The Unreliable Narrator

The Unreliable Narrator was mainly about how authors develop the essential characters that narrate their novels. It starts of with a brief excerpt from The Remains of the Day and the rest of the article revolves around the the character Stevens and the unreliablity of what he dictates as fact. At first the author of the article defines what an unreliable narrator is as, "invented characters who are part of the stories they tell" and that the point of using an unreliable narrator is, "to reveal in an interesting way the gap between appearance and reality." The author then gives the readers a bit more background to the novel to help understand the character flaws of the particular 'unreliable narrator' that he focuses on: Stevens. Many of the paragraphs focus on incidences where Stevens reports himself in a more favourable light than an observable source may think. The author explains Stevens' emotional flaws or 'emotional sterility' and his utter denial when he acts in a crass manner. The author then follows up his claims with another excerpt from the novel which again shows Stevens' distortion of reality. Finally, the author connects The Remains of the Day with another self-deluded narrator from the novel Pale Fire.