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Narrative technique

Unreliable narrator

A narration whose account cannot be fully trusted because of the narrator's bias, delusion, deception, or limited knowledge.

Unreliable narrator in fiction: 8 works

  1. Alex narrates his own crimes in a self-justifying invented slang that colors all we see.

  2. Offred's fragmented, revised account and the closing 'Historical Notes' undercut her reliability.

  3. Leonard's amnesiac, self-deceiving perspective makes his account fundamentally untrustworthy.

  4. Kathy's gentle, evasive retrospection withholds and softens the horror she describes.

  5. The emotionally detached, memory-impaired narrator filters events through a compromised mind.

  6. The biologist's compromised, changing perception makes her account uncertain.

  7. Murderbot's wry, self-deprecating first-person voice colors and downplays events.

  8. Klara's limited, literal machine perception filters and skews everything she reports.

More narrative techniques

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