So, being active in a fandom I won’t name but that’s totally Harry Potter as well as criticizing various other work like Hunger Games, Name of the Wind, Twilight and such, I’ve noticed a peculiar thing: fans of said work would defend them by citing unreliable narrator.Why is a character hated by the narrative for no good reason? The narrator just has a bias against them due to personal reasons. Why show contradicts tell? The narrator is unreliable and tries to make themselves look better/worse because of reasons. Why killing these guys is a good thing, again? It isn’t, Katniss just rationalize it as a defense mechanism.
This argument is really annoying because countering it is not even so much difficult as tedious since it involves combing the text to demonstrate that, no, really, the narrative agrees with the narrator, we aren’t meant to question it.
So I think it calls for a talk about what unreliable narrator is and how it should be used.
Let’s start with the basics: unreliable narrator is a narrative device. In other words, it’s not something that just happens, it’s a tool used by authors’ to achieve a desired result. By telling us a lie, good writers reveal a greater truth.
Lolita, for example, could have been written from a POV of omniscient narrator dissecting every lie Humbert tells himself, but it wouldn’t achieve the same result. By experiencing the events from his perspective, we are forced to follow every twist and turn of his mind he twists into spirals to justify and glorify his actions, and in doing so, we may be able to see spirals in our our mind (hopefully created in a less horrifying context).
Reading Umineko, we are forced to decide what is real and what is not and why scenes that aren’t real are shown to us, what they intend to say. It creates a mystery within a mystery, providing clues to the nature of witch’s game.
In both cases, there is a reason why the device is used, an effect writers wanted to accomplish. And so, when judging whether or not a specific narrator is unreliable, we should ask ourselves: “If it is so, so what? Would the story change? Would some kind of profound truth be revealed? Is it necessary for the narrator to be unreliable for the story to accomplish what it sets up to accomplish?”
And if not, if the narrative doesn’t change if you go against the narrator, if only minor details are subject to “unreliability,” then at best we are dealing with a misapplied unreliable narrator, which is worthy of criticism in its own right.
In other words, there must be a pay-off to unreliability. The author presents us with a challenge, and successfully overcoming it must reveal something important, something the author wanted to say about the characters, the world and everything else.
And speaking of challenges, they must be fair. There are a lot of works where you can claim that the narrator is unreliable… but the narrator also may not be. Like with Kvothe. Yeah, it’s possible he bullshits about half of his exploits. But it’s also possible that he doesn’t. How would you know?
Well, in good books there are clues that, when analyzed carefully, would unquestionably point to the truth. In stories that utilize what I would call “opinionated narrator” (most commonly first person perspective stories where events unfold as we read about them rather than being told by the narrator afterwards and such), we can check tell against show. In such stories, we typically can trust narrator’s perception but not observation.
That is, if the narration says that Character A said “I don’t love you anymore” and walked away, we can safely assume that Character A did indeed say it and walked away. However, we can’t trust the narrator saying afterwards that Character A was just afraid and tried to protect the narrator and didn’t mean it. The scene, in the larger context of the plot, would clearly show that, no, Character A did mean it and would repeat it even after narrator’s excuse is no longer valid.
Perhaps most importantly, the rest of the world shouldn’t buy into the narration. The narrator can think that a character is Devil’s spawn, but if it’s not true, other characters probably wouldn’t believe it, which would be clearly shown in their actions, and the character wouldn’t behave like a Devil’s spawn.
The events shown to us form a complete and coherent picture that the narration tries to disrupt in a way that can be spotted by a clever reader.
In stories where the narrator outright lies to us and certain events simply didn’t happen or happened differently, there, too, should be clues exposing the truth. By reading and analyzing the text, we should be able to tell what is the lie and what isn’t, and why the narrator lied to us.
Perhaps the narrator tells us about a successful military mission that was jolly fun all around, but we know that all of narrator’s comrades are dead, so it must have been much more brutal than the narrator lets on, and we can see slips in narration where deaths took place.
In conclusion, unreliable narrator is a powerful tool. Truths we discovered ourselves always have more impact on us than ones that were just told to us, and analyzing the text written by an unreliable narrator provides us with an opportunity to learn a hidden truth. It teaches us about lies we tell ourselves and lies other people tell us, making us think and read between the lines. It presents us with a vision of the world seen by another person, telling about the narrator more in less words by what the narrator thinks, tells and doesn’t tell. Finally, it’s just fun.
And so, it’s a shame that unreliable narrator is used now more often as an excuse for bad writing than as a tool for good one.
Kvothe’s pretty much the gold standard of a bad use of unreliable narrator. I mean, the closest thing to a ‘hint’ that he is unreliable is that he thought Denna was prettier then people who never met her claimed.
And even, that’s such a tiny detail that it’s more likely that he just sees her as prettier then she really is because he’s in love with her, and gives no hint that all of his amazing tales are potentially lies.
Especially when he keeps instead hinting that not only are they all true but instead underplayed. Like despite having lost all his amazing power he was still able to generically blow stuff up around him just by getting mad.
(What sort of magic is that, anyways? It doesn’t follow with the magic system laid down at all, as it’s clearly not Naming magic despite it being instinctive like the time he got upset his lute was broken. And Sympathetic magic requires a lot of conscious thought to work.)
The Felurian bit is the most insufferable though. Kvothe is virgin, he feels awkward towards women, then he meets Felurian by chance and ends up in the Faerie world. There, he does what every man drawn to Felurian does. He bangs her. But what comes after is just jarring. One of the most ancient beings, who has engaged in sex with countless men, finds it very hard to believe Kvothe was a virgin just a few minutes ago. Because he is apparently that naturally gifted at sex. The other part is the one where he is able to comprehend Felurian, (again, one of the most ancient Faerie being), enough to call her true name and fend her off. Are the readers supposed to take this at face value and believe it, even though this is unrealistic considering the universe it is being played (and even making him a bit Gary Stu-ish); or should the audience suspect him and brush these absurd bits off by not believing him?
Well, think about it this way: let’s say he was bullshitting. What do we gain out of it, as readers? What does it reveal about the story, its themes, characters and morals?
That Kvothe is a braggart? But most things he talks about aren’t worthy of lies, the sex fairy is an isolated incident. In fact, a lot of things that serve as a source of his awesomeness are surprisingly mundane, like how he’s got his nicknames. If he were a braggart, you’d expect him to come up with something epic to explain why he’s called Bloodless or whatever.
In the end, by assuming that the sex fairy thing didn’t happen all you accomplish is deciding that a part of the story that doesn’t even really ties to anything didn’t happen. It diminishes the story, not adds to it.
Really, that’s my main objection. Claiming that a narrator is unreliable allows readers to dismiss problematic unrealistic elements as not real, which strikes me as just making excuses for bad writing. A good story with an unreliable narrator benefits from reader discovering the lies. It doesn’t become less, it becomes more as another layer of truth is revealed.
Like, if Kvothe lied about stuff like sex fairy all the time and couldn’t go into a bar without boning a dragon, and by exposing these lies readers would be able to discover another story, one about a clever con man who just decided to quit while he was ahead, yeah, that would be cool.
As it is, even if Kvothe is unreliable, it’s pointless.
I find this problem unnerving in some VN such as Fate/Stay Night. The rules of the world are estabilished, and throughout the narration said rules are broken. I had an impression the author intended to cause a surprise effect on the reader, but to me it is just retconning. Some people justify it by saying the narrator is unreliable, but I don’t buy it. That would be a more accurate example of the themes discussed in this post, I believe.
That’s not the narrator being unreliable. Yes, the rules established beforehand are being broken, but they’re also explicitly noted as being broken. It really is the novel just surprising the reader. It’s not always effective, of course (for starters, I think Nasu does it so much it gets annoying very quickly), nor is it always well-written, but it’s not a retcon, nor unreliable narration.
Wait, really, people do that? Yeah, Shirou is not unreliable. There are some moments where his narration shouldn’t be trusted (when he’s being an idiot and when his mind is afflicted, in particular every time he talks about how he’s certainly totally unquestionably going to die), but they are obvious to see. There is a very clear distinction in Nasu’s writing between “stuff that actually happens and shouldn’t be questioned” and “narrator being insane.”
When the rules are broken, they are typically broken in-universe. I wouldn’t call it retcons, since typically characters note that this shit shouldn’t be possible, so it’s just more Nasu adding exceptions.
Personally, I don’t mind it that much in FSN since it’s a culmination of magecraft, which defies common sense, which gone off the rails, with miracles long forgotten intruding upon modern reality, magi scheming, etc, so nothing is sacred anymore.
I can see how it can be annoying, though, and your concerns are valid.
The main problem with Kvothe isn’t that he’s maybe an unreliable narrator (he isn’t, at best he may exaggerate some things), he’s a boring narrator. He doesn’t do anything of importance. He just… makes money, spends money, makes money, spends money, makes money, learns skills super fast, spends money, skips the only potentially interesting part of the story.
Most of the things he’s talking about are just not worth lying. What do I care about his college years? What would I get out of trying to decide whether he scored highest marks or second highest?
Honestly, at this point the smartest thing the author could do is to say that the entire story of Kvothe is bullshit he made up on the spot to conceal some ugly truth to be revealed in the final book. And even that would be unsatisfying since you would still need to read all of the bullshit to get to the good part.
“(What sort of magic is that, anyways? It doesn’t follow with the magic
system laid down at all, as it’s clearly not Naming magic despite it
being instinctive like the time he got upset his lute was broken. And
Sympathetic magic requires a lot of conscious thought to work.)”
It was Little Death, an ancient power granted to him by sex fairy.
Honestly, just don’t worry about it. The rules of sympathy are inconsistent enough that he can probably pull it off if he wanted. Or he came up with some other exploit. It doesn’t really matter, the world is designed to make Kvothe awesome.
And to make a post about an unreliable narrator that I think works extremely well.. well, Umineko and Higurashi are both fundamentally about mysteries and unreliable narrators, though they take somewhat different tacks with them.
EDIT: I mean, Umineko was mentioned as an example of the type, and I think it’s a positive example.
Yes, it is. I won’t go into details here, though, because spoilers for Umineko are the gravest sin.
I would throw in House of Leaves as a good example of unreliable narrator (and just a really cool book).
Fantastic article, illhousen! :-) Add here that “Obama face” meme (the “Not bad” one, in case there’s more than one). :-P
Thanks, Obama!
(On a sort of related note, Jesus Fuck, Russian news went full truther. We get “investigation into 9/11 conspiracy” at prime time on a respectable program. What is it even.)
So the truth IS out there… Only it’s in Russian?
Out of curiosity when is Harry Potter unreliable? I love the series, and I can see some of the bias shining in a few cases, but theres never a place where it’s implied the actual events he reports are anything less than true.
Uh, yeah, that’s my point. He isn’t unreliable, but a part of fandom claims he is to explain away setting inconsistencies or to defend their preferred headcanon in some cases.
Ahhh, Ok that makes sense, I can understand how he may be bias in describing people, but the rest made no sense to me.
Honestly, I wouldn’t even say he’s that much biased. He is often wrong about who the real culprit is and such, which is to be expected in mysteries, but he typically judge people pretty well (the one exception I can recall off the top of my head is Tom Riddle the diary, but that was rather brief and pretty obvious).
Sometimes annoyingly so, in fact. Like with Stan, when in HBP Harry instantly concludes Stan is innocent, which seems to be true (there is no contradiction, and the narrative wouldn’t be enriched if we assume otherwise). I mean, really, how did he know? They’ve spent together like five minutes. Stan could be the leader of Brotherhood of Dada for all Harry knows.
In all honesty I just assumed Harry uses some type of magic for that, abused children are normally rather critical and need to know people’s moods, if Harry somehow uses magic for that(maybe a type of instinctive passive leglimency) it would make sense, even him misjudging Tom Riddle suddenly makes sense due to there connection.
I think there is another reason for using unreliable narration that you overlook, and that is to make a point about storytelling/objectivity itself; That reality and fantasy aren’t as distinct as we like to believe. In these instances, we might not always be able to figure out what was real and what was the result of unreliable narration. Satoshi Kon comes to mind, and to a lesser degree Hitchcock and his intentional plot holes. However, these are easy to distinguish from the handwaving that you mention.
Yes, though my main points still apply: something like that would be done for a specific reason (to explore the nature of stories) and there would be clues to tell us the narrator is unreliable (even if it’s not clear which parts are the lies).