The unreliable narrator – a short summary

At its core, an unreliable narrator is a storyteller whose version of events can’t be fully trusted — either because they’re lying, distorted by emotion, confused, or simply limited in perspective.

In literature, it’s a storytelling device:

A character telling the story gives you information that later turns out to be misleading or incomplete.

They might be:

• Lying on purpose
• Delusional or mentally unwell
• Too naive or immature to understand what’s happening
• Biased or emotionally compromised
• Withholding information (from us or themselves)

Purpose: To make the reader or viewer rethink everything — what’s real, what’s interpretation, and who gets to tell the truth.

Why Writers Use It

1. To create suspense or surprise
2. To mirror real-life subjectivity — no one tells a story without bias
3. To explore complex psychological states
4. To manipulate the audience — and then pull the rug out
5. To create moral ambiguity or critique truth itself

Types of Unreliable Narrators

Type	Description	Example
The Liar	Intentionally deceives	Gone Girl (Amy Dunne)
The Madman	Psychologically unstable	Fight Club, Shutter Island
The Naïve Child	Too innocent or inexperienced to understand the full story	Room, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
The Addict	Under the influence or mentally clouded	Requiem for a Dream, The Lost Weekend
The Biased Witness	Tells the story to make themselves look better (or worse)	The Great Gatsby (Nick Carraway)
The Amnesiac	Lacks memory, often hides key facts	Memento, Before I Go to Sleep

Key Techniques Used

1. Inconsistencies: Events or details that don’t add up
2. Contradictory accounts: Different characters have clashing memories
3. Limited POV: We only see what the narrator sees (and miss the bigger picture)
4. Shocking twist: The narrator wasn’t who they claimed to be, or reality wasn’t as we were told
5. Foreshadowing through tone: Something feels off even before we learn the truth

Famous Examples

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

Holden Caulfield is jaded, contradictory, and deeply emotional. Is he being honest, or is his pain coloring everything?

 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

Humbert Humbert tries to seduce the reader with language — but he’s clearly manipulating us, and the story is disturbing when read carefully.

 Fight Club – dir. David Fincher

Narrator suffers from dissociation. When the reveal comes, it reframes the entire film.

The Sixth Sense – dir. M. Night Shyamalan

The protagonist doesn’t lie, but the story omits key facts — we’re misled by omission.

Life of Pi – Yann Martel

Two versions of the same story — one fantastical, one brutal. Which is true? That’s left to the reader.

How It Affects the Audience

• Forces active engagement — we become detectives
• Makes us question truth and memory
• Reflects real-world subjectivity — no story is purely objective
• Creates deep emotional or moral complexity

We begin to realize: truth in storytelling is never neutral — and who tells the story changes the story.

Connection to Narrative Psychology

Just like in narrative psychology, the unreliable narrator:

• Reveals how memory is selective
• Shows how identity can shape interpretation
• Exposes the gap between story and fact
• Reflects the inner world more than outer events

So, in both fiction and psychology:

The narrator is a lens — not a window.

Unreliable Narrator in Narrative Psychology

In narrative psychology, we are all unreliable narrators — to some degree.

Why? Because:

• Memory is selective and reconstructive
• We’re shaped by emotion, trauma, culture, desire
• We unconsciously filter experiences to protect our identity or make sense of chaos

The life story we tell isn’t false, but it’s always edited, framed, and biased — even when we try to be honest.

This doesn’t make us liars. It just means we’re human.

Examples of Everyday Unreliable Narration

• Remembering a breakup as all their fault — until years later, you see your role too
• Downplaying childhood pain to avoid re-feeling it
• Framing a bad event as “meant to be” — even if that’s not factually accurate
• Forgetting the boring or confusing parts of a story to make it neater

 Why It Matters Psychologically

1. Self-protection
   We often unconsciously distort painful events to preserve our emotional stability.
2. Meaning-making
   We simplify and shape our stories to give life a sense of coherence.
3. Identity construction
   Our life story is part of how we say “who I am” — and we’ll subtly alter the story to keep that identity intact.
4. Emotional tone
   Some people consistently narrate their lives with optimism (redemptive stories), others with pessimism or victimhood (contamination stories).
   This tone matters more than the facts, in terms of well-being.

Summary (Psychological Lens)

An unreliable narrator, in narrative psychology, is the self as storyteller — a person who tells the story of their life in a way that is inevitably subjective, emotional, and incomplete.

This is not a flaw — it’s how the human mind works:

• We filter our memories
• We edit our narratives
• And we revise them as we grow

We are all unreliable narrators .