Nothing could be more audacious than to claim a narrator is unreliable just to make a story more palatable to oneself. The accurate way to interpret any literature is to pay attention to the details. If the text contradicts your claim, then your claim is wrong. It’s not a relativist issue; people can be absolutely incorrect in this situation. The text directly contradicts the assertion that the narrator in Sherwood Anderson’s “Hands is a random townsperson; however, that topic was broached during a class discussion. Since the text refutes the townsfolk narrator gaffe, any interpretation that claims the narrator is over-exaggerating the molestation incidents is equally refuted. This is due to the fact that the narrator knows all and wants to portray Adolph in a positive light.
For any interpretation, the first piece of the literature that one should look at is how the story is delivered, e.g., first person or third person, omniscient or not, etc. The narrator in “Hands” is an omniscient third person narrator. The narrator is not some random yokel from a town. The narrator knows obscure, minute details like “The name of Biddlebaum he got from a box of goods seen at a freight station as he hurried through an eastern Ohio town” (1942). The narrator knows obscure details and Adolph’s past. It is just not plausible that the narrator is one of the residents of either town or a collective memory of the residents.
Now, one might argue that because the narrator thinks this story “is worth a book in itself. Sympathetically set forth it would tap many strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men”, then he is biased: ergo, he’s an unreliable narrator (1940). However, being biased in and of itself is not the sole criterion for a narrator be...
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... Willard). Any interpretation like that is misreading the text. The narrator in “Hands” was only used as an example in this paper to show that not all biased narrators are automatically de facto unreliable narrators. Assuming that a narrator is unreliable without actually proving it is a dangerous idea, and that thought should have been questioned by more students in the discussion. The ability to assume a narrator is unreliable without the proper textual justification is the bane of all literature. With this backdoor condition, any person could negate the story’s credibility, and then they could dismiss the story outright.
Works Cited
Anderson, Sherwood. "Hands." The Norton Anthology: American Literature. 8th ed. New York:
W.W. Norton, 2011. 1940-943. Print.
"The Masses." Vol. 8, No. 5, March 1916 Page 5. New York University Library, n.d. Web. 06
May 2014.
This source was talking about the unreliability of narrators in the twentieth-centure. I did not find this source overly helpful because it took a long time to get to the point, however, once the writer got to talking about the unreliability it was helpful.
Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano. Vol.
The narrator's insensitivity reveals itself early in the story when his wife's blind friend, Robert, comes for a visit after the death of his wife. Almost immediately in the beginning of the story the narrator admits "A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to." [Carver 2368] He even goes so far as to suggest to his wife that he take the man bowling. He hears the story of Robert's dead wife and can not even imagine " what a pitiful life this woman must have led." [Carver 2370] The narrator is superficial, only recognizing the external part of people and not recognizing the value of a person on the inside.
In Sherwood Anderson's "Hands", the protagonist, Wing Biddlebaum is portrayed as the towns' mystery who lives alone in a small house, and although he has been living in Winesburg Ohio for twenty years Wing "did not think of himself as in any way part of the life of the town" (213). Wing cannot express himself entirely. The reason for this is his hands. He is afraid of them and tries to keep them hidden from society and from himself. In this touching story the unjust allegations of a small community have stripped Wing Biddlebaum of his identity and have forced him to become a prisoner unto himself.
(Sept. 1976): 35-39. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Carol T. Gaffke. Vol. 26. Detroit:
Wilson, M. & Clark, R. (n.d.). Analyzing the Short Story. [online] Retrieved from: https://www.limcollege.edu/Analyzing_the_Short_Story.pdf [Accessed: 12 Apr 2014].
In much of The Things They Carried, stories are retold time and time again. One reason for this is the idea of keeping a story’s story-truth alive. In “Good Form,” O’Brien differentiates what he calls story-truth from happening-truth. Story-truth seems to give us a better understanding of O’Brien’s sentiment in a particular story even though the story itself may not be true at all. On the other hand, happening-truth is what actually happened in the story, but may not contain as much emotional authenticity as story-truth. According to O’Brien, story-truth is therefore truer than happening-truth. Relating back to storytelling, O’Brien retells stories continuously to maintain their sentiment and emotional value. Without this continuous repetition, this sentiment fades away and the emotional value of the story is lost.
Usually, a short story may contain profound thoughts. Writers always convey their ideas or opinions by offering several arguments in their productions. These arguments are essential to advancing the story and defining characters. In "Aunt Mary" written by Joseph Imperiale, we might identify three arguments here.
*the narrator is looking back on what he has once witnessed long ago, and it's haunting him, makes him feel guilty and ashamed.
Pike, Gerald. “Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers.” Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas Votteler. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Research International Limited, 1990. 90. Print.
The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” has taken the time to meticulously plot. He sneaks nightly into the old man’s room preparing until he is ready to carry out his plans. His discontent lies...
When a child is born, he or she does not see the same things an adult sees. The baby does not understand language and cannot make the distinction between races or gender or good and evil. While it is impossible to go back in time, novels allow readers to take on a new set of eyes for a few hours or days. They give a new perspective to the world, and sometimes provide a filter to the things seen in the world. Unreliable narrators give authors the flexibility to lie to and withhold information from readers, providing new perspectives into the narrator as well as the other characters of the novel. Authors use unreliable narrators not to give more information to the reader, but to withhold information in order to further character development.
It is very easy to some to hear something and take it out of context or to focus on something so intently and to manipulate your visions to fit your outlook. Sister Aloysius started looking for a fault as soon as Father Flynn gave his sermon about doubt, she knew that the sermon was born of misconduct and had to pinpoint the source. She asked at dinner that night if anyone had witnessed anything unusual and to be on the lookout, just like that a rumor has started. Adolf never had a chance after rumors were spread about him; he was forced out of town without a single ounce of proof, only a rumor, stared by a boy that spread through the township. It seems like rumors spread the faster than good deeds, you will hear about someone’s wrongdoing long before you hear about their good qualities. Gossip is a word for rumors now and has even taken over news articles and has a spot in most local newspapers; no evidence just the gossip of the town. It doesn’t take much just a little talk here and there and maybe some misunderstanding. While, the rumor travels though the grapevine doubt is
In the first lines of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the reader can tell that narrator is crazy, however the narrator claims the he is not crazy and is very much sane, because how could a crazy person come up with such a good plan. “How, then, am I mad? Hearken! And observer how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story,” (Poe 74). The reader can see from this quote that narrator is claiming that he is not insane because he can tell anyone what happened without having a mental breakdown or any other problems that people associate with crazy people. This is the begging of the unreliability of the narrator. Here the reader is merely questioning the amount of details. The narrator then goes on to explain how he didn’t hate the old man but he hated his eye.
Testimony as a source for the writing of history is frequently questioned. At the same time, many historians continue to seek personal stories in order to build their historical narratives. Because it is often assumed that history must reveal to us ‘exactly’ what happened or that there is a single correct narrative of the past, testimonial evidence appears to pose an imminent threat to the emergence of a consolidated historical narrative. What then makes testimony a useful source for the narration of history? In this essay, I will argue that testimonial evidence provides history with otherwise invisible perspectives, possibilities and counter narratives that make the latter representative of a greater number of voices from the past. In light