Reliability
IntroducedBias is inferred from selection
- Readers can infer narrators' biases by noting which details they choose to include in a narrative and which they choose to omit.
- So reliability is not a feeling about a narrator — it is read off their selections.
- That makes it evidenced rather than asserted, which is what an essay needs.
A narrator who describes every guest except the host may be doing more than forgetting a name.
Readers infer a narrator's bias by noting...
That makes reliability evidenced rather than asserted.
Bias reduces reliability
- Readers who detect bias in a narrator may find that narrator less reliable.
- Note may and less: the CED describes a sliding scale, not a switch.
- Very few narrators are wholly unreliable, and calling one so is usually an overstatement you cannot defend.
A narrator is either reliable or unreliable, with nothing in between.
The CED's wording is may find them less reliable — a sliding scale.
Reliability changes what you can conclude about others
- The reliability of a narrator may influence a reader's understanding of a character's motives.
- So an unreliable narrator does not only mislead about facts — they distort every motive they report.
- A character who seems cruel through a biased narrator may not be cruel at all.
What reduces this narrator's reliability?
Sort each cause by what it is.
A narrator's reliability influences the reader's understanding of a character's ____.
A character who seems cruel through a biased narrator may not be cruel at all.
"Unreliable narrator" is a scale, not a label. The CED says readers may find a narrator less reliable — so an essay is stronger for saying less reliable about X, for this reason than for declaring a narrator unreliable outright, which is rarely defensible from the text.
Select all the things that can reduce reliability without dishonesty.
A narrator can be scrupulously honest and still only know what they know.
Unreliable does not mean lying
- A narrator can be scrupulously honest and still unreliable, because they only know what they know.
- Youth, illness, distance, self-interest and simple absence all reduce reliability without any dishonesty.
- So describe why this narrator's account is limited, rather than accusing them.
Put the reliability pass in order.
The last step is the one the CED's objective actually names.
A reliability pass
- List what the narrator includes about a disputed event, and what they leave out.
- Name the bias those choices suggest, and say how much less reliable it makes them.
- Then take one character and say how the narrator's bias may have distorted their motives.
The narrator records every remark his sister made about money and none of what she said about their mother. He is not lying. But the reader can no longer trust his account of why she left — and the novel's final chapter depends on that gap being noticed.
Bias is inferred from which details a narrator includes and omits, and readers who detect bias may find the narrator less reliable — a scale, not a switch. Reliability influences a reader's understanding of a character's motives, and a narrator can be honest and still limited.