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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator

 Unreliable narrator
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Illustration by Gustave Doré for Baron Münchhausen: tall tales, such as those of the Baron, often feature unreliable narrators.An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised.[1] The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction.[2] This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually to deceive the reader or audience.[1] Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators, but third-person narrators can also be unreliable.

The nature of the narrator is sometimes immediately clear. For instance, a story may open with the narrator making a plainly false or delusional claim or admitting to being severely mentally ill, or the story itself may have a frame in which the narrator appears as a character, with clues to his unreliability. A more dramatic use of the device delays the revelation until near the story's end. This twist ending forces the reader to reconsider their point of view and experience of the story. In some cases the narrator's unreliability is never fully revealed but only hinted at, leaving the reader to wonder how much the narrator should be trusted and how the story should be interpreted.

Historical novels, speculative fiction, and clearly delineated dream sequences are generally not considered instances of unreliable narration, even though they describe events that did not or could not happen.

Contents
[hide]
?1 Examples of unreliable narrators
?1.1 Historical occurrences
?1.2 Novels
?1.3 Films
?1.4 Television
?1.5 Comics
?2 Works featuring unreliable narrators
?3 References
?3.1 Footnotes
?3.2 Textbook
?3.3 External links

Examples of unreliable narrators
Historical occurrences
The literary device of the "unreliable narrator" was used in several medieval fictional Arabic tales of the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights.[3] In one tale, "The Seven Viziers", a courtesan accuses a king's son of having assaulted her, when in reality she had failed to seduce him (inspired by the Qur'anic/Biblical story of Yusuf/Joseph). Seven viziers attempt to save his life by narrating seven stories to prove the unreliability of the courtesan, and the courtesan responds by narrating a story to prove the unreliability of the viziers.[4] The unreliable narrator device is also used to generate suspense in another Arabian Nights tale, "The Three Apples", an early murder mystery. At one point of the story, two men claim to be the murderer, one of whom is revealed to be lying. At another point in the story, in a flashback showing the reasons for the murder, it is revealed that an unreliable narrator convinced the man of his wife's infidelity, thus leading to her murder.[5]

Another early example of unreliable narration is Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. In "The Merchant's Tale" for example, the narrator, being unhappy in his marriage, allows his misogynistic bias to slant much of his tale. In "The Wife of Bath", the Wife often makes inaccurate quotations and incorrectly remembers stories.

Novels
Wilkie Collins' early detective story The Moonstone (1868) is an early example of the unreliable narrator in crime fiction. The plot of the novel unfolds through several narratives by different characters, which contradict each other and reveal the biases of the narrators.

A controversial example of an unreliable narrator occurs in Agatha Christie's novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, where the narrator hides essential truths in the text (mainly through evasion, omission, and obfuscation) without ever overtly lying. Many readers at the time felt that the plot twist at the climax of the novel was nevertheless unfair. Christie used the concept again in her 1967 novel Endless Night.

Many novels are narrated by children, whose inexperience can impair their judgment and make them unreliable. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Huck's innocence leads him to make overly charitable judgments about the characters in the novel.

Ken Kesey's two most famous novels feature unreliable narrators. "Chief" Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest suffers from schizophrenia, and his telling of the events often includes things such as people growing or shrinking, walls oozing with slime, or the orderlies kidnapping and "curing" Santa Claus. Narration in Sometimes a Great Notion switches between several of the main characters, whose bias tends to switch the reader's sympathies from one person to another, especially in the rivalry between main character Leland and Hank Stamper. Many of Susan Howatch's novels similarly use this technique; each chapter is narrated by a different character, and only after reading chapters by each of the narrators does the reader realize each of the narrators has biases and "blind spots" that cause them to perceive shared experiences differently.

Humbert Humbert, the main character and narrator of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, often tells the story in such a way as to justify his pedophilic fixation on young girls, in particular his sexual relationship with his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Similarly, the narrator of A. M. Homes' The End of Alice deliberately withholds the full story of the crime that put him in prison – the rape and murder of a young girl – until the end of the novel.

In some instances, unreliable narration can bring about the fantastic in works of fiction. In Kingsley Amis' The Green Man, for example, the unreliability of the narrator Maurice Allington destabilizes the boundaries between reality and the fantastic. The same applies to Nigel Williams's Witchcraft.[6] An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears also employs several points of view from narrators whose accounts are found to be unreliable and in conflict with each other.[7]

Mike Engleby, the narrator of Sebastian Faulks' Engleby, leads the reader to believe a version of events of his life that is shown to be increasingly at odds with reality.[8]

Zeno Cosini, the narrator of Italo Svevo's Zeno's Conscience, is a typical example of unreliable narrator: in fact the novel is presented as a diary of Zeno himself, who unintentionally distorts the facts to justify his faults. His psychiatrist, who publishes the diary, claims in the introduction that it's a mix of truths and lies.[9]

Films
One of the earliest examples of the use of an unreliable narrator in film is the German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, from 1920.[10] In this film, an epilogue to the main story is a twist ending revealing that Francis, through whose eyes we see the action, is a patient in an insane asylum, and the flashback which forms the majority of the film is simply his mental delusion. A much more recent film (and play) to use a similar plot device is Amadeus. This tale is narrated by an elderly Antonio Salieri from an insane asylum, where he claims to have murdered his rival, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is left unclear whether the story actually happened, or whether it is the product of Salieri's delusions.

In Citizen Kane (1941), the story of Charles Foster Kane is told by five different acquaintances of his, each with varying opinions of the character.

In the 1996 film, Courage Under Fire, Denzel Washington's character is tasked with researching the events related to a posthumous Medal of Honor nomination for a female helicopter pilot (played by Meg Ryan). The research involves getting accounts of the events from the other people present, other military members who survived. Their accounts are seen as flashbacks and while the basic facts are the same in each memory, the details vary greatly.

The 1945 film noir Detour is told from the perspective of an unreliable protagonist who may be trying to justify his actions.[11][12][13]

In Possessed (1947), Joan Crawford plays a woman who is taken to a psychiatric hospital in a state of shock. She gradually tells the story of how she came to be there to her doctors, which is related to the audience in flashbacks, some of which are later revealed to be hallucinations or distorted by paranoia.[14]

The film Rashomon (1950), adapted from In a Grove (1921), uses multiple narrators to tell the story of the death of a samurai. Each of the witnesses describe the same basic events but differ wildly in the details, alternately claiming that the samurai died by accident, suicide, or murder. The term "Rashomon effect" is used to describe how different witnesses are able to produce differing, yet plausible, accounts of the same event, with equal sincerity.

The narrator of the 1950 Billy Wilder film Sunset Boulevard, William Holden's character of down-and-out screen-writer turned kept man Joseph C. Gillis, is an unreliable narrator because his narration of the film is delivered from beyond the grave, as Gloria Swanson's character, former silent-screen actress Norma Desmond, had shot and killed him the night before the earliest events in the film (which he narrates posthumously, and in flashback) began.

The 1995 film The Usual Suspects reveals that the narrator had been deceiving another character, and hence the audience, by inventing stories and characters from whole cloth.[15][16]

In the 1999 film Fight Club, it is revealed that the narrator suffers from multiple personality disorder and that some events were fabricated, which means only one of the two main protagonists actually exists, as the other is in the narrator's mind.[17]

In the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, it is eventually revealed that the narrator is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and many of the events he witnessed occurred only in his own mind.[18]

Television
In the final episode of M*A*S*H, unreliable narration is used to create dramatic effect; Hawkeye Pierce, now a patient of Sidney Freedman in an army mental hospital ward, recounts a traumatic memory of a recent event. In the recounting a key component is substituted with something more innocuous, leaving the viewer wondering why that incident resulted in his mental illness. Later, psychoanalysis with free-association reveals the true memory, which is much more disturbing and can be clearly seen as the cause.

In the episode "Three Stories" of the show House, M.D., the title character, Dr. Gregory House, gives a lecture recounting the stories of three patients who came in with leg pain. House constantly changes details and lies about the stories to make them more interesting and, as is ultimately revealed, to conceal the identity of one of the patients.

How I Met Your Mother creator Craig Thomas has explicitly said that the series narrator, "Future Ted", voiced by Bob Saget, is an unreliable narrator. The narrator would sometimes come up with "what if?" conversations for other characters and almost revealing key plot points.[19]

In the episode "Remember this (http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/coupling/episodes/s3ep4.shtml) " (Season 3, episode 4) of the British sitcom Coupling, the story of the first meeting of Patrick and Sally is recounted by several people, all of whom turn out to be unreliable narrators. Most jokes in this episode hinge on disparities amongst certain details of the story (and their psychological implications).

Comics
In Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's Batman: The Killing Joke, the Joker, who is the anti-hero of the story, reflects on the pitiful life that transformed him into a psychotic murderer. Although the Joker's version of the story is not implausible given overall Joker storyline in the Batman comics, the Joker admits at the end of The Killing Joke that he himself is uncertain if it is true.[20]

Between his first appearance in 2008 and 2010, the human identity of Red Hulk, a tactically intelligent version of the Hulk, was a source of mystery. In the 2010 book Fall of the Hulks: Gamma, Red Hulk is depicted in flashback to have killed General Thunderbolt Ross at the behest of Bruce Banner (the Hulk's human identity), with whom he has formed an alliance.[21] However, in the 2010 "World War Hulks" storyline that flashback is revealed to have been false when, during a battle with Red She-Hulk, the Red Hulk reverts to human form, and is revealed to be General Thunderbolt Ross himself.[22]

Works featuring unreliable narrators
?Martin Amis's Time's Arrow[23]
?Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights[24]
?Peter Carey's Illywhacker[25]
?Angela Carter's Wise Children[26]
?Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
?Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone[27]
?The works of Bret Easton Ellis, most prominently American Psycho[28]
?William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury[1]
?F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby[29]
?Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier[30]
?Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans[31]
?Henry James's The Turn of the Screw[32]
?James Lasdun's The Horned Man[33]
?Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes[34]
?Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire[35]
?Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles[citation needed]
?Mordecai Richler's Barney's Version[36][37][38]
?Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children'
?Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson's The Illuminatus! Trilogy
?The works of Gene Wolfe, most prominently The Book of the New Sun and The Fifth Head of Cerberus[39]
?William Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon
?Robert Graves's I, Claudius
Films with an unreliable point-of-view (or points-of-view):

?A Beautiful Mind directed by Ron Howard
?Amarcord directed by Federico Fellini[40]
?Big Fish directed by Tim Burton[41]
?The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari directed by Robert Wiene[42]
?Fight Club directed by David Fincher[43]
?Hero (2002) directed by Zhang Yimou[44]
?Memento directed by Christopher Nolan[45]
?Rashomon directed by Akira Kurosawa[46]
?Stage Fright directed by Alfred Hitchcock[47]
?"Box" segment from "Three... Extremes" (2004) directed by Takashi Miike[48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57]
?The Usual Suspects directed by Bryan Singer[58]
References
Footnotes
1.^ a b c "How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II", by James N. Frey (1994) ISBN 0312104782, p. 107 (http://books.google.com/books?id=pA1h1ti1tzEC&pg=PA107&dq=%22unreliable+...)
2.^ "Professor Wayne Booth" (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1824513,00.html) , an obituary, The Times, 14 October 2005
3.^ Irwin, Robert (2003), The Arabian Nights: A Companion, Tauris Parke Paperbacks, p. 227, ISBN 1860649831
4.^ Pinault, David (1992), Story-telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights, Brill Publishers, p. 59, ISBN 9004095306
5.^ Pinault, David (1992), Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights, Brill Publishers, pp. 93–7, ISBN 9004095306
6.^ Martin Horstkotte. "Unreliable Narration and the Fantastic in Kingsley Amis's The Green Man and Nigel Williams's Witchcraft". Extrapolation 48,1 (2007): 137–151.
7.^ "THE MYSTERY READER reviews: An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears" (http://www.themysteryreader.com/pears-instance.html) . Themysteryreader.com. http://www.themysteryreader.com/pears-instance.html. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
8.^ Roberts, Michèle (18 May 2007). "Engleby, by Sebastian Faulks. Sad lad, or mad lad?" (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/engleby-by...) . The Independent (London). http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/engleby-by.... Retrieved 21 March 2009.
9.^ "James Wood reviews ‘Zeno's Conscience’ by Italo Svevo, edited by William Weaver, ‘Memoir of Italo Svevo’ by Livia Veneziani Svevo, translated by Isabel Quigly and ‘Emilio's Carnival’ by Italo Svevo, translated by Beth Archer Brombert · LRB 3 January 2002" (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n01/james-wood/mixed-feelings) . Lrb.co.uk. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n01/james-wood/mixed-feelings. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
10.^ Film Studies: Don't Believe His Lies, by Volker Ferenz (http://reviews.media-culture.org.au/modules.php?name=News&file=article&s...)
11.^ Detour (1945) (Ferdy on Films, etc.) (http://ferdyonfilms.com/2006/12/detour-1945.php) [dead link]
12.^ [1] (http://www.cinematheque.bc.ca/archives/ffnoso98.html) [dead link]
13.^ "> Detour (1945)" (http://www.film-talk.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t14372.html) . Film Talk. http://www.film-talk.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t14372.html. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
14.^ "Possessed movie review" (http://www.alifeatthemovies.com/movie-of-the-day/possessed/) . A Life At the Movies. 20 June 2010. http://www.alifeatthemovies.com/movie-of-the-day/possessed/.
15.^ Schwartz, Ronald (2005), Neo-Noir: The New Film Noir Style from Psycho to Collateral (http://books.google.com/?id=VRCgRGFV0ycC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA71#v=onepage&q=) , Scarecrow Press, p. 71, ISBN 9780810856769, http://books.google.com/?id=VRCgRGFV0ycC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA71#v=onepage&q=
16.^ Lehman, David (2000), The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection (http://books.google.com/?id=ZYC09Sc8-jQC&lpg=PA41&pg=PA221#v=onepage&q=) (2nd ed.), University of Michigan Press, pp. 221–222, ISBN 9780472085859, http://books.google.com/?id=ZYC09Sc8-jQC&lpg=PA41&pg=PA221#v=onepage&q=: "[H]e has improvised, spontaneously and with reckless abandon, a coherent, convincing, but false-bottomed narrative to beguile us and deceive his interrogator."
17.^ http://www.poewar.com/john-hewitt%E2%80%99s-writing-tips-explaining-the-...
18.^ Hansen, Per Krogh, Unreliable Narration in Cinema (http://cf.hum.uva.nl/narratology/a09_hansen.htm) , University of Southern Denmark, http://cf.hum.uva.nl/narratology/a09_hansen.htm "...[In] the second part of the film a large part of what we hitherto have considered part of the objective perspective (persons, actions, places) are exposed as being mental constructions and projections made by the protagonist...We have not only seen the events from his perspective, but we have seen what he thinks happens."
19.^ "'How I Met Your Mother's' Craig Thomas on Ted & Barney's Breakup, Eriksen Babies and The Future of Robarn" (http://blog.zap2it.com/korbitv/2008/05/how-i-met-your.html) . Zap2it.com. http://blog.zap2it.com/korbitv/2008/05/how-i-met-your.html. Retrieved 21 July 2008.
20.^ David Leverenz, "The Last Real Man in America: From Natty Bumppo to Batman", The "American Literary History" Reader, ed. Gordon Hutner (New York: Oxford UP, 1995) 276. ISBN 0195095049.
21.^ Loeb, Jeph. Fall of the Hulks: Gamma Marvel Comics. (February 2010)
22.^ Loeb, Jeph. Hulk vol. 2 No. 22 Marvel Comics. (July 2010)
23.^ The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/01/home/amis-arrow.html?_r=1&oref=slo....
24.^ http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0029-0564(197303)27%3A4%3C449%3ATUNIWH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6
25.^ Asthana, Anushka (23 January 2010). "Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey" (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/...) . The Times (London). http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/....
26.^ "Comedy Is Tragedy That Happens to Other People" (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE3D91730F93AA25752C0A...) . The New York Times. 19 January 1992. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE3D91730F93AA25752C0A....
27.^ "Historicizing unreliable narration: unreliability and cultural" (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-97074176.html) . Encyclopedia.com. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-97074176.html. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
28.^ Sarah Webster. When Writer Becomes Celebrity. The Oxonian Review of Books, Vol. 5, No. 2 (spring 2006) [2] (http://www.oxonianreview.org/issues/5-2/5-2webster.html)
29.^ Thomas E. Boyle. Unreliable Narration in "The Great Gatsby". The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, Vol. 23, No. 1 (March 1969), pp. 21–26 [3] (http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1346578)
30.^ Womack, Kevin and William Baker, eds. The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion. Broadview Press, 2003. [4] (http://books.google.com/books?id=ISGzVIjrHmIC&pg=PA3&dq=ford+madox+ford+...)
31.^ Mudge, Alden. "Ishiguro takes a literary approach to the detective novel." [5] (http://www.bookpage.com/0009bp/kazuo_ishiguro.html)
32.^ Helal, Kathleen, ed. The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Works. Enriched Classics. Simon and Schuster, 2007. [6] (http://books.google.com/books?id=rb-7OYNkItUC&pg=PA455&lpg=PA455&dq=the+...)
33.^ "DarkEcho Review: The Horned Man by James Lasdun" (http://www.darkecho.com/darkecho/reviews/horned.html) . Darkecho.com. 3 May 2003. http://www.darkecho.com/darkecho/reviews/horned.html. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
34.^ Landay, Lori (1998), Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Women: The Female Trickster in American Culture, University of Pennsylvania Press, p. 200 [7] (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=n5BpcSboBEEC&printsec=frontcover#PPA...)
35.^ "Dowling on Pale Fire" (http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/palenarr.htm) . Rci.rutgers.edu. http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/palenarr.htm. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
36.^ The New York Times: "The Way He Was -- or Was He?" (http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/21/reviews/971221.21shapirt.html)
37.^ Newsday: "'Barney's Version' of a Colorful Life" (http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/barney-s-version-of-a-colorf...)
38.^ The Globe and Mail: "Barney's Version: Barney as an Everymensch" (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/movies/barneys-version-barney-a...)
39.^ "Interview with Gene Wolfe Conducted by Lawrence Person" (http://home.roadrunner.com/~lperson1/wolfe.html) . Home.roadrunner.com. http://home.roadrunner.com/~lperson1/wolfe.html. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
40.^ Tom Dawson, [8] (http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/08/24/amarcord_2004_review.shtml) , reviewing Amracord on BBC films
41.^ Lance Goldenberg, "There's Something Fishy About Father" (http://tampa.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A3527) , Creative Loafing Tampa, 8 January 2004.
42.^ Ferenz, Volker, "Fight Clubs, American Psychos and Mementos," New Review of Film and Television Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1 November 2005), pp. 133–159, (link (http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/link.asp?id=j0496042631634l1) , accessed 5 March 2007, reg. required).
43.^ Church, David, "Remaining Men Together: Fight Club and the (Un)pleasures of Unreliable Narration (http://www.offscreen.com/biblio/phile/essays/fight_club/) ", Offscreen, Vol. 10, No. 5 (31 May 2006). Retrieved on 14 April 2009.
44.^ "''Hero'' review in the ''Montreal Film Journal''" (http://www.montrealfilmjournal.com/review.asp?R=R0000709) . Montrealfilmjournal.com. 26 March 2003. http://www.montrealfilmjournal.com/review.asp?R=R0000709. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
45.^ [9] (http://www.reel.com/movie.asp?MID=131667&buy=closed&PID=10099964&Tab=rev...) [dead link]
46.^ [10] (http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article.jsp?cid=136021&mainArticleId=160926) Rashomon article on Turner Classic Movies
47.^ The "lying" opening flashback, Hitchcock/Truffaut
48.^ "Three... Extremes" (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051027/REVIE...) . Chicago Sun-Times. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051027/REVIE....
49.^ Hartlaub, Peter (28 October 2005). "FILM CLIPS / Opening today" (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/28/DDG17FEJ0A1....) . The San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/28/DDG17FEJ0A1.....
50.^ Vu, Ryan. "Three... Extremes (2004)" (http://popmatters.com/film/reviews/t/three-extremes.shtml) . < PopMatters. http://popmatters.com/film/reviews/t/three-extremes.shtml. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
51.^ Stuart, Gwynedd (26 October 2005). "Trilogy of terror | Movie Review | Creative Loafing Atlanta" (http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:62889) . Atlanta.creativeloafing.com. http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:62889. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
52.^ Tobias, Scott (26 October 2005). "Three... Extremes | Film | Movie Review" (http://www.avclub.com/articles/three-extremes,4240/) . The A.V. Club. http://www.avclub.com/articles/three-extremes,4240/. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
53.^ "Three... Extremes – Filmcritic.com Movie Review" (http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/2a460f93626cd4678625624c007f...) . Filmcritic.com. http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/2a460f93626cd4678625624c007f.... Retrieved 13 November 2011.
54.^ "Three...Extremes (2004) Review" (http://hollywoodgothique.com/threeextremes2004.html) . Hollywood Gothique. http://hollywoodgothique.com/threeextremes2004.html. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
55.^ Patrick (6 April 2006). "Thoughts on Stuff: Three...Extremes" (http://thoughtsonstuff.blogspot.com/2006/04/threeextremes.html) . Thoughtsonstuff.blogspot.com. http://thoughtsonstuff.blogspot.com/2006/04/threeextremes.html. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
56.^ "Three Extremes Horror Movie Review from BHM: Engrossing and Unforgettable" (http://www.best-horror-movies.com/three-extremes.html) . Best-horror-movies.com. http://www.best-horror-movies.com/three-extremes.html. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
57.^ Adams, Sam. "Screen Picks" (http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2006-03-09/screen.shtml) . Citypaper.net. http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2006-03-09/screen.shtml. Retrieved 13 November 2011.
58.^ "'Where Is My Mind?' – Chaucer's 'Unreliable Narrator' Goes Neo-Noir: (The Usual Suspects, Fight Club and Memento)" (http://www.filmintuition.com/unreliable_narrator.html) by Jen Johans
Textbook
Smith, M. W. (1991). Understanding Unreliable Narrators. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

External links
?Henry Sutton's top 10 unreliable narrators (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/17/henry-sutton-top-10-unreliab...)
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Allende Admirer's picture

As far as the MSM goes, I

As far as the MSM goes, I find their narratives to be fairly reliable in that invariably the opposite of what they convey is the truth.

Have been watching RT quite a lot. It appears to me to be a genuine news channel. Dont know if any of the US cable /broadcasting systems carry it, but in the UK it is on the basic terrestrial package. Wonder if your bullshit detector has beeped any warnings on RT Gretavo?

If not,I wonder how long it will be before RT is taken off air/license revoked like the Iranian Press tv Channel.

On this subject (reliable narrator), I recently had a massive disagreement with friends over 'We Need To Talk About Kevin'.
- Specifically the Lyn Ramsey film adaptation as I have not read the source novel.

The problem I have is that in order to leave open the designed 'we will never know' conclusion (ie. what drove Kevin to be a high school mass slaughterer) the film definately promotes one possibility that the child was just born a wrong un from the start.
- The child's determination to be an arch nemesis for his mother from even pre speech age with the total abscense of any redeeming scenes of normal child development.

I find this a totally unbelievable and fake premis, and an extremely dangerous precident to set even if we entertain the possibility that some kids are just born on the dark side.

Although it is clear the mother had problems bonding with the child, she was portrayed as a caring responsible parent none the less.Certainly not a Dahmer or Hitler parenting model.

So the question for me is are we to take her first person narrative to be unreliable in that she is selectively remembering or embelishing incidents with her son to find understanding of his later actions and absolving her own parenting of blame ? -(That would have been an interesting option for me,) but the problem is I have absolutely no reason throughout the duration of the film to question the reliability of her narration, and therefore am asked to accept ONE possibility that the child was just born a wrong un? -Unacceptable IMO.