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	The literary device of the unreliable narrator should not be confused with other devices such as [[euphemism]], [[hyperbole]], [[irony]], [[metaphor]], [[pathetic fallacy]], [[personification]], [[sarcasm]], or [[satire]], in which the narrator is credible, but the narrator's words cannot be taken literally. Similarly, [[historical novel]]s, [[speculative fiction]], and clearly delineated [[dream sequence]]s are generally not considered instances of unreliable narration, even though they describe events that did not or could not happen.		The literary device of the unreliable narrator should not be confused with other devices such as [[euphemism]], [[hyperbole]], [[irony]], [[metaphor]], [[pathetic fallacy]], [[personification]], [[sarcasm]], or [[satire]], in which the narrator is credible, but the narrator's words cannot be taken literally. Similarly, [[historical novel]]s, [[speculative fiction]], and clearly delineated [[dream sequence]]s are generally not considered instances of unreliable narration, even though they describe events that did not or could not happen.
		+	==Overview==
		+
		+	===Classification===
		+	Attempts have been made at a classification of unreliable narrators. William Riggan analysed in his study discernible types of unreliable narrators, focusing on the first-person narrator as this is the most common kind of unreliable narration.<ref>{{cite book |last=Riggan |first=William |title=Pícaros, Madmen, Naīfs, and Clowns: The Unreliable First-person Narrator |year=1981 |publisher=Univ. of Oklahoma Press: Norman |isbn=0806117141}}</ref> Adapted from his findings is the following list:
		+
		+	* The Pícaro: a narrator who is characterized by exaggeration and bragging, the first example probably being the soldier in [[Plautus]]'s comedy ''[[Miles Gloriosus (play)|Miles Gloriosus]]''.
		+	:Examples in modern literature are ''[[Moll Flanders]]'', ''[[Simplicius Simplicissimus]]'' or ''[[Felix Krull]]''.
		+	* The Madman: A narrator who is either only experiencing mental [[defense mechanism]]s, such as (post-traumatic) [[Dissociation (psychology)|dissociation]] and [[depersonalization|self-alienation]], or severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia or paranoia.
		+	:Examples include [[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]]'', and [[Patrick Bateman]] in ''[[American Psycho]]''.
		+	* The Clown: A narrator who does not take narrations seriously and consciously plays with conventions, truth and the reader's expectations.
		+	:Examples of the type include [[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|Tristram Shandy]] and [[The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas|Bras Cubas]].
		+	* The Naïf: A narrator whose perception is immature or limited through his or her point of view.
		+	:Examples of naïves include [[Huckleberry Finn]], [[Holden Caulfield]], and [[Forrest Gump]]
		+	* The Liar: A mature narrator of sound cognition who deliberately misrepresents himself, often to obscure his unseemly or discreditable past conduct.
		+	:John Dowell in [[Ford Madox Ford]]'s ''[[The Good Soldier]]'' exemplifies this kind of narrator.
		+
		+	This typology is surely not exhaustive and cannot claim to cover the whole spectrum of unreliable narration in its entirety or even only the first-person narrator. Further research in this area has been called for.
		+
		+	It also still remains a matter of debate whether and how a non-first-person narrator can be unreliable, though the deliberate restriction of information to the audience—for example in the three interweaving plays in [[Alan Ayckbourn]]'s ''[[The Norman Conquests]]'', each of which shows the action taking place only in one of three locations during the course of a weekend—can provide instances of unreliable ''narrative'', even if not necessarily of an unreliable ''narrator''.
		+
		+	===Definitions and theoretical approaches===
		+	[[Wayne C. Booth]] was the earliest who formulated a reader-centered approach to unreliable narration and distinguished between a reliable and unreliable narrator on the grounds of whether the narrator's speech violates or conforms with general norms and values. He writes, "I have called a narrator ''reliable'' when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to say the implied author's norms), ''unreliable'' when he does not." Peter J. Rabinowitz criticized Booth's definition for relying too much on the extradiegetic facts such as norms and ethics, which must necessarily be tainted by personal opinion. He consequently modified the approach to unreliable narration.
		+
		+	{{Quote| There are unreliable narrators (c.f. Booth). An unreliable narrator however, is not simply a narrator who 'does not tell the truth' – what fictional narrator ever tells the literal truth? Rather an unreliable narrator is one who tells lies, conceals information, misjudges with respect to the narrative audience – that is, one whose statements are untrue not by the standards of the real world or of the authorial audience but by the standards of his own narrative audience. […] In other words, all fictional narrators are false in that they are imitations. But some are imitations who tell the truth, some of people who lie.
		+
		+	Rabinowitz' main focus is the status of fictional discourse in opposition to factuality. He debates the issues of truth in fiction, bringing forward four types of audience who serve as receptors of any given literary work:
		+
		+	# "Actual audience" (= the flesh-and-blood people who read the book)
		+	# "Authorial audience" (= hypothetical audience to whom the author addresses his text)
		+	# "Narrative audience" (= imitation audience which also possesses particular knowledge)
		+	# "Ideal narrative audience" (= uncritical audience who accepts what the author is saying)
		+
		+	Rabinowitz suggests that "In the proper reading of a novel, then, events which are portrayed must be treated as both 'true' and 'untrue' at the same time. Although there are many ways to understand this duality, I propose to analyze the four audiences which it generates." Similarly, Tamar Yacobi has proposed a model of five criteria ('integrating mechanisms') which determine if a narrator is unreliable. Instead of relying on the device of the implied author and a text-centered analysis of unreliable narration, Ansgar Nünning gives evidence that narrative unreliability can be reconceptualized in the context of frame theory and of readers' cognitive strategies.
		+
		+	:[…] to determine a narrator's unreliability one need not rely merely on intuitive judgments. It is neither the reader's intuitions nor the implied author's norms and values that provide the clue to a narrator's unreliability, but a broad range of definable signals. These include both textual data and the reader's preexisting conceptual knowledge of the world. In sum whether a narrator is called unreliable or not does not depend on the distance between the norms and values of the narrator and those of the implied author but between the distance that separates the narrator's view of the world from the reader's world-model and standards of normality.
		+
		+	Unreliable Narration in this view becomes purely a reader's strategy of making sense of a text, i.e. of reconciling discrepancies in the narrator's account (cf. [[#Signals of unreliable narration|signals of unreliable narration]]). Nünning thus effectively eliminates the reliance on value judgments and moral codes which are always tainted by personal outlook and taste. Greta Olson recently debated both Nünning's and Booth's models, revealing discrepancies in their respective views.
		+
		+	{{Quote| […] Booth's text-immanent model of narrator unreliability has been criticized by Ansgar Nünning for disregarding the reader's role in the perception of reliability and for relying on the insufficiently defined concept of the implied author. Nünning updates Booth's work with a cognitive theory of unreliability that rests on the reader's values and her sense that a discrepancy exists between the narrator's statements and perceptions and other information given by the text.}}
		+
		+	and offers "[…] an update of Booth's model by making his implicit differentiation between fallible and untrustworthy narrators explicit." Olson then argues "[…] that these two types of narrators elicit different responses in readers and are best described using scales for fallibility and untrustworthiness." She proffers that all fictional texts that employ the device of unreliability can best be considered along a spectrum of fallibility that begins with trustworthiness and ends with unreliability. This model allows for all shades of grey in between the poles of trustworthiness and unreliability. It is consequently up to each individual reader to determine the credibility of a narrator in a fictional text.
		+
		+	===Signals of unreliable narration===
		+	Whichever definition of unreliability one follows, there are a number of signs that constitute or at least hint at a narrator's unreliability. Nünning has suggested to divide these signals into three broad categories.
		+
		+	* Intratextual signs such as the narrator contradicting himself, having gaps in memory, or lying to other characters
		+	* Extratextual signs such as contradicting the reader's general world knowledge or impossibilities (within the parameters of logic)
		+	* Reader's Literary Competence. This includes the reader's knowledge about literary types (e.g. stock characters that reappear over centuries), knowledge about literary genres and its conventions or stylistic devices
		+
		+	==Examples==
		+
	===Historical occurrences===		===Historical occurrences===
-	The literary device of the "unreliable narrator" was used in several medieval fictional [[Arabic literature|Arabic tales]] of the ''[[One Thousand and One Nights]]'', also known as the ''Arabian Nights''. In one tale, "[[The Seven Viziers]]", a [[courtesan]] accuses a king's son of having assaulted her, when in reality she had failed to seduce him (inspired by the [[Qur'an]]ic/[[Bible|Biblical]] story of [[Islamic view of Joseph|Yusuf]]/[[Joseph (Hebrew Bible)|Joseph]]). Seven [[vizier]]s attempt to save his life by narrating seven stories to prove the unreliability of the courtesan, and the courtesan responds by narrating a story to prove the unreliability of the viziers. The unreliable narrator device is also used to generate [[suspense]] in another ''Arabian Nights'' tale, "[[The Three Apples]]", an early [[Crime fiction|murder mystery]]. At one point of the story, two men claim to be the murderer, one of whom is revealed to be lying. At another point in the story, in a [[Flashback (narrative)|flashback]] showing the reasons for the murder, it is revealed that an unreliable narrator convinced the man of his wife's [[infidelity]], thus leading to her murder.	+	One of the earliest uses of unreliability in literature is in ''[[The Frogs]]'' by [[Aristophanes]]. After the God [[Dionysus]] claims to have sunk 12 or 13 enemy ships with [[Cleisthenes (son of Sibyrtius)]], his slave [[Xanthias]] says "Then I woke up." A more well-known version is in [[Plautus]]' comedy ''[[Miles Gloriosus (play)|Miles Gloriosus]]'' (3rd–2nd centuries BC), which features a soldier who constantly embellishes his accomplishments while his slave Artotrogus, in [[aside]]s, claims the stories are untrue and he is only backing them up to get fed. The literary device of the "unreliable narrator" was used in several medieval fictional [[Arabic literature|Arabic tales]] of the ''[[One Thousand and One Nights]]'', also known as the ''Arabian Nights''. In one tale, "The Seven Viziers", a [[courtesan]] accuses a king's son of having assaulted her, when in reality she had failed to seduce him (inspired by the [[Bible|Biblical]]/[[Quran|Qur'anic]] story of [[Islamic view of Joseph|Yusuf]]/[[Joseph (Hebrew Bible)|Joseph]]). Seven [[vizier]]s attempt to save his life by narrating seven stories to prove the unreliability of the courtesan, and the courtesan responds by narrating a story to prove the unreliability of the viziers. The unreliable narrator device is also used to generate suspense in another ''Arabian Nights'' tale, "[[The Three Apples]]", an early [[Crime fiction|murder mystery]]. At one point of the story, two men claim to be the murderer, one of whom is revealed to be lying. At another point in the story, in a [[Flashback (narrative)|flashback]] showing the reasons for the murder, it is revealed that an unreliable narrator convinced the man of his wife's [[infidelity]], thus leading to her murder.
-	Another early example of unreliable narration is [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]''. In "[[The Merchant's Prologue and Tale|The Merchant's Tale]]" for example, the narrator, being unhappy in his marriage, allows his [[Misogyny|misogynistic]] bias to slant much of his tale. In "[[The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale|The Wife of Bath]]", the Wife often makes inaccurate quotations and incorrectly remembers stories.	+	Another early example of unreliable narration is [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]''. In "[[The Merchant's Prologue and Tale|The Merchant's Tale]]" for example, the narrator, being unhappy in his marriage, allows his [[Misogyny|misogynistic]] bias to slant much of his tale. In ''[[The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale|The Wife of Bath]]'', the Wife often makes inaccurate quotations and incorrectly remembers stories.
	===Novels===		===Novels===
		+	A controversial example of an unreliable narrator occurs in [[Agatha Christie]]'s novel ''[[The Murder of Roger Ackroyd]]'', where the narrator hides essential truths in the text (mainly through evasion, omission, and obfuscation) without ever overtly lying. Many readers at the time felt that the [[plot twist]] at the climax of the novel was nevertheless unfair. Christie used the concept again in her 1967 novel ''[[Endless Night]]''. Similar unreliable narrators often appear in [[detective novel]]s and [[thriller (genre)|thriller]]s, where even a first-person narrator might hide essential information and deliberately mislead the reader in order to preserve the surprise ending. In some cases, the narrator describes himself or herself as doing things which seem questionable or discreditable, only to reveal in the end that such actions were not what they seemed (e.g. [[Alistair MacLean]]'s "[[The Golden Rendezvous]]" and [[John Grisham]]'s "[[The Racketeer (novel)|The Racketeer]]").
-	One of the earliest known examples of unreliable narration is [[Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]''. In [[The Merchant's Prologue and Tale|the Merchant's Tale]], the narrator, being unhappy in his marriage, allows his [[misogyny|misogynistic]] bias to slant much of his tale.	+	Many novels are narrated by children, whose inexperience can impair their judgment and make them unreliable. In ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' (1884), [[Huckleberry Finn (character)|Huck]]'s innocence leads him to make overly charitable judgments about the characters in the novel.
-	Many novels are narrated by children, whose inexperience can impair their judgment and make them unreliable. In ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' (1884), [[Huckleberry Finn|Huck]]'s inexperience leads him to make overly charitable judgments about the characters in the novel; even going so far as to accuse his author, "Mr. Mark Twain," of having stretched the truth in the previous book, ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]'', an early example of a [[Fourth wall | fourth-wall breach]]. In contrast, [[Holden Caulfield]], in ''[[The Catcher in the Rye]]'', tends to assume the worst.	+	[[Ken Kesey]]'s two most famous novels feature unreliable narrators. [[Chief Bromden|"Chief" Bromden]] in ''[[One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (novel)|One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest]]'' suffers from [[schizophrenia]], and his telling of the events often includes things such as people growing or shrinking, walls oozing with slime, or the orderlies kidnapping and "curing" [[Santa Claus]]. Narration in ''[[Sometimes a Great Notion (novel)|Sometimes a Great Notion]]'' switches between several of the main characters, whose bias tends to switch the reader's sympathies from one person to another, especially in the rivalry between main character Leland and Hank Stamper. Many of [[Susan Howatch]]'s novels similarly use this technique; each chapter is narrated by a different character, and only after reading chapters by each of the narrators does the reader realize each of the narrators has biases and "blind spots" that cause him or her to perceive shared experiences differently.
-	Another class of unreliable narrator is one who intentionally attempts to deceive the audience or other characters in the story. One of the earliest examples is Agatha Christie's detective novel ''[[The Murder of Roger Ackroyd]]'', in which the narrator is scrupulously honest in facts revealed but neglects to mention certain key events.	+	Humbert Humbert, the main character and narrator of [[Vladimir Nabokov]]'s ''[[Lolita]]'', often tells the story in such a way as to justify his [[pedophilia|pedophilic]] fixation on young girls, in particular his sexual relationship with his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Similarly, the narrator of [[A. M. Homes]]' ''[[The End of Alice]]'' deliberately withholds the full story of the crime that put him in prison—the rape and subsequent murder of a young girl—until the end of the novel.
-	In some cases, as with [[Vladimir Nabokov]]'s 1962 ''[[Pale Fire]]'', the reader is unable to discern among several possible narrators, each with his or her own intrinsically unreliable agenda and bias. This serves to effectively include the reader in the experience of the novel, rather than simply providing a narrative, encouraging independent theories and ultimately furthering a point.	+	In some instances, unreliable narration can bring about the fantastic in works of fiction. In [[Kingsley Amis]]' ''[[The Green Man]]'', for example, the unreliability of the narrator Maurice Allington destabilizes the boundaries between reality and the fantastic. The same applies to [[Nigel Williams (author)|Nigel Williams]]'s ''Witchcraft''. ''[[An Instance of the Fingerpost]]'' by [[Iain Pears]] also employs several points of view from narrators whose accounts are found to be unreliable and in conflict with each other.
-	[[Gene Wolfe]] could be said to have made the unreliable narrator one of his stylistic signatures. The most famous example is the complicated and self-contradictory autobiography of the Autarch Severian, who claims to possess [[eidetic memory]], in ''[[Book_of_the_new_sun|The Book of the New Sun]]''.	+	Mike Engleby, the narrator of [[Sebastian Faulks]]' ''[[Engleby]]'', leads the reader to believe a version of events of his life that is shown to be increasingly at odds with reality.
-	The eponymous narrator of [[Michael Moorcock|Michael Moorcock's]] ''[[Pyat Quartet]]'' is thoroughly and entertainingly [[duplicitous]].	+	Zeno Cosini, the narrator of [[Italo Svevo]]'s ''[[Zeno's Conscience]]'', is a typical example of unreliable narrator: in fact the novel is presented as a diary of Zeno himself, who unintentionally distorts the facts to justify his faults. His psychiatrist, who publishes the diary, claims in the introduction that it's a mix of truths and lies.
-	[[Daniel Keyes|Daniel Keyes's]] ''[[Flowers for Algernon]]'' has a narrator, Charley, who could also be considered unreliable. Charley is mentally retarded, and his descriptions of events in his life reveal a very limited understanding of events around him. His vocabulary and understanding improve when an experimental treatment radically increase his intelligence, only to decline again in the final section of the novel.
-
-	In some instances, unreliable narration can bring about the fantastic in works of fiction. In [[Kingsley Amis|Kingsley Amis's]] ''[[The Green Man]]'', for example, the unreliability of the narrator Maurice Allington destabilizes the boundaries between reality and the fantastic.
	===Films===		===Films===
-	The film ''[[Rashomon (movie)|Rashomon]]'' (1950), adapted from ''[[In a Grove]]'' (1921), uses multiple narrators to tell the story of the death of a [[samurai]]. Each of the witnesses describe the same basic events but differ wildly in the details, alternately claiming that the samurai died by accident, [[suicide]], or [[murder]]. The term [[Rashomon effect]] is used to describe how different witnesses are able to produce differing, yet plausible, accounts of the same event, with equal sincerity.	+	One of the earliest examples of the use of an unreliable narrator in film is the [[German expressionism|German expressionist]] film ''[[The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari]]'', from 1920. In this film, an epilogue to the main story is a [[twist ending]] revealing that Francis, through whose eyes we see the action, is a patient in an insane asylum, and the flashback which forms the majority of the film is simply his mental delusion.
	The 1945 [[film noir]] ''[[Detour (1945 film)|Detour]]'' is told from the perspective of an unreliable protagonist who may be trying to justify his actions.		The 1945 [[film noir]] ''[[Detour (1945 film)|Detour]]'' is told from the perspective of an unreliable protagonist who may be trying to justify his actions.
-	Mentally impaired narrators may describe the world as they perceive it rather than as it really is. In the film, ''[[Bubba Ho-tep]]'', the main character is either [[Elvis Presley]] or an [[Elvis impersonator]] named Sebastian Haff. He appears to suffer from [[Alzheimer's disease]], making it unclear how much of his story is real.	+	In ''[[Possessed (1947 film)|Possessed]]'' (1947), [[Joan Crawford]] plays a woman who is taken to a psychiatric hospital in a state of shock. She gradually tells the story of how she came to be there to her doctors, which is related to the audience in flashbacks, some of which are later revealed to be hallucinations or distorted by paranoia.
-	The entire story in the film ''[[Fight Club (film)|Fight Club]]'' (1999) is told by an anonymous narrator who suffers from [[dissociative identity disorder]]; the story's events are caused by, and thus filtered through, his mental instability.	+	In ''[[Rashomon (movie)|Rashômon]]'' (1950), a Japanese crime drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa, adapted from "[[In a Grove]]" (1921), uses multiple narrators to tell the story of the death of a [[samurai]]. Each of the witnesses describe the same basic events but differ wildly in the details, alternately claiming that the samurai died by accident, suicide, or murder. The term "[[Rashomon effect|Rashômon effect]]" is used to describe how different witnesses are able to produce differing, yet plausible, accounts of the same event, with equal sincerity. The film does not select the "authentic" narrator from the differing accounts: all versions are equally valid and equally suspect.
-	At the end of the film ''[[The Usual Suspects (film)|The Usual Suspects]]'' (1996) the viewer learns that protagonist [[Keyser Soze|Verbal Kint]]'s entire convoluted tale, told during a police interrogation and involving many characters and events, is composed from the visual detritus of the office of the very police detective in charge of the interrogation.	+	The 1950 [[Alfred Hitchcock]] film ''[[Stage Fright (1950 film)|Stage Fright]]'' (1950) uses the device of unreliable narration by presenting the aftermath of a murder in a flashback, as told by the murderer. The details of the flashback provide an explanation which helps convince the innocent main protagonist of the film to help the murderer, believing him innocent.
-	The play and film ''[[Amadeus]]'' is narrated by an elderly [[Antonio Salieri]] from an [[insane asylum]], where he claims to have murdered his rival, [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart]]. It is left unclear whether the story actually happened, or whether it is the product of Salieri's delusions; this is especially ambiguous, as there is no concrete historical evidence that Salieri killed Mozart.	+	In the movie version of ''[[Forrest Gump]]'' (1994), the title character narrates his life story, and in the process naïvely refers to [[Apple Computers]] as a "fruit company" while also assuming that sustaining a "million dollar wound" meant that one would get paid for it. He also states that Jenny's dad treated her well because "he was always kissing and touching her and her sisters."
-	==Works featuring unreliable narrators==	+
		+	The 1995 film ''[[The Usual Suspects]]'' reveals that the narrator had been deceiving another character, and hence the audience, by inventing stories and characters from whole cloth. The character is seen as a weak, humble, and quiet criminal but it is later found by the audience that he is the fabled crime boss Keyser Soze.
		+
		+	In the 1999 film ''[[Fight Club]]'', it is revealed that the narrator suffers from [[dissociative identity disorder]] and that some events were fabricated, which means only one of the two main protagonists actually exists, as the other is in the narrator's mind.
		+
		+	In the 2001 film ''[[A Beautiful Mind (film)|A Beautiful Mind]]'', it is eventually revealed that the narrator is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and many of the events he witnessed occurred only in his own mind.
		+
		+	In the 2013 film ''[[Lone Ranger (2013 film)|The Lone Ranger]]'' the narrator, ''[[Tonto]]'' ([[Johnny Depp]]), is identified quickly as potentially unreliable by a child attending a 1930s carnival sideshow during extensive questioning about the events leading to the origin of the wild west character the child emulates. The child is wearing the costume identified with the fictional western hero of radio, comics, films, and television. The events related by the narrator vaguely follow an alternative version of character development that occurred during its radio dramas and the beginning of its television series, but with novel disclosures of graphic details that occur as a series of flashbacks portraying the elderly Tonto's memories of the events. Along with the child, the audience is left to make their own judgments about the memories of Tonto.
		+
		+	===Television===
		+	In the [[Goodbye, Farewell and Amen|final episode]] of ''[[M*A*S*H (TV series)|M*A*S*H]]'', unreliable narration is used to create dramatic effect; [[Hawkeye Pierce]], now a patient of [[Sidney Freedman]] in an army mental hospital ward, recounts a traumatic memory of a recent event. In the recounting a key component is replaced with something more innocuous, leaving the viewer wondering why that incident resulted in his mental illness. Later, [[psychoanalysis]] with [[free association (psychology)|free-association]] reveals the true memory, which is much more disturbing and can be clearly seen as the cause.
		+
		+	In the episode "[[Three Stories (House)|Three Stories]]" of the show ''[[House (TV series)|House, M.D.]],'' the title character, Dr. Gregory House, gives a lecture recounting the stories of three patients who came in with leg pain. House constantly changes details and lies about the stories to make them more interesting and, as is ultimately revealed, to conceal that the identity of one of the patients was House himself.
		+
		+	''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' creator [[Craig Thomas (screenwriter)|Craig Thomas]] has explicitly said that the series narrator, [[Ted Mosby|"Future Ted"]], voiced by [[Bob Saget]], is an unreliable narrator. The narrator would sometimes come up with "what if?" conversations for other characters and almost revealing key plot points. Other times, he can't remember the names of some of the people he's met and calls them names such as "Blah Blah" or "Honey", citing "it's been over 25 years."
		+
		+	In the episode "[http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/coupling/episodes/s3ep4.shtml Remember this]" (Season 3, episode 4) of the British sitcom ''[[Coupling (UK TV series)|Coupling]]'', the story of the first meeting of Patrick and Sally is recounted by several people, all of whom turn out to be unreliable narrators. Most jokes in this episode hinge on disparities amongst certain details of the story (and their psychological implications).
		+
		+	===Comics===
		+	In Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's ''[[Batman: The Killing Joke]]'', [[Joker (comics)|the Joker]], who is the villain of the story, reflects on the pitiful life that transformed him into a psychotic murderer. Although the Joker's version of the story is not implausible given overall Joker storyline in the [[Batman]] comics, the Joker admits at the end of ''The Killing Joke'' that he himself is uncertain if it is true.
		+
		+	Between his first appearance in 2008 and 2010, the human identity of [[Red Hulk]], a tactically intelligent version of the [[Hulk (comics)|Hulk]], was a source of mystery. In the 2010 book ''Fall of the Hulks: Gamma'', Red Hulk is depicted in flashback to have killed [[General Thunderbolt Ross]] at the behest of Bruce Banner (the Hulk's human identity), with whom he has formed an alliance. However, in the 2010 "[[World War Hulks]]" storyline that flashback is revealed to have been false when, during a battle with [[Red She-Hulk]], the Red Hulk reverts to human form, and is revealed to be General Thunderbolt Ross himself.
		+
		+	==Notable works featuring unreliable narrators==
		+
		+	===Literature===
		+	<!--
		+	Please add examples in alphabetical order (author's last name). Choose a selection of "classic" and "recent" work for best illustration; one work per author. Failure to conform will result in reversion so as not to have the list either too lengthy or in disorder. Also, please only add well-known works with clear instances of unreliable narration and please provide a RELIABLE SOURCE; unsourced or controversial entries can be unilaterally deleted, as per WP:RS, WP:NOR, and WP:PROVEIT.
		+	-->
	* [[Martin Amis]]'s ''[[Time's Arrow (novel)|Time's Arrow]]''		* [[Martin Amis]]'s ''[[Time's Arrow (novel)|Time's Arrow]]''
		+	* [[Augusto Roa Bastos]]'s ''[[I, the Supreme]]''
	* [[Emily Brontë]]'s ''[[Wuthering Heights]]''		* [[Emily Brontë]]'s ''[[Wuthering Heights]]''
		+	* [[Peter Carey (novelist)|Peter Carey]]'s ''[[Illywhacker]]''
	* [[Angela Carter]]'s ''[[Wise Children]]''		* [[Angela Carter]]'s ''[[Wise Children]]''
	* [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]''		* [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]''
-	* [[Ian McEwan]]'s ''[[Atonement]]''	+	* [[Wilkie Collins]]'s ''[[The Moonstone]]''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-97074176.html|archiveurl=http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120324064324/http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-97074176.html|archivedate=2012-03-24 |title=Historicizing unreliable narration: unreliability and cultural |publisher=Encyclopedia.com |accessdate=13 November 2011}}</ref>
-	* [[Wilkie Collins]]'s ''[[The Moonstone]]''	+	* The works of [[Bret Easton Ellis]], most prominently ''[[American Psycho]]''<ref name=ampsycho>{{cite journal |last=Webster |first=Sarah |title=When Writer Becomes Celebrity |journal=Oxonian Review of Books |year=2006 |volume=5 |issue=2 |url=http://www.oxonianreview.org/issues/5-2/5-2webster.html |accessdate=21 April 2013}}</ref>
-	* [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]]'s ''[[Notes from Underground]]''	+	* [[William Faulkner]]'s ''[[The Sound and the Fury]]''<ref name=frey/>
-	* [[Bret Easton Ellis]]'s ''[[American Psycho]]''	+	* [[Ford Madox Ford]]'s ''[[The Good Soldier]]''<ref>{{cite book |last=Ford |first=Ford Madox |editor1-last=Womack |editor1-first=Kenneth |editor2-last=Baker |editor2-first=William |title=The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion |year=2003 |publisher=Broadview Press |location=Peterborough, Ont. |isbn=9781551113814 |url=http://www.broadviewpress.com/product.php?productid=568&cat=0&page=1 |accessdate=21 April 2013}}</ref>
-	*[[William Faulkner]], ''[[The Sound and the Fury]]''	+	* [[Günter Grass]]'s ''[[The Tin Drum]]''
-	* [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]]'s ''[[The Great Gatsby]]''	+	* [[Kazuo Ishiguro]]'s ''[[When We Were Orphans]]''<ref name=Ishiguro>{{cite web|last=Mudge|first=Alden|title=Ishiguro takes a literary approach to the detective novel|url=http://bookpage.com/interview/ishiguro-takes-a-literary-approach-to-the-detective-novel|work=http://bookpage.com|accessdate=20 April 2013|date=September 2000}}</ref>
-	*[[Ford Madox Ford]]'s "[[The Good Soldier]]"	+	* [[Henry James]]'s ''[[The Turn of the Screw]]''<ref>Helal, Kathleen, ed. ''The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Works''. Enriched Classics. Simon and Schuster, 2007. [http://books.google.com/books?id=rb-7OYNkItUC&pg=PA455&lpg=PA455&dq=the+turn+of+the+screw+unreliable&source=bl&ots=tU39iFN6C5&sig=1-7VHB3wsRtpbcN_aepdXSgvO1w&hl=en&ei=WEJTSuT9CdK_twfBqeWrCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4]</ref>
-	* [[Kazuo Ishiguro]]'s ''[[When We Were Orphans]]''	+	* [[James Lasdun]]'s ''[[The Horned Man]]''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.darkecho.com/darkecho/reviews/horned.html |title=DarkEcho Review: The Horned Man by James Lasdun |publisher=Darkecho.com |date=3 May 2003 |accessdate=13 November 2011}}</ref>
-	* [[James Lasdun]]'s ''[[The Horned Man]]''	+	* [[Anita Loos]]'s ''[[Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (novel)|Gentlemen Prefer Blondes]]''<ref>{{cite book |last=Landay |first=Lori |title=Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Women The Female Trickster in American Culture |year=1998 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |isbn=978-0-8122-1651-6 |page=[http://books.google.com.au/books?id=n5BpcSboBEEC&q=unreliable+narrator 200] |url=http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1089.html |accessdate=20 April 2013}}</ref>
-	* [[Vladimir Nabokov]]'s ''[[Pale Fire]]''	+	* [[Vladimir Nabokov]]'s ''[[Pale Fire]]''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/palenarr.htm |title=Dowling on Pale Fire |publisher=Rci.rutgers.edu |accessdate=13 November 2011}}</ref> and ''[[Lolita]]''
-	* [[J.D. Salinger]]'s ''[[The Catcher in the Rye]]''	+	* [[Mordecai Richler]]'s ''[[Barney's Version (novel)|Barney's Version]]''<ref>{{cite news|last=Shapiro|first=James |authorlink=James S. Shapiro |title=The Way He Was – or Was He?|url=http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/21/reviews/971221.21shapirt.html|work=nytimes.com|publisher=New York Times|accessdate=21 April 2013|date=21 December 1997}}</ref><ref>''[[Newsday]]'': [http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/barney-s-version-of-a-colorful-life-1.2674183 "'Barney's Version' of a Colorful Life"]</ref><ref>''[[The Globe and Mail]]'': [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/movies/barneys-version-barney-as-an-everymensch/article1848130/ "Barney's Version: Barney as an Everymensch"]</ref>
-	* [[Laurence Sterne]]'s ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman]]''	+	* [[J. D. Salinger]]'s '' [[The Catcher in the Rye]]''<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/17/henry-sutton-top-10-unreliable-narrators |title=Henry Sutton, Top 10 Unreliable Narrators |accessdate=15 April 2012 |work=The Guardian |date=17 February 2010}}</ref>
-	* [[Mark Twain]]'s ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]''	+	* The works of [[Gene Wolfe]], most prominently ''[[The Book of the New Sun]]'' and ''[[The Fifth Head of Cerberus]]''<ref name="PersonInterview">{{cite web|url=http://home.roadrunner.com/~lperson1/wolfe.html |title=Interview with Gene Wolfe Conducted by Lawrence Person |publisher=Home.roadrunner.com |accessdate=13 November 2011}}</ref>
-	* [[Machado de Assis]]'s ''[[Dom Casmurro]]''	+	* [[Salman Rushdie]]'s ''[[Midnight's Children]]''<ref>{{cite web|url= http://salmanrushdie.livejournal.com/2230.html|title=Salman Rushdie, 'Errata' or Unreliable Narration in Midnight's Children}}</ref>
-	* [[Gene Wolfe]]'s ''[[The Fifth Head of Cerberus]]''	+	* [[William Thackeray]]'s ''[[The Luck of Barry Lyndon]]''
-	* [[Henry James]]'s ''"The Turn Of The Screw"''	+	* [[Robert Graves]]'s ''[[I, Claudius]]''
-		+
-	Films with an unreliable point-of-view (or points-of-view):	+
-	* ''[[Memento (film)|Memento]]''	+	===Film===
-	* ''[[The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari]]''	+	<!--
-	* ''[[Fight Club (film)|Fight Club]]''	+	Please add examples in alphabetical order (by title). Choose a selection of "classic" and "recent" work for best illustration; one work per writer and/or director. Please only add well-known works with clear instances of unreliable narration and please provide a RELIABLE SOURCE if possible. Unsourced or controversial entries can be challenged using a "Citation needed" tag, and may later be removed if a citation is not provided within a reasonable timeframe, as per WP:RS, WP:NOR, and WP:PROVEIT.
-	* ''[[Hero (2002 film)|Hero]]'' (2002)	+	-->
-	* ''[[Rashomon (movie)|Rashomon]]''	+	* ''[[Amarcord]]'' directed by [[Federico Fellini]]<ref>{{cite web |last=Dawson |first=Tom |title=Amarcord (1973) |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/08/24/amarcord_2004_review.shtml |work=bbc.co.uk |publisher=BBC |accessdate=21 April 2013 |date=24 August 2004}}</ref>
		+	* ''[[Big Fish]]'' directed by [[Tim Burton]]<ref>Lance Goldenberg, [http://tampa.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A3527 "There's Something Fishy About Father"], ''Creative Loafing Tampa'', 8 January 2004.</ref>
		+	* ''[[The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari]]'' directed by [[Robert Wiene]]<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ferenz |first=Volker |title=FIGHT CLUBS, AMERICAN PSYCHOS AND MEMENTOS: The scope of unreliable narration in film |journal=New Review of Film and Television Studies |date=November 2005 |volume=3 |issue=2 |pages=133–159 |doi=10.1080/17400300500213461 |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17400300500213461 |accessdate=21 April 2013 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |issn=1740-0309}}</ref>
		+	* ''[[Fight Club]]'' directed by [[David Fincher]]<ref name=church>Church, David, "[http://www.offscreen.com/biblio/phile/essays/fight_club/ Remaining Men Together: Fight Club and the (Un)pleasures of Unreliable Narration]", ''Offscreen'', Vol. 10, No. 5 (31 May 2006). Retrieved 14 April 2009.</ref>
		+	* ''[[Forrest Gump]]'' directed by [[Robert Zemeckis]]<ref name=forrest>{{cite web|last=Healy|first=Sue|title=unreliable first person|url=http://suehealy.org/tag/unreliable-first-person/|publisher=WordPress.com|accessdate=10 February 2014}}</ref>
		+	* ''[[Hero (2002 film)|Hero]]'' (2002) directed by [[Zhang Yimou]]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.montrealfilmjournal.com/review.asp?R=R0000709 |title=HERO |publisher=Montreal Film Journal |work=Montrealfilmjournal.com |date=26 March 2003 |accessdate=13 November 2011}}</ref>
		+	* ''[[Memento (film)|Memento]]'' directed by [[Christopher Nolan]]
		+	* ''[[Rashomon (film)|Rashômon]]'' directed by [[Akira Kurosawa]]
	==See also==		==See also==
	:''[[fantastique]], [[unnamed narrator]], [[literary mystification]], [[false document]], [[Baron Münchhausen]]''		:''[[fantastique]], [[unnamed narrator]], [[literary mystification]], [[false document]], [[Baron Münchhausen]]''
	{{GFDL}}		{{GFDL}}

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Revision as of 06:11, 3 April 2014

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In literature and film, an unreliable narrator (a term coined by Wayne C. Booth in his 1961 book The Rhetoric of Fiction) is a literary device in which the credibility of the narrator is seriously compromised. This unreliability can be due to psychological instability, a powerful bias, a lack of knowledge or even a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader or audience. Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators, but third-person narrators can also be unreliable.

The nature of the narrator is sometimes immediately clear. 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 his unreliability. A more common, and dramatic, use of the device delays the revelation until near the story's end. This twist ending forces the reader to reconsider their point of view and experience of the story. In many cases the narrator's unreliability is never fully revealed but only hinted at, leaving the reader to wonder how much the narrator should be trusted and how the story should be interpreted.

The literary device of the unreliable narrator should not be confused with other devices such as euphemism, hyperbole, irony, metaphor, pathetic fallacy, personification, sarcasm, or satire, in which the narrator is credible, but the narrator's words cannot be taken literally. Similarly, historical novels, speculative fiction, and clearly delineated dream sequences are generally not considered instances of unreliable narration, even though they describe events that did not or could not happen.

Contents 1 Overview 1.1 Classification 1.2 Definitions and theoretical approaches 1.3 Signals of unreliable narration 2 Examples 2.1 Historical occurrences 2.2 Novels 2.3 Films 2.4 Television 2.5 Comics 3 Notable works featuring unreliable narrators 3.1 Literature 3.2 Film 4 See also

Overview

Classification

Attempts have been made at a classification of unreliable narrators. William Riggan analysed in his study discernible types of unreliable narrators, focusing on the first-person narrator as this is the most common kind of unreliable narration.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Adapted from his findings is the following list:

• The Pícaro: a narrator who is characterized by exaggeration and bragging, the first example probably being the soldier in Plautus's comedy Miles Gloriosus.

Examples in modern literature are Moll Flanders, Simplicius Simplicissimus or Felix Krull.

• 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 include 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, and Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

• The Clown: A narrator who does not take narrations seriously and consciously plays with conventions, truth and the reader's expectations.

Examples of the type include Tristram Shandy and Bras Cubas.

• The Naïf: A narrator whose perception is immature or limited through his or her point of view.

Examples of naïves include Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield, and Forrest Gump

• The Liar: A mature narrator of sound cognition who deliberately misrepresents himself, often to obscure his unseemly or discreditable past conduct.

John Dowell in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier exemplifies this kind of narrator.

This typology is surely not exhaustive and cannot claim to cover the whole spectrum of unreliable narration in its entirety or even only the first-person narrator. Further research in this area has been called for.

It also still remains a matter of debate whether and how a non-first-person narrator can be unreliable, though the deliberate restriction of information to the audience—for example in the three interweaving plays in Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests, each of which shows the action taking place only in one of three locations during the course of a weekend—can provide instances of unreliable narrative, even if not necessarily of an unreliable narrator.

Definitions and theoretical approaches

Wayne C. Booth was the earliest who formulated a reader-centered approach to unreliable narration and distinguished between a reliable and unreliable narrator on the grounds of whether the narrator's speech violates or conforms with general norms and values. He writes, "I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to say the implied author's norms), unreliable when he does not." Peter J. Rabinowitz criticized Booth's definition for relying too much on the extradiegetic facts such as norms and ethics, which must necessarily be tainted by personal opinion. He consequently modified the approach to unreliable narration.

{{Quote| There are unreliable narrators (c.f. Booth). An unreliable narrator however, is not simply a narrator who 'does not tell the truth' – what fictional narrator ever tells the literal truth? Rather an unreliable narrator is one who tells lies, conceals information, misjudges with respect to the narrative audience – that is, one whose statements are untrue not by the standards of the real world or of the authorial audience but by the standards of his own narrative audience. […] In other words, all fictional narrators are false in that they are imitations. But some are imitations who tell the truth, some of people who lie.

Rabinowitz' main focus is the status of fictional discourse in opposition to factuality. He debates the issues of truth in fiction, bringing forward four types of audience who serve as receptors of any given literary work:

1. "Actual audience" (= the flesh-and-blood people who read the book)
2. "Authorial audience" (= hypothetical audience to whom the author addresses his text)
3. "Narrative audience" (= imitation audience which also possesses particular knowledge)
4. "Ideal narrative audience" (= uncritical audience who accepts what the author is saying)

Rabinowitz suggests that "In the proper reading of a novel, then, events which are portrayed must be treated as both 'true' and 'untrue' at the same time. Although there are many ways to understand this duality, I propose to analyze the four audiences which it generates." Similarly, Tamar Yacobi has proposed a model of five criteria ('integrating mechanisms') which determine if a narrator is unreliable. Instead of relying on the device of the implied author and a text-centered analysis of unreliable narration, Ansgar Nünning gives evidence that narrative unreliability can be reconceptualized in the context of frame theory and of readers' cognitive strategies.

[…] to determine a narrator's unreliability one need not rely merely on intuitive judgments. It is neither the reader's intuitions nor the implied author's norms and values that provide the clue to a narrator's unreliability, but a broad range of definable signals. These include both textual data and the reader's preexisting conceptual knowledge of the world. In sum whether a narrator is called unreliable or not does not depend on the distance between the norms and values of the narrator and those of the implied author but between the distance that separates the narrator's view of the world from the reader's world-model and standards of normality.

Unreliable Narration in this view becomes purely a reader's strategy of making sense of a text, i.e. of reconciling discrepancies in the narrator's account (cf. signals of unreliable narration). Nünning thus effectively eliminates the reliance on value judgments and moral codes which are always tainted by personal outlook and taste. Greta Olson recently debated both Nünning's and Booth's models, revealing discrepancies in their respective views.

Template:Quote

and offers "[…] an update of Booth's model by making his implicit differentiation between fallible and untrustworthy narrators explicit." Olson then argues "[…] that these two types of narrators elicit different responses in readers and are best described using scales for fallibility and untrustworthiness." She proffers that all fictional texts that employ the device of unreliability can best be considered along a spectrum of fallibility that begins with trustworthiness and ends with unreliability. This model allows for all shades of grey in between the poles of trustworthiness and unreliability. It is consequently up to each individual reader to determine the credibility of a narrator in a fictional text.

Signals of unreliable narration

Whichever definition of unreliability one follows, there are a number of signs that constitute or at least hint at a narrator's unreliability. Nünning has suggested to divide these signals into three broad categories.

• Intratextual signs such as the narrator contradicting himself, having gaps in memory, or lying to other characters
• Extratextual signs such as contradicting the reader's general world knowledge or impossibilities (within the parameters of logic)
• Reader's Literary Competence. This includes the reader's knowledge about literary types (e.g. stock characters that reappear over centuries), knowledge about literary genres and its conventions or stylistic devices

Examples

Historical occurrences

One of the earliest uses of unreliability in literature is in The Frogs by Aristophanes. After the God Dionysus claims to have sunk 12 or 13 enemy ships with Cleisthenes (son of Sibyrtius), his slave Xanthias says "Then I woke up." A more well-known version is in Plautus' comedy Miles Gloriosus (3rd–2nd centuries BC), which features a soldier who constantly embellishes his accomplishments while his slave Artotrogus, in asides, claims the stories are untrue and he is only backing them up to get fed. The literary device of the "unreliable narrator" was used in several medieval fictional Arabic tales of the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights. In one tale, "The Seven Viziers", a courtesan accuses a king's son of having assaulted her, when in reality she had failed to seduce him (inspired by the Biblical/Qur'anic story of Yusuf/Joseph). Seven viziers attempt to save his life by narrating seven stories to prove the unreliability of the courtesan, and the courtesan responds by narrating a story to prove the unreliability of the viziers. The unreliable narrator device is also used to generate suspense in another Arabian Nights tale, "The Three Apples", an early murder mystery. At one point of the story, two men claim to be the murderer, one of whom is revealed to be lying. At another point in the story, in a flashback showing the reasons for the murder, it is revealed that an unreliable narrator convinced the man of his wife's infidelity, thus leading to her murder.

Another early example of unreliable narration is Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. In "The Merchant's Tale" for example, the narrator, being unhappy in his marriage, allows his misogynistic bias to slant much of his tale. In The Wife of Bath, the Wife often makes inaccurate quotations and incorrectly remembers stories.

Novels

A controversial example of an unreliable narrator occurs in Agatha Christie's novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, where the narrator hides essential truths in the text (mainly through evasion, omission, and obfuscation) without ever overtly lying. Many readers at the time felt that the plot twist at the climax of the novel was nevertheless unfair. Christie used the concept again in her 1967 novel Endless Night. Similar unreliable narrators often appear in detective novels and thrillers, where even a first-person narrator might hide essential information and deliberately mislead the reader in order to preserve the surprise ending. In some cases, the narrator describes himself or herself as doing things which seem questionable or discreditable, only to reveal in the end that such actions were not what they seemed (e.g. Alistair MacLean's "The Golden Rendezvous" and John Grisham's "The Racketeer").

Many novels are narrated by children, whose inexperience can impair their judgment and make them unreliable. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Huck's innocence leads him to make overly charitable judgments about the characters in the novel.

Ken Kesey's two most famous novels feature unreliable narrators. "Chief" Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest suffers from schizophrenia, and his telling of the events often includes things such as people growing or shrinking, walls oozing with slime, or the orderlies kidnapping and "curing" Santa Claus. Narration in Sometimes a Great Notion switches between several of the main characters, whose bias tends to switch the reader's sympathies from one person to another, especially in the rivalry between main character Leland and Hank Stamper. Many of Susan Howatch's novels similarly use this technique; each chapter is narrated by a different character, and only after reading chapters by each of the narrators does the reader realize each of the narrators has biases and "blind spots" that cause him or her to perceive shared experiences differently.

Humbert Humbert, the main character and narrator of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, often tells the story in such a way as to justify his pedophilic fixation on young girls, in particular his sexual relationship with his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Similarly, the narrator of A. M. Homes' The End of Alice deliberately withholds the full story of the crime that put him in prison—the rape and subsequent murder of a young girl—until the end of the novel.

In some instances, unreliable narration can bring about the fantastic in works of fiction. In Kingsley Amis' The Green Man, for example, the unreliability of the narrator Maurice Allington destabilizes the boundaries between reality and the fantastic. The same applies to Nigel Williams's Witchcraft. An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears also employs several points of view from narrators whose accounts are found to be unreliable and in conflict with each other.

Mike Engleby, the narrator of Sebastian Faulks' Engleby, leads the reader to believe a version of events of his life that is shown to be increasingly at odds with reality.

Zeno Cosini, the narrator of Italo Svevo's Zeno's Conscience, is a typical example of unreliable narrator: in fact the novel is presented as a diary of Zeno himself, who unintentionally distorts the facts to justify his faults. His psychiatrist, who publishes the diary, claims in the introduction that it's a mix of truths and lies.

Films

One of the earliest examples of the use of an unreliable narrator in film is the German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, from 1920. In this film, an epilogue to the main story is a twist ending revealing that Francis, through whose eyes we see the action, is a patient in an insane asylum, and the flashback which forms the majority of the film is simply his mental delusion.

The 1945 film noir Detour is told from the perspective of an unreliable protagonist who may be trying to justify his actions.

In Possessed (1947), Joan Crawford plays a woman who is taken to a psychiatric hospital in a state of shock. She gradually tells the story of how she came to be there to her doctors, which is related to the audience in flashbacks, some of which are later revealed to be hallucinations or distorted by paranoia.

In Rashômon (1950), a Japanese crime drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa, adapted from "In a Grove" (1921), uses multiple narrators to tell the story of the death of a samurai. Each of the witnesses describe the same basic events but differ wildly in the details, alternately claiming that the samurai died by accident, suicide, or murder. The term "Rashômon effect" is used to describe how different witnesses are able to produce differing, yet plausible, accounts of the same event, with equal sincerity. The film does not select the "authentic" narrator from the differing accounts: all versions are equally valid and equally suspect.

The 1950 Alfred Hitchcock film Stage Fright (1950) uses the device of unreliable narration by presenting the aftermath of a murder in a flashback, as told by the murderer. The details of the flashback provide an explanation which helps convince the innocent main protagonist of the film to help the murderer, believing him innocent.

In the movie version of Forrest Gump (1994), the title character narrates his life story, and in the process naïvely refers to Apple Computers as a "fruit company" while also assuming that sustaining a "million dollar wound" meant that one would get paid for it. He also states that Jenny's dad treated her well because "he was always kissing and touching her and her sisters."

The 1995 film The Usual Suspects reveals that the narrator had been deceiving another character, and hence the audience, by inventing stories and characters from whole cloth. The character is seen as a weak, humble, and quiet criminal but it is later found by the audience that he is the fabled crime boss Keyser Soze.

In the 1999 film Fight Club, it is revealed that the narrator suffers from dissociative identity disorder and that some events were fabricated, which means only one of the two main protagonists actually exists, as the other is in the narrator's mind.

In the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, it is eventually revealed that the narrator is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and many of the events he witnessed occurred only in his own mind.

In the 2013 film The Lone Ranger the narrator, Tonto (Johnny Depp), is identified quickly as potentially unreliable by a child attending a 1930s carnival sideshow during extensive questioning about the events leading to the origin of the wild west character the child emulates. The child is wearing the costume identified with the fictional western hero of radio, comics, films, and television. The events related by the narrator vaguely follow an alternative version of character development that occurred during its radio dramas and the beginning of its television series, but with novel disclosures of graphic details that occur as a series of flashbacks portraying the elderly Tonto's memories of the events. Along with the child, the audience is left to make their own judgments about the memories of Tonto.

Television

In the final episode of M*A*S*H, unreliable narration is used to create dramatic effect; Hawkeye Pierce, now a patient of Sidney Freedman in an army mental hospital ward, recounts a traumatic memory of a recent event. In the recounting a key component is replaced with something more innocuous, leaving the viewer wondering why that incident resulted in his mental illness. Later, psychoanalysis with free-association reveals the true memory, which is much more disturbing and can be clearly seen as the cause.

In the episode "Three Stories" of the show House, M.D., the title character, Dr. Gregory House, gives a lecture recounting the stories of three patients who came in with leg pain. House constantly changes details and lies about the stories to make them more interesting and, as is ultimately revealed, to conceal that the identity of one of the patients was House himself.

How I Met Your Mother creator Craig Thomas has explicitly said that the series narrator, "Future Ted", voiced by Bob Saget, is an unreliable narrator. The narrator would sometimes come up with "what if?" conversations for other characters and almost revealing key plot points. Other times, he can't remember the names of some of the people he's met and calls them names such as "Blah Blah" or "Honey", citing "it's been over 25 years."

In the episode "Remember this" (Season 3, episode 4) of the British sitcom Coupling, the story of the first meeting of Patrick and Sally is recounted by several people, all of whom turn out to be unreliable narrators. Most jokes in this episode hinge on disparities amongst certain details of the story (and their psychological implications).

Comics

In Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's Batman: The Killing Joke, the Joker, who is the villain of the story, reflects on the pitiful life that transformed him into a psychotic murderer. Although the Joker's version of the story is not implausible given overall Joker storyline in the Batman comics, the Joker admits at the end of The Killing Joke that he himself is uncertain if it is true.

Between his first appearance in 2008 and 2010, the human identity of Red Hulk, a tactically intelligent version of the Hulk, was a source of mystery. In the 2010 book Fall of the Hulks: Gamma, Red Hulk is depicted in flashback to have killed General Thunderbolt Ross at the behest of Bruce Banner (the Hulk's human identity), with whom he has formed an alliance. However, in the 2010 "World War Hulks" storyline that flashback is revealed to have been false when, during a battle with Red She-Hulk, the Red Hulk reverts to human form, and is revealed to be General Thunderbolt Ross himself.

Notable works featuring unreliable narrators

Literature

• Martin Amis's Time's Arrow
• Augusto Roa Bastos's I, the Supreme
• Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights
• Peter Carey's Illywhacker
• Angela Carter's Wise Children
• Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
• Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone<ref>{{

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• The works of Bret Easton Ellis, most prominently American Psycho<ref name=ampsycho>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury<ref name=frey/>
• Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Günter Grass's The Tin Drum
• Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans<ref name=Ishiguro>{{

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• Henry James's The Turn of the Screw<ref>Helal, Kathleen, ed. The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Works. Enriched Classics. Simon and Schuster, 2007. [1]</ref>
• James Lasdun's The Horned Man<ref>{{

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• Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
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• Mordecai Richler's Barney's Version<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Newsday: "'Barney's Version' of a Colorful Life"</ref><ref>The Globe and Mail: "Barney's Version: Barney as an Everymensch"</ref>
• J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
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• Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children<ref>{{

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• William Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon
• Robert Graves's I, Claudius

Film

• Amarcord directed by Federico Fellini<ref>{{

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• Big Fish directed by Tim Burton<ref>Lance Goldenberg, "There's Something Fishy About Father", Creative Loafing Tampa, 8 January 2004.</ref>
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari directed by Robert Wiene<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• Fight Club directed by David Fincher<ref name=church>Church, David, "Remaining Men Together: Fight Club and the (Un)pleasures of Unreliable Narration", Offscreen, Vol. 10, No. 5 (31 May 2006). Retrieved 14 April 2009.</ref>
• Forrest Gump directed by Robert Zemeckis<ref name=forrest>{{

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• Hero (2002) directed by Zhang Yimou<ref>{{

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• Memento directed by Christopher Nolan
• Rashômon directed by Akira Kurosawa

See also

fantastique, unnamed narrator, literary mystification, false document, Baron Münchhausen