Contradictory Narrators
Different narrators know different things
- Some narrators or speakers may provide details and information that others do not or cannot provide.
- Do not and cannot are different: one is a choice, the other a limit.
- So when a detail is missing from one account, ask which of the two it is.
"Do not" and "cannot" differ because...
So when a detail is missing, ask which of the two it is.
They may contradict each other
- Multiple narrators or speakers may provide contradictory information in a text.
- Not merely different emphases — contradictory, meaning both cannot be true.
- So a multi-narrator text hands the reader a decision the text itself may decline to make.
Do not always pick a winner
- The reflex is to decide which narrator is right; often the text has arranged for you not to be able to.
- Where the evidence genuinely does not settle it, saying so is the stronger answer.
- Where it does settle it, say what tipped it — and then say why the other account was told at all.
Cannot, does not, or a contradiction?
Sort each gap between two accounts.
When two narrators contradict each other, you must decide which is right.
Often the text has arranged for you not to be able to — and saying so is stronger.
Deciding which narrator is right is often the wrong move. Where a text arranges two accounts that cannot both be true and gives you no way to settle it, that undecidability is the design — and a contradiction is evidence about both narrators whether or not the facts are ever resolved.
A contradiction is evidence about ____ accounts, whichever turns out to be true.
It tells you what each narrator needed to believe, or needed you to believe.
Use the contradiction to read both narrators
- A contradiction is evidence about both accounts, whichever is true.
- It tells you what each narrator needed to believe, or needed you to believe.
- That is available even when the facts remain undecidable, which is why it is the safer analysis.
Select all the steps of the multi-narrator pass.
Likeability is not evidence.
Match each version to what it requires.
The story is about which version each of them needed.
A multi-narrator pass
- List what each narrator provides that the other does not, and mark cannot versus does not.
- Find any point where the two contradict.
- Then say what each account's version reveals about the one telling it.
He says she left without a word; she says she wrote twice. Both cannot be true, and the story never adjudicates. But it does not need to: his version requires her to have been careless, and hers requires him to have been unreachable — and the story is about which of those each of them needed.
Some narrators provide details others do not or cannot — a choice versus a limit. Multiple narrators may provide contradictory information. Do not always pick a winner: a contradiction is evidence about both accounts, revealing what each narrator needed to believe.