Dr. Sabrina Boyer
ENG 131 FON01
10/02/2016
Reliability Journal
In Haircut, the author Ring Lardner, placed his story in a small town where a very known barber, Whitey, is the best source of information on the town. He knows everyone very well, and he knows all the town gossip and all the news (146). The reader can see from the beginning of the story that this barber is not a reliable person, because he cannot be trusted in everything that he is telling to readers.. All the time, the barber is on the side of his friend Jim Kendall, trying to give to him all the benefits of the doubt. In the beginning of the story, barber said: “When he was alive, him and Hod Meyers used to keep this town in an uproar. I bet they was more laughin’ done here than any town, its size in America” (Lardner, 145). He believes that the sense of humor of the two friends is a quality. There is nothing wrong with a person to have a sense of humor, but sometimes Jim’s humor was sarcastic and inappropriate. A good example is that night when Jim, changing his voice as a woman, called the barber and asked him to come to her house and shave her husband who just passed
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away. Of course, this was a joke and as a result, the barber said: “Nobody could of thought it up but Jim Kendall. he certainly was a card!” (Lardner, 151-152). With these words the barber wants to say that, however, Jim is a good man. Another reason that makes readers think that the barber is an unreliable person is the way he speaks about Jim’s relation with his family. He said: “She’d of divorced him only they wasn’t no chance to get alimony and she didn’t have no way to take care of herself and the kids. She couldn’t never understand Jim. He was kind of rough, but a good fella at heart” (Lardner, 146). If Jim had a good heart, he would not have left his wife and children to wait for him when they planned to go to the circus. According to Barber, Jim lied to them that he will buy tickets for the show, but he had no intention of that, the proof being the image of his family in front of the circus’s tent waiting for him, while he was drunk at the poolroom (Lardner, 147). These facts demonstrate that Jim was actually a self-centered person and not a person as the barber described him. In reality, Jim is a selfish and a mean man that nobody likes. There is an irony between what the narrator says and what the reader interprets from the story. This leads the reader to consider the barber as an unreliable person. In The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe introduces a character which is showing more and more his criminal character as the story goes by. His name is Montresor and he is the narrator who tells the story of his revenge against Fortunato. First of all, the fact that makes the reader think that the narrator in an unreliable person, is because he is telling his story from his point of view, and he could have left out details to make himself look better, or make what he does more justifiable. Montresor is a jealous and spiteful man, who murdered his friend, Fortunato, just because he insulted him on different occasions. He wanted revenge (Poe, 283). He is looking for revenge, therefore the reader can think that he is not thinking properly, and he is not in an entirely stable mental state. Mental instability is not reliable. Such a man who was able to kill just for revenge, can not be considered a reliable person. The author didn’t tell us what happened between two of them, what Fortunato did to make him so angry, but Montresor himself said: “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge” (Poe, 283). Throughout the story, Montresore calls Fortunato "my good friend" and "my poor friend”, when in reality he hates Fortunato and he intends to murder him in a horrible way “I said to him—“My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking to-day” (Poe, 283). He doesn’t mind telling us about his murder and he thinks what he did was the right way to handle the situation. He thought he brought justice. The reader can’t really say that the narrator’s reason for revenge is justified. We don’t know any details, therefore we can trust his judgment. According to Poe, Montresor, to be able to put his plan into the application, he made his friend drunk, so he wouldn't be suspicious. Then he buries him alive. In my opinion, it is insane (285). Only a sick mind can plan in details the death of a man. In both stories, the authors present to us two different characters that can not be reliable.
In Haircut, the narrator, who is the town’s barber, seems to be an unintelligent and insensitive observer who introduces to us one of his friends, Jim, without making any comments on his behavior, except, indicating how amusing his friend was. The barber can’t be reliable. In the second story, The Cask of Amontillado, the narrator tells us a story about himself, story that happened 50 years ago. According with what Montresore said about himself, the reader can describe him as being obsessed with revenge, a person with no conscience, with no guilt for what he has done. This kind of person can’t be reliable,
too. Work Cited Buck, JoAnn et al., eds. A Critical Introduction to Short Fiction. 2nd ed. Southlake: Fountain head, 2012. 145-154. Print. Buck, JoAnn et al., eds. A Critical Introduction to Short Fiction. 2nd ed. Southlake: Fountain head, 2012. 283-288. Print.
Everyone faces varying degrees of peer pressure at least once in their lifetime, but what matters is how one reacts. In Bad Haircut—a collection of short stories—the author, Tom Perrotta, examines the effect of peer pressure on the main character, Buddy, in a comical yet informative light. Buddy faces peer pressure consistently and ends up associating with the wrong people, due to a lack of backbone. Yet Buddy is different and a better person than those who he associates with because he is compassionate and able to recognize that he is a follower; therein lies the irony that only the reader sees Buddy’s merit while the other characters only see the results of his friends’ poor judgment.
Should one trust the accounts of the main characters in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Yellow Wallpaper?” “The Cask of Amontillado” is written by Edgar Allan Poe. In the “Cask of Amontillado,” a man named Montresor tells of a time when he uses deception to murder a man that he perceives has done wrong against him. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is in the format of journal entries that are written by a woman whose mental health is deteriorating. The deterioration of her mental health leads her to suffer from hallucinatory thinking. How reliable are the narrators? Reliability encompases the honesty the narators exhibit twoards the readers,
In the Edgar Allan Poe stories "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" the most prominent and important themes that are used are death, logic, and irony. The characters of the narrator and Montresor in these stories are both coldblooded murders who kill for selfish and inane reasons who firmly believe that their actions are justified even though their justifications only make sense in their own minds. They both try to convince their audience that they are sane by explaining to them their reasons for killing their victims and admitting how they did it, which only helps to prove their insanity. The narrator and Montresor are similar in that they both have impaired senses of judgment encouraged by perverse morals and believe that the horrible things that they do are justifiable.
The Tell-Tale Heart begins with the narrator explaining that he is not mad, rather just very disturbed by about the vulture eye of the old man living in the same house. He seemed to be a bit nervous more than anything. On the other hand, the narrator of The Cask of Amontillado seemed to be quite arrogant. He was very confident that his plan to have revenge on Fortunato was going to work. Although the traits of the narrators are not quite similar, they both had the same idea in mind. That idea was to commit murder on a man they had a problem with. To me, both narrat...
Barbershop the Next cut holds a significant value to American popular culture with diverse social economic references. This movie depicts numerous components of subcultural issues that are faced in the black communities of American more notable Chicago, IL. Within the movie Barbershop: The Next Cut there will be an in-depth analysis of how this movie shows different Popular-Culture concepts for example; Ideology and Institutional power. This movie also shows the cultural “Norms” and the distinct language used in the subculture that is portrayed within the movie. The most relevant aspect of this movie that will be focused on will be the inequality of the black community in both race and gender and also the social stratification.
In life, many people strive to find a person that is reliable and to separate the people that are unreliable. Unreliable can be defined as an adjective meaning not dependable. Having read through the short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “Strawberry Spring” by Stephen King, it is reasonable to conclude that each of these stories has its own unreliable narrator. The most unreliable narrator, however, is the narrator/killer Springheel Jack from “Strawberry Spring” by Stephen King due to the narrator’s cognition problems and the violent nature of the murders.
In the “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor believes Fortunado is his greatest enemy and in return for revenge he must kill him. He achieves his goal through a depraved plan, in which he manipulated Fortunado to drink until he lost his senses for the amontillado. In “Tell-Tale Heart,” Poe depicts the murderer has no valid reason to kill the old man. The murderer’s sanity comes into question many times when the story takes place. The first sentence in the story proves this statement: “TRUE! – NERVOUS – VERY, VERY DREADFUL nervous I had been and am; but why will you say I am mad?” (Charter 1127). The narrator himself questions the audience before telling the incident that has occurred. In this story, the murder plot is not planned and takes place all of the sudden when the insane man decides to kill the fragile old man who is on the alert
The disturbing description of the serial killer is recited without any waver whatsoever away from the intent only to divulge information. The narrator makes no personal comment and expresses no opinion about Howard. After the narrator has given the information to the listener, the narrator leads the train of thought right back to the work environment. The idea of a horrible mass murderer is interrupted by his typing ability. This continued contrast now goes past unstable and borders on psychotic.
In Edgar Allen Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” the first person point of view narration is essential to creating the . The reason this is so important in this particular story, is because when a sane killer, Montresor, is allowed to tell the story from his point of view, the reader gets a unique, disturbing look into the calmness of his mind. The audience can more clearly see how he thinks and feels which the audience does not normally get in mainstream, commercial literature. The reason the narration style is so important to the tone of the story, is because it lets the reader become personally acquainted with the thoughts and intentions of the main character, and since the reader somewhat knows the outcome from the beginning, it allows certain ironies to make sense to the reader. Furthermore, were it
In “The Cask of Amontillado,” the reader can tell the narrator is unreliable. The narrator shows this through his lack of reason for killing Fortunato. Also, the narrator indicates that he is unreliable when he laughs as he kills Fortunato; only a madman would laugh while killing someone. The narration of the story makes it so the reader questions why the narrator killed Fortunato. Another question most readers have is, why is the narrator sharing this story? Also, readers commonly ask themselves, what has happened to make him share this story? The narrator says, “For half of a century no mortal has disturbed them” (Poe 113). This statement by the narrator may make a reader feel that Fortunato’s body has been moved or found. Likewise, it may make a reader feel that the narrator is bragging to someone about getting away with murder because he is possibly on his
Firstly, at the end of this story, the narrator’s illusions are the most powerful pieces of evidence for his madness. It is his two illusions that betrays him and imposed him to confess the crime. His first illusion is the beating of the old man’s heart which actually did not exist. Initialy, exactly as he portrayed "My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears, it continued and became more distinct", the ringing he heard haunted him ceaselessly. Then he "found that the noise was not within his ear", and thought the fancy in his ear was the beating of old man’s heart. Because of the increasing noise, he thought the officers must hear it, too. However, in fact, everything he heard is absurd and illusive. And it proves that the narrator is really insane. Next, his second illusion is the officers’ "hypocritical smiles" which pushed him to completely be out of control. Losting of his mind, he called the officer "Villains". Apparently, he was confused and falsely thought "they were making a mockery of his horror" which irritated him intensively. Consequently, he told all the truth and "admitted the deed" in order to get rid of the growing noise. Therefore, the above two pieces of evidence both reveal the truth that the narrator is absolutely insane in contrary to what the narrator tried to tell us.
“The Cask of Amontillado” is a dark piece, much like other works of Edgar Allan Poe, and features the classic unreliable narrator, identified by himself only as Montresor. This sinister central character is a cold ruthless killer that is particularly fearsome because he views murder as a necessity and kills without remorse. Montresor is a character who personifies wickedness. Poe uses this character and his morally wrong thoughts and actions to help the reader identify with aspects of the extreme personage, allowing them to examine the less savory aspects of their own. The character of Montresor detailing the glorious murder he committed is a means of communicating to the reader that vengeance and pride are moral motivators that lead to treacherous deeds and dark thoughts.
Edgar Allen Poe’s tale of murder and revenge, “The Cask of Amontillado”, offers a unique perspective into the mind of a deranged murderer. The effectiveness of the story is largely due to its first person point of view, which allows the reader a deeper involvement into the thoughts and motivations of the protagonist, Montresor. The first person narration results in an unbalanced viewpoint on the central conflict of the story, man versus man, because the reader knows very little about the thoughts of the antagonist, Fortunato. The setting of “The Cask of Amontillado”, in the dark catacombs of Montresor’s wine cellar, contributes to the story’s theme that some people will go to great lengths to fanatically defend their honor.
*the narrator is looking back on what he has once witnessed long ago, and it's haunting him, makes him feel guilty and ashamed.
...us on deadly revenge. In each case, a retribution that is carried out in a cruel and callous fashion. The men fulfilling these actions are cold, calculating, and contemplative. They have painstakingly endeavored to seek retribution against what has plagued them: Fortunato and his insults to the Montresor and the old man’s piercing, chilling eye for the man from “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Driven to the point of madness by their own obsessions, they plot to murder their offenders. The tales are told each by the man who has indeed committed the crime. Each man’s insanity becomes more and more clear as they narrate confession; the Montresor with the unfailing ease with which he dictates his account and the man from “The Tell-Tale Heart” with his jagged and rough delivery. Their distinct mental instability calls into question to reliability of the report they give.