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Reliable and Unreliable Narrators
In analyzing the point of view, the reader is often forced to confront the question of the relative trustworthiness or reliability of the narrator. With omniscient point of view, the question is usually not a troublesome one, for when the narrator outside the work and aids directly in its analysis and interpretation, his reliability can be largely assumed. Much the same thing is true with the dramatic point of view, where there is no apparent narrator present. When, however, the narrative voice is positioned inside the work and belongs to a character who is directly involved in the action, the question of the narrator’s reliability often becomes pertinent indeed.
Reliability, it should be understood, is not a matter of whether the reader happens to agree with the narrator’s views. Reliability refers to something far more serious, for an unreliable narrator who is allowed to go undetected and uncorrected can distort our understanding of the author’s own intention, attitudes and meanings.
Often, of course, an unreliable narrator is a stylistic device used by the author to make an obvious thematic point. For example, in Richard Wright’s The Man Who Was Almost a Man, Dave’s equation of a gun with manliness underscores the false and corrupting values of the society in which he lives. In such a case, the author usually provides somewhere a clear indication of the narrator’s unreliability, for the failure to do so will result in ambiguity if not downright unintelligibility.
The question of reliability becomes most complex, however, with perfectly honest and well-intentioned narrators who make every effort to tell the truth of things insofar as they are able to perceive it. Sincerity and good intentions are one thing; reliability is another. Such narrators may prove to be unreliable because they are ignorant or because they commit an error in judgement by drawing the wrong conclusions from the facts available. They may also to prove unreliable because they are victims of their own self-deception. Whatever the cause, once the reader begins to suspect that the narrator is unreliable, a note of ambiguity or irony introduced into the work.
To overcome this problem, the reader must first be able to identify the narrator and perceive his unreliability; and having done so the reader must be able to supply, on his own, an alternative perspective which will allow him to view the work correctly. Sometimes the necessary correction can be made by analyzing and attempting to understand the intellectual and moral qualities of the narrator or by studying a carefully what the other characters have to say about him or her.