The Unreliable Narrator “Reliably” Depicting Trauma: A Comparative Analysis of Jungian Psychology and the Unreliable Narrator in Contemporary Short Fiction. Contemporary writers of short fiction depict trauma in a way that allows the reader to fully invest in a narrative with a more concise and intentional story arc surrounding the conceptualization of trauma. This is often depicted in short fiction as close up snapshots of difficult moments in a person's life, mainly through abuse, death, and neglect. Within these stories, the unreliable narrator is an imperative tool that demonstrates the complexities of the human psyche in distress. Through a close reading and analysis of Irvine Welsh’s “Catholic Guilt”, Helen Simpson’s “Every Third Thought”, and RZ Baschir’s “The Chicken”, scrutinized under both a cultural …show more content…
Welsh understands the complexity of human nature and the relevance the unreliable narrator has to depict the struggle for a better life while battling inner turmoil. One of his most famous works, Trainspotting, tells the stories of Scottish youth trapped in an urban purgatory of the aforementioned “drugs, sex, and violence”. Welsh states, “When people are talking about life and its excess, all its pleasures and disappointments, it's almost as if drugs sharpen our awareness of what life's about--the good times, morality and our great fear of the Grim Reaper” (Ketcham 352). Each character in Trainspotting is the epitome of the unreliable narrator, battling against “falling into the traps of poverty and desperation” (Ketcham 352). Another aspect of Welsh’s stories that showcase the unconscious trauma of the unreliable narrator is the visceral and graphic vengeance inflicted both on and by his characters. In David Leon Higdon’s "Wild Justice" in the Works of Irvine Welsh he states, “Indeed, much of the
Why do people tend to falsify tales when in a tragic setting? Many authors of great books have credited their amazing stories to the human behavioral tendency of fabricating stories and having dreams to distract them from reality. Krik? Krak! Is a collection of such stories, in which every story is somehow linked in a not-so-obvious way. In Edwidge Danticat’s novel, it is shown that people in suffering are thus hopeful, yet their hope leads to despair as they realize that hope does not free them from the harsh reality of their own lives.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
By reading a short story, you learn valuable messages that you can use in life. The three short stories share a common theme of the mystery of other minds. In “A & P,” the protagonist Sammy used very sexist language when he says, “With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light” (Updike 561). In addition to the sexist comments, when Sammy calls women sheep and witches readers are puzzled because they cannot believe why he would say these comments about women. In “A Rose for Emily,” Tobe never goes to the authorities and tells them about Emily, but instead, “He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again” (Faulkner 96). Readers suspect that Tobe has mental issues because they question how someone in their right mind would not tell the authorities there is a dead body in Emily’s house. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” Jig thinks about getting an abortion when she says, “And I’ll do it and then everything will be fine” (Hemingway 1). Some readers question how someone in their right mind would ever consider getting an abortion.
The “Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and serves as a testament to Poe’s ability to convey mental disability in an entertaining way. The story revolves around the unnamed narrator and old man, and the narrator’s desire to kill the old man for reasons that seem unexplainable and insane. After taking a more critical approach, it is evident that Poe’s story is a psychological tale of inner turmoil.
Weisel-Barth, J 2014 ‘Review of “The Stories We Tell”’, International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, Vol.9(2), p.162-166, DOI: 10.1080/15551024.2014.884526
Each short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” and “The Sniper,” show many different themes throughout. From insanity, to happiness, all the way to selfishness, each story also hides terrible secrets.
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.
It has been said of Anton Chekhov, the renown Russian short-story writer, that in all of his “work, there is never exactly a point. Rather we see into someone’s hear – in just a few pages, the curtain concealing these lives has been drawn back, revealing them in all their helplessness and rage and rancor.” Alice Munro, too, falls into this category. Many of her short-stories, such as “Royal Beatings” focus more on character revelation rather than plot.
The Americans of African and European Ancestry did not have a very good relationship during the Civil war. They were a major cause of the Civil War. But, did they fix or rebuild that relationship after the war from the years 1865 to 1900? My opinion would be no. I do not believe that the Americans of African and European ancestry successfully rebuilt their relationship right after the Civil war. Even though slavery was finally slowly getting abolished, there was still much discrimination against the African Americans. The Jim Crow laws and the black codes discriminated against black people. The Ku Klux Klan in particular discriminated against black people. Even though the United States government tried to put laws into the Constitution to protect black people, the African Americans were discriminated in every aspect of life from housing, working, educating, and even going to public restrooms!
'Young Goodman Brown,' by Hawthorne, and 'The Tell Tale Heart,' by Poe, offer readers the chance to embark on figurative and literal journeys, through our minds and our hearts. Hawthorne is interested in developing a sense of guilt in his story, an allegory warning against losing one's faith. The point of view and the shift in point of view are symbolic of the darkening, increasingly isolated heart of the main character, Goodman Brown, an everyman figure in an everyman tale. Poe, however, is concerned with capturing a sense of dread in his work, taking a look at the motivations behind the perverseness of human nature. Identifying and understanding the point of view is essential, since it affects a reader's relationship to the protagonist, but also offers perspective in situations where characters are blinded and deceived by their own faults. The main character of Poe?s story embarks on an emotional roller coaster, experiencing everything from terror to triumph. Both authors offer an interpretation of humans as sinful, through the use of foreshadowing, repetition, symbolism and, most importantly, point of view. Hawthorne teaches the reader an explicit moral lesson through the third person omniscient point of view, whereas Poe sidesteps morality in favor of thoroughly developing his characters in the first person point of view.
An author’s use of an unreliable narrator can effectively provide readers with a first-person experience of mental illness. Two authors who have masterfully utilized unreliable narrators in their short stories are Edgar Allan Poe and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. These particular authors intended to induce fear, influence psychology, or both with their use of an unreliable narrator. Edgar Allan Poe, an American author credited with inventing the horror genre, wrote his short stories intending to produce “a single, intense response in the reader” (Art 707). In Poe’s frightening short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, he produces this response with the use of an unreliable narrator. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an
In ‘unreliable narration’ the narrator’s account is at odds with the implied reader's surmises about the story’s real intentions. The story und...
When a narrator is deemed unreliable, there is conflict between the narrator’s presentation and the rest of the novel that makes readers suspect his sincerity and reliability. Readers often read between the lines and come to the conclusion that the narrator is either withholding the true version of the story or lacking the ability to tell the truth. There are three specific sources of unreliability according to Rimmon-Keenan they are the narrator’s limited knowledge, his or her personal involvement, and his or her questionable morals (100-101). Factors that could contribute to a narrator’s unreliability is that the narrator is young and inexperienced, old with failing memory, or has a low IQ. These are all cases of limited understanding and knowledge on the part of the narrator. When narrators are personally involved in the story, they tend to portray events or characters i...
... insecurity and paranoia. By leading us through an intricate maze of guilt and denial, Poe raises questions about what differentiates guilt from remorse. The audience begins to wonder if the fixation with the old man’s eye is in fact a cause of the madness or a result of the narrator’s inability to cope with his evil thoughts and the subsequent guilt that such thoughts derive. “The tell-tale heart” takes us through an incredible journey of discovery. By exploring the intrinsic nature of guilt, Poe shows us that without remorse and acceptance of responsibility the only possible result is a never ending cycle of projection, blame and denial that lead to madness.
In the “Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator is extremely uncanny due to the reader’s inability to trust him. Right from the beggining the reader can tell that the narrator is crazy although the narrator does proclaim that he is sane. Since a person cannot trust a crazy person, the narrator himself is unreliable and therefore uncanny. Also as the story progress the narrator falls deeper and deeper into lunacy making him more and more unreliable, until the end of the story where the narrator gives in to his insanity, and the reader loses all ability to believe him.