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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This is an 8 page paper that provides an overview of the unreliable narrator device. Using novels by Margaret Atwood and Henry James as models, the use of the device is explored. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Page Count:
8 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KW60_KFatwood.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
10th century, it continues to be widely used to this day, with representative examples evident in works of fiction from a number of cultural backgrounds and from various historical periods,
including Chaucers "Canterbury Tales", and Cervantes "Don Quixote". More contemporarily, the usage of the device surged with the advent of postmodernism, highlighting the manner in which the traditional elements of
a text (such as a narrator) might be formally subverted in order to inform or alter the overall "meaning" of a text (or, indeed, to intentionally obfuscate the determination of
any such "meaning" at all). It is in this sense that the device is now most commonly employed: to allow the author to emphasize ambiguity of meaning as a primary
formal element of a text. Two works which exhibit this technique quite handily are Margaret Atwoods "Alias Grace" and Henry James "The Turn of the Screw". Both texts make use
of an unreliable narrator, and by examining the manner in which the reader first comes to trust and then distrust the narrator, one might gain a greater understanding of how
the device is effectively used, and how all texts are ultimately inherently biased and thus at least somewhat "unreliable". This paragraph helps the student begin to assess how trust
is established in Atwoods text. Atwoods "Alias Grace" is something of a historical novel, as it purports to tell the story of Grace Marks, an Irish emigrant servant who was,
in real life, imprisoned for life for her arguable complicity in the murder of Thomas Kinnear, her employer. In the course of the narrative, Grace communicates her version of events
to an interlocutor, Dr. Simon Jordan, and the reader is provided with what appear to be keen personal insights into the reality of the story behind the high-profile case. From
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