Momik Unreliable Narrator

Over many centuries, thousands of authors have written stories about and containing trauma. When it comes to trauma, authors often struggle in determining how to portray it to their reader. This is a common struggle for authors who write about tragic events because they are usually unsure of how their reader will react. Some events such as the fall of the Twin Towers, multiple wars, and the Holocaust are very hard to retell so it is very difficult to do so. But after traumatic events, such as physical or mental abuse or issues, that threaten to rob people of their happiness and spirit, people typically don’t tell others. In fact, many trauma survivors either never speak to anyone about what happened to them or wait a very long time to do so.

This type of narrator typically displays characteristics or tendencies that indicate a lack of credibility or understanding of the story. Whether due to age, mental disability or personal involvement, an unreliable narrator provides the reader with either incomplete or inaccurate information as a result of these conditions. Lack of alignment with the higher education, understanding of morals, and sense of reality of the implied author is a determining factor in a narrator's unreliability. In David Grossman’s 1986 novel, Momik, the story is being told through the words of an unreliable narrator. The main character of the novel, Momik, tries to piece the Holocaust together by taking all of the things he hears from his conversation with relatives and images relating them to the Holocaust. Unlike his parents, who refuse to discuss the Holocaust with Momik, he is determined to find out the whole story so he takes everything he can possibly find out tries to put it all together. Momik is constantly hearing murmurs and whispers from people surrounding him. After find out a new piece to his puzzle, he adds it to his collection and tries to link everything