The question arises in any novel whether the narration may be trusted or whether we should rely on our own judgement. In both The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby the narrators could be described as unreliable but does this mean they are unable to be trusted or is unreliability merely a human trait used by Salinger and Fitzgerald to strengthen our empathy for the character? Both Salinger’s, and Fitzgerald’s novels fall prey to unreliable narration due to their structure. In both novels there is a retrospective account of events. Holden Cauldfield, begins the novel with the statement “I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas.” Nick Carraway begins with “when I came back from the east last fall”.
The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is totally unreliable. We are questioning his sanity from the very beginning of the story. He goes out of his way to make us believe he is not mad while he is telling the story, and tells us about going out of his way to make sure others believe in his sanity. Another thing he does to make us question his sanity and reliability is that he claims to hear things a normal person would not be able to hear. And he kills an old man for no other reason than because his eye makes “his blood run cold”.
Through manipulation, blame, and self-justification, Humbert Humbert attempts to provide his readers and jury with an understanding of his passion for and obsession with Lolita, and the knowledge that he is aware of his wrong-doings, while still attempting to express what he believes to be his rationality throughout his narration. As readers, we are challenged to gain insight into Humbert’s personality through his devious techniques of narration and his attempts of rationalization as well as a sense that Lolita is much more complicated than Humbert Humbert lets on. From the beginning of the novel, the reader is confronted with Humbert Humbert’s unreliability and his willingness to manipulate the reader by altering the “facts.” John Ray Jr. describes the narrator as wearing a mask (his pseudonym, “Humbert Humbert”) “through which two hypnotic eyes seem to glow,” (Nabokov 3) illustrating Humbert’s deceptive means of storytelling. The reader is also presented with Humbert’s current state in legal captivity
However, as I learn to write better I am starting to see why the author uses so many stories and many large words to get his point across. If the author did not go into detail about what he was writing about someone might not get the point that he was trying to get across. After reading Yosemite Mon Amour, numerous times I begin to have a clear understanding of why there is so much detail in the story. I felt that the essay was to long because of many stories that the author had written. At the time of first reading this story it seemed as though the author was jumping around and I had a hard time following where he was going with the story this started right from the first paragraph I had no idea why the author was describing Toyotas, and Winnebago’s and then jumping into describing rain.
The started off by talking about the differences that the old man could compare his past experiences to the present life. Winston was extremely eager to gain knowledge of what the past was like so he began to ask many questions. The old man was able to tell him things that Winston did and didn’t know about, yet were completely useless to him. Winston read many books about the days before the Revolution, although he knew and believed that not everything he read was true. For Winston it was exciting that he could finally hear about the reality and more in-depth information of those old days and that he could finally get the answers to the questions he has been waiting for.
The Narrator's Delusions As readers, we begin to realize that the narrator suffers from paranoia. This means that perhaps not everything the narrator recounts is accurate. Look through the text for passages in which the narrator describes a sensation, experience, or belief that you think might not be grounded in reality. For example, do you think the ticking sound the narrator hears is real, or is it just in the narrator's mind? Why do you think Poe would choose to tell his story from the perspective of this delusional narrator?
O'Brien creates an intentional paradox for his readers when he writes the violent, but grabbing story of Rat Kiley and then at the end of the story, tells the reader that the characters and events of the story did not happen just as he described them, but that they happened in a totally different way to other people. But he insists that the story is true. With this, O'Brien challenges the reader to discover the truth of the event. O'Brien gets the reader to figure out what fiction of this book is actually worth. Firstly, did O'Brien confuse the reader when he said that the events did not happen after the reader became involved in those events?
“I am in blood / Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” (3.4.136-138) In this quote, Macbeth is telling himself that because he has stepped into evil so deeply, it will be hard to go back to morallity because he will never be able to rid of this guilt brought onto him. He begins to feel so remorseful, that he starts hallucinating and realizing that he has done such treacherous deeds. Even though he can still see how his actions are terrible, as the play develops, he begins to inch deeper and deeper into his own destruction of innocence. Macbeth had always felt threatened by Macduff because Macduff knew what a traitor he really was. Therefore, he had wanted to plot to end Macduff’s life as to not pose a threat on his reign any longer.
/ The killer, ambushed by excitement, announces: “And now a new anxiety seized me—the sound would be heard by a neighbor! The old man's hour had come!” (2). / The narrator decides the old man’s time is up, which reveals the inner evil of the madman. / In this short story, Poe uses the eye and heart to symbolize the perils of evil. / The author uses the old man’s “evil” eye as a stimulus
Hamlet increasingly gets angrier and angrier with himself as he keeps talking, and his anger turns to Claudius. Hamlet is now angry and self-loathing. He calls himself a “scullion” which means the lowest of the servants. He tells his brain to start working and gets an idea: to watch Claudius’ reaction to the modified version of The Mousetrap to confirm or deny his guilt about the King’s murder, which is the fourth part of Hamlet’s soliloquy. In the soliloquy, Hamlet is at first upset with himself about finding ways to avoid avenging his Father’s murder, like his spirit in ghost form told him to.