in their lives, on drugs, or have an eating disorder. Here I add my 3 categories of bad, sad, mad: They can tell a compelling story that may not reflects the truth. The Madman who has lost touch with reality. Sometimes these narrators make the best storytellers however, readers have to keep the narrator's tendency toward hyperbole in mind. The Picaro is a narrator who likes to exaggerate. Alex from A Clockwork Orange, Nelly from Wuthering Heights, Mrs de Winter from Rebecca, Invisible Man from Invisible Man. The Outsider may be someone new in town or of a different racial or socioeconomic background than the rest of the characters in the story and prejudice may pollute their perspective. Examples: Jack from Room, Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Fynn. These characters are sometimes children or immature adults. The Naïve narrator (Naïf) is unreliable because of their lack of experience. 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 as Book of the New Sun or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. 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 misrepresented vital pieces of information such as in American Psycho. But sometimes, the dramatic use of the device delays the revelation until near the story's end such as in the story of Shutter Island or Fight Club. In this sense, he is the antihero of the story and represents an unreliable narrator who admits to his deception. Another great example, in this case, is Alex in A Clockwork Orange is a depraved and violent psychopathic teenager who has no desire to change. For example, a story may open with the narrator making a plainly false or delusional claim or admitting to being severely mentally ill, or with clues to the character's unreliability like Forrest Gump or Lolita or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Sometimes the narrator's unreliability is made immediately clear. To understand and then define the Unreliable Narrator, I would like to give you some examples. However, in fiction, the unreliable narrator is deliberately deceptive or unintentionally misguided, leading the reader to question these characters' credibility as a storyteller. ( source) In fiction similar to real life, an unreliable narrator is an untrustworthy storyteller or speaker. Booth in his book The Rhetoric of Fiction in 1961.
We can see these traits in an unreliable narrator found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters.
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