The Unreliable Narrator In The Outsider

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I think the narrator form the short story, “The Outsider,” is unreliable. He has no idea what he looks like, he’s never heard himself speak before, and he’s never even seen the outside world. I don’t think that he’s crazy, and I don’t think that he’s lying to the reader either because he’s genuinely lost, and he explains to the reader how he doesn’t know anything. For example on page 21 the narrator says, “I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely horrible; full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows.” And again where he says “ I must have lived years in this place, but I cannot measure the time. Beings must have cared for my needs, yet I cannot recall …show more content…

In a dream I fled from that haunted and accursed pile, and ran swiftly and silently in the moonlight. When I returned to the churchyard place of marble and went down the steps I found the stone trap- door immovable; but I was not sorry, for I had hated the antique castle and the trees. Now I ride with the mocking and friendly ghouls on the night- wind, and play by day amongst the catacombs of Nephren- Ka in the sealed and unknown valley of Hadoth by the Nile. I know not for me, save that of the moon over the rock tombs of Neb, nor any gaiety save the unnamed feasts of Nitokris beneath the Great Pyramid; yet in my new wilderness and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage.” This, to me, is the narrator remembering himself. Maybe he wasn’t tricking us, but based on the current information given, I definitely think that he has seen himself before, maybe he forgot because of his mental state, but because he can recall such vivid images of myself, even when he thought it wasn’t him, in fact, maybe it

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