An Unreliable Narrator: The Voice of Truths and Lies
The narrator is the essence of every single story. The narrator defines the veracity of the events that are being told. Nonetheless, not all the stories have a sincere narrator. This is when the narrator's essences begin to differ, and this is when a narrator starts being called: unreliable. In the words of John Gardner, an unreliable narrator is: "a guy talking who is definitely not the writer and who is fun to listen to and fun to watch and who tells you all kinds of things that may be true and may be false". Thus, this guy has certain qualities that may transform a story into a work of art or a fanfare of fallacies.
On the one hand, the unreliable narrator tells the readers what he wishes them to know from him, picking out extracts of information from a roulette of veracity or falsehood. He may decide to tell them that he is a philosopher and he develops that idea until he reveals that he's not a philosopher but a performer playing that role. Though, the lies that the narrator tells may not be always useful or entertaining. In order to make things interesting, the narrator must decide whether he wants to transform his voice into the maximum lie or telling the event exactly as it happened.
On the other hand, The voice of an unreliable narrator leads its way, either corrupted or not, towards the true nature of the story. An example of one of the most amazing unreliable narrators could be Humbert Humbert from Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged man who is obsessed with a beautiful blonde lass whose charm mesmerizes him. He is bewitched and his love towards her transforms the story into a melancholic and witty narration. However, he plays with the readers and enjoys telling them that he doesn't love the girl anymore, and that he wishes her death, but every time the girl passes by his side, her enchantment hypnotizes Humbert once again. This shows the effect that an unreliable narrator can have when his voice shows his evolving emotions. When a character changes his emotions out of thin air, the readers can feel identified with him because we are constantly evolving.
Furthermore, the use of an unreliable narrator can have many outcomes in the development of a story. Some of these outcomes may be positive or not, but it is the narrator the one that decides when he is going to be unreliable. The lies and truths that he decides to tell to the readers may embellish or impoverish his story. That is why his lies have to be conceived with a notion of artfulness because if he fails to lie, the readers will get lost in a parade of nonsense and trifles. The unreliable narrator is the one that wants to play with the reader. He wants the reader to puzzle out the pieces and to connect them to see if he is lying or not and if that event happened or not. With all his techniques, he becomes spellbinding to read.
Lastly, an unreliable narrator is a voice composed by truths and lies, like life itself. He is the one that seeks to get the juicy attention from his viewers, and if he manages to captivate their eyes, he will have them anchored into his psyche until the end of the story. This kind of narrator is one of the most fascinating because all the stories that have such a voice are the most human ones. The use of this voice is a way to understand that our lives and ourselves are, sometimes, unreliable narrators.
