All narrators are unreliable. Just as real people are inevitably tinted by biases, experiences, backgrounds, opinions, and perspectives, the notional storytellers of our writing are bound by the same tendencies, even ostensibly “omniscient” narrators like those favored by Dickens and other (mostly older) authors. The question, therefore, is not whether or not an author should experiment with unreliable narrators, but in what way and to what extent the narrators you employ will be unreliable, and how you will utilize that fact in your storytelling. Perhaps the most significant factor in manipulating the unreliability of your narrator is intimacy.
When we speak of unreliable narrators, we are usually referring to an approach to storytelling through a strong character lens, producing intimacy between the reader’s experience of the story and the character’s. In genre fiction, Mat from Wheel of Time and Kvothe from Kingkiller Chronicle are probably the most famous examples of this style of unreliable narrator – these are what, in high school English parlance, would be considered examples of the “literary device” of the unreliable narrator, useful for producing effects like eliciting reader sympathy or setting up dramatic irony, depending on how the unreliability is communicated, how explicit it is made, and how the characters’ values align with the reader’s.
If, instead, the author chooses to tell the story through “objective” narration, the effect is to produce an intimacy between the storyteller and the reader, instead of between the character and the reader. It produces a concomitant distance between the reader and the characters, which can also be a desirable effect, and the reader will tend not to consider the narrator’s unreliability in this form (unless certain signposts are offered as indication) because of the intimacy produced. The reader trusts the storyteller in this form to provide something approaching the truth of the matter, insofar as there can be a truth to tell, and it is usually the case that such narrators do seek a level of reliability, but that should not be equated to their being wholly reliable, as they inevitably are not. The narrator in A Christmas Carol does not provide some impossible notion of an objective depiction of reality – it has a biased perspective, colored by Dickens’ views of right and wrong, and weighted by the goal of generating sympathy, or at least understanding, for that odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling Mr. Scrooge, and depicting his redemption. The story works precisely because of the narrator’s unreliability in this sense, and the reader’s willingness to accept that unreliability in the way we accept the word of a storyteller.
At a recent event, I happened into conversation with a stranger who was keen to tell stories of himself, about his habit of running marathons, completing ironman races, and other physical feats. They may have been interesting stories, but I could not tell you if they were, because I was preoccupied the entire time by wondering if he was even telling me the truth. Rarely do we question, at least not so pervasively, the basic truthfulness of the people who narrate to us of themselves, and well this is, for it is a disorienting experience. In this instance, something about the stranger’s bearing, appearance, and presentation came together to suggest strongly a sense that these stories did not align with the person telling them. A narrator whom I should have perceived as reliable became unreliable, changing my distance from the narrative.
Controlling this intimacy between narrator and reader is a far more potent tool in the author’s toolbox than the mere literary device of the “unreliable narrator,” which can be deployed to advantage only in specific circumstances and types of stories. Producing intimacy between the reader and the characters through the use of an unreliable narrator shortcuts the generation of a high degree of sympathy for the character, which can be maintained even in the face of a morally dubious protagonist. This is the power of perspective, to enable the reader to perceive the inner thoughts, assumptions, and intentions of a character and thereby come to understand them in a way we never otherwise understand those who are not ourselves. It is a way of taking the old saying that we judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions, and adding these unreliable narrator-characters to the theretofore single-entry list of those judged by their intentions. Alternatively, producing intimacy between the reader and the unreliable storyteller provides the storyteller with an exceptional level of trust, by which means they can tell a story like A Christmas Carol in a way that is so satisfying. If A Christmas Carol were told from Scrooge’s perspective, it would not be so much a story of redemption as one of personal growth, a likely off-putting effect in this context. Told from a Cratchit’s perspective, perhaps it is a story of valiant striving and faith paid off in Scrooge’s transformation – a story that may be intriguing, but lacks the moral weight of the original, and which risks telling a story from the perspective of a character with insufficient agency to be engaging.
Far more can be said about this reframed notion of the unreliable narrator – indeed, there is a frame through which The Rhetoric of Fiction can be viewed as a book devoted almost entirely to the subject – but this should serve as an introduction to a changed perspective on the idea of the unreliable narrator (and the narrator in general) from which I have recently benefited. Understanding how unreliability and intimacy are related and can be manipulated in storytelling opens a vast array of possibilities for narrative, ones far more interesting than those available from the diametric view.
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