RELIABILITY AND FIRST-PERSON NARRATION

 

We call a narrator credible, reliable, or sympathetic when he or she more or less conforms to one or more of the following:

 

1. Shares values with implied author.

 

2. Shares values with the reader.

 

3. Accurately observes and records his or her

            "reality"

 

4. Encourages reader rapport and trust

 

5. Examples: Huck Finn, Nick Carraway, Tommy in "The Gryphon."

 

 

 

We call a narrator unreliable, untrustworthy or unsympathetic

when he or she more or less conforms to one or more of the following;

 

1. Lies deliberately out of self-interest.

 

2. Denies role in events from a lack of self-awareness.

 

3. Expresses ideas or values reader may find reprehensible.

 

4. May be incapacitated in some way: Benji in The Sound and the Fury; the narrator of "A Flower for Algernon."

 

5. Records events accurately but interprets them in a way that is at odds or contrary with our own: narrator of "Why I Live at the P.O." The narrator of "The Idea."

 

 

 

Two Notes:

 

1. Excellent fiction can be created using any or all conceiveable states of reliability or unreliability, and many stories depend on the ambiguity and shades between to achieve their effect, as can be seen in Sammie's account of his quitting his job in Updike's "A & P."

 

2. Problems arise when readers and writers fail to agree on the degree and extent of a narrator's reliability or unreliability.