I need a good list of books (I’ll even take short stories) and movies that feature unreliable narrators.
Harmon & Holman’s Handbook to Literature defines an unreliable narrator as one
So, the list starts[ul][li]Huckleberry Finn[/li][li]The Sound and the Fury (times two, no less)[/li][li]The Catcher in the Rye[/li][li]Lolita[/ul]Off the top of my head, I can add [ul]Fight Club[/li][li]The Usual Suspects[/li][li]Faulkner’s short story “Spotted Horses”[/ul]Please submit your own, as I am having no luck finding a good list.[/li]
Thanks in advance!
One of my pet theories is that Star Trek and Blake’s Seven take place in the same universe. The only difference is who tells the stories.
Sixth Sense
The film version of Blade Runner
The Prisoner
In some senses, all first person narratives are unreliable. By definition, the “I” character only knows what he knows, only sees what he sees and has to base conclusions based on the this “unreliable” evidence.
Terence Malick’s Badlands features a voiceover by Holly Sargis, a lovelorn 15 year old who thinks life is a romance novel as she runs away with murderous Kit Carruthers. An absolute masterpiece with the most sardonic humour imaginable. See it as well as reading the script.
I just finished The Horned Man by James Lasdun… the narrator is either insane or very strange, and either way he seems to leave major, important sections of story out, leaving you (the reader) the fill in the gaps. I think this would be a great example of what you’re talking about… the narrator can’t even be sure he knows what he thinks he knows.
The narrator of The Athenian Murders by Jose Carlos Somoza is certainly suffering from some delusion, though I can’t tell you what.
The narrator of Ordinary Horror by David Searcy is quite old and could be delusional. At the very least, he’s undure of what’s going on around him.
Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin plays some fun games with different narrators and how their stories interact and leave gaps in the narrative.
The main character of Jacob’s Ladder is certainly suffering from some impediments to his reliability.
Jeff Bridges’ character in Fearless isn’t exactly unreliable, but he doesn’t have the firmest grasp on himself, either.
Matthew McConaghey’s (I know that spelling is wrong) character in Frailty seems to fit the bill, too.
Wow, this has gotta be the first time I’ve seen the title Flowers for Algernon mentioned on the internet…pretty much anywhere…by anyone. The SDMB really is the best and brightest, it seems
The Good Soldier (Ford Madox Ford) is a great example. The narrator equivocates, conceals stuff, contradicts himself but may know more than he lets on… or not. Villette (C Bronte) has a good example of a narrator who is perfectly sympathetic but still unreliable.