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I am always frightened by how many people do not realize that Lolita has an unreliable narrator... it is almost like a litmus test.

I remember as a kid watching an episode of Dave the Barbarian where the villain kidnapped the narrator and forced him to do his bidding to defeat the hero. Pretty clever for a kids show, in my opinion.

My favourite unreliable narrator is myself

Lindsay is a national treasure. I'm only subbed because of this series honestly.

An unreliable narrator can make people think critically about what they assume to be true. Some people are happy to do this, and others find this uncomfortable.

Lindsay Ellis just keeps getting better...

I like how in the vampire chronicles one book is from Louis’ perspective and another is from Lestat‘s and you realize THEY REMEMBER THEIR RELATIONSHIP COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY. I loved that because yeah, different people will recall the same relationship on widely different ways. And with no objective POV both accounts become equally valid.

Great example: Lemony Snicket. He makes us think that the Baudelaire children are actually saying their dialogue in ASoUE, when he literally was not there to hear what happened. He has such a stranglehold on the narrative and the children never have their own autonomy until he cannot physically follow them anymore.

Such a pleasant host 😍

We stan an educated,national treasure, video essay QUEEN

This reminds me of the Tracy Chapman song 'Telling Stories' "there is fiction in the space between - the lines on a page; the memory. Write it down but it doesn't mean, you're not just telling stories."

We're all looking at you, Lestat

I really really love this series! It warms my literature nerd heart

It's not literature but Welcome to Night Vale does really fun things with Cecil's perception of his "entirely normal" town

Hears "Unreliable Narrator" Me: Is *Mr. Robot* on again?

Another unreliable narrator is Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye. He spends so much time criticizing how “phony” everyone around him is, but isn’t aware of his own pessimistic biases and immaturity.

Ian McEwan explores this brilliantly in Atonement. As for HP, JK is inconsistent - in the very first chapter the narrator is not only omniscient but addresses the audience directly in the line "one the dull grey tuesday our story starts". I rather hoped the series would close on this note, but she stuck to Harry's pov for the remainder of the story.

One of the best yet, I say. The Experiencing Self vs. Narrating Self blew my mind.

You're giving me Sound and Fury flashbacks. So. Much. Stream. Of. Consciousness.

Slaughterhouse Five is my favorite example of this

Lovecraft used the unreliable narrator trope a lot too

You mean...I might NOT be a brilliant, handsome bad ass? o____o Nah!

Dofus: The Treasures of Kerubim, while not literature, is a wonderful example of this. It's about a retired adventurer telling stories about how he got his amazing magical items to his adoptive grandson Joris. However, about halfway through, he tells a story with some of his old party members around and they frequently correct him on his account. Kind of interesting to start the series trusting his words with an innocent naivety, but even when the cat is out of the bag it becomes fun trying to pick out what is true and what is embellished. Also a tad surprised Rashomon didn't show up in this vid. Then again, that's the whole point of the story.

God I love this channel....PBS is such a boon and benefit to the world of academia...

Great example of Unreliable Narrator: Narrator of Netflix show “You”

When you mentioned Miles Gloriosus (I've heard Miles pronounced as "Me-lays"), it reminded me of the famous song from A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum: "I, Miles Gloriosus, / I, slaughterer of thousands, / I, oppressor of the meek, / Subduer of the weak, / Degrader of the Greek, / Destroyer of the Turk, / Must hurry back to work." In that musical, he's not a coward, but he is dimwitted, and he's also a pompous, arrogant, and ruthless military commander who's blissfully unaware with how much he repels people, including his betrothed bride, with his brutality and boorishness. Learning that his original inspiration was a coward makes his character even funnier.

An un reliable narrator shows us a story is how someone thinks something happenend and not necessarily how it really happened, which is how our memory works. That's how when we revisit a book, we might find we remember things that were never in the book in th first place... Thanx, PBS, LU Lindsay!!!!

Lindsay’s videos on It’s Lit have improved so much, from engaging but not overwhelming effects to no forced-sounding calls to action: I love it!

Damn you, inner narrator! Always feeding me unhealthy snacks!

absolutely loving this series

Lolita was the first book I read that really made me question OTHER narrators in other stories. I was incredibly aware of how vile H.H was yet I was engrossed in the story, actively wanting to know what would happen next and even amused at the situations. Silly Humberg, Humbug, Humbert! I was awestruck by the incredibly skillful writing that I now look at every narrator with scrutiny. Lolita is a test and Nabakov is playing a game with you. It's amazing!

❤️ this series.

I always thought the concept of calling Harry Potter an unreliable narrator was interesting because it gives fans a way to bypass some of JK's biases and present a lot of head canons that maybe Harry missed because he's an ignorant kid like maybe Dumbledore was more obvious about his homosexuality but Harry was too oblivious to notice it kind of adds some pure enjoyment to a now tainted series

These are simply a joy.

Love this topic. Slightly disappointed Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd didn't get a shout out... :)

It reminded me the last Maggie Fish video about Fight Club

I don’t blame her for not mentioning Rashomon in a short video to a broad audience. Its an excellent example of this concept since the same story is told by a few witnesses and we can’t know what really happened

I am so happy to see It's Lit! videos show up on the PBS Digital KZfaq. Lindsay Ellis is a great host and this is a really well-done series!

Liked before even watching it! Your series is just that great!

I regret to have to confess that when I saw this title, my mind instantly jumped to Robert W. Chambers' story "The Repairer Of Reputations" as the most classic example of a (surprisingly/startlingly) unreliable narrator that I could think of.

I had to read "I am the Cheese" in middle school, and I was not developmentally prepared for it, I felt robbed and that my time had been wasted. But in retrospect I think i learned a lot from the book and keep thinking back to it. I've since come to really love stories with unreliable narrators, my favorite being the Wheel of Time series, which has about a dozen or more narrators over the length of it, most of them straightforward, but the few very unreliable ones are the most fun, presenting their stories in a way that you can really read between the lines and see how their actions are not remotely as innocent or virtuous or wise as the narrator believes.

I like to see them talk about children books

At what age did you realize that the story of Huckleberry Finn is to help a boy escape slavery? Now years old.

I think this might be my favorite episode. I love unreliable narrator stories and Lindsay was very good at explaining their use.

*Spoiler for "The King in Yellow"* . . . I recently encountered one. I was reading "The King in Yellow" by Robert W. Chambers and during the first story I felt like I didn't connect with the protagonist (who is also the narrator). He described things so intensely and over the top. Since I started reading in the tram to my therapy session, I even spoke to my therapist about it and wondered whether the people a 100 years ago just wrote in different style than today and/or whether I was just somewhat limited in my ability to tolerate certain personalities. I also spoke about other works from around the turn of the century, in which I found some characters odd. However, when I finished the story, it turned out the narrator was very unreliable. That explained a lot. ^ ^

Love the emasculating ikea chair

Perhaps my favorite unreliable narrators are those from Kazuo Ishiguro's novels. They're not unreliable _just_ because the story demands it (like in Fight Club) or because they're innocent to a violent world around them (like Huckleberry Finn), but instead their 'unreliableness' is in itself another layer of text in Ishiguro's books. Just like what Lindsay says about the narrative self, Ishiguro likes to explore the unreliable nature of memory and the way it is always reconstructed rather than recalled, and I adore that.

A example of a book I recently read with an unreliable narrator was The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Young Bruno is so naive and innocent that its almost hard to understand his aloofness but it offers the reader a very stark and sad realization when you piece together what he means by "Out With", "the Fury" and all the other things going on.

I grew up reading a lot of mysteries (some Sherlock Holes, some Hardy Boys, a few others to go along with them), so I've always had something of an appreciation for the Unreliable Narrator. since I typically never knew more than the narrator, I ended up having even more fun reading the stories since I was trying to figure the mystery out along with them!

The curious Case of the dead dog in the night time is a great example and a very engaging book! Another good example is Everything is illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer; it switches between two narrators telling two different stories they could not tell without each other's help. Both are unreliable narrators, and the book comes across as being mostly true when it is 99% fiction.

I appreciate that Lindsay’s essay was about literature, but as a teacher, I used How I Met Your Mother as a way to demonstrate the unreliable narrator. The show has ups and downs, but it’s at its best when it plays up the unreliable narrator. Ted, and the other characters remember events differently often in conflicted ways, or in conflicting timelines, or narrator Ted forgets details, like the date he calls “blah blah”. They use the unreliable narrator for ongoing jokes, like the goat at Teds birthday. I think my favourite example is in the second last season when a whole episode takes place in the bar with the whole gang and their usual antics, and at the end, an imaginary Barney tells Ted none of is happening, you’ve been sitting at the bar by yourself for hours remembering the good old days before your friends grew up. It makes you feel sooooooo sad for Ted, it makes him look so lonely. My students saw how powerful the unreliable narrator tool could be, not just in a murder mystery context like may of the examples my English syllabus suggested. I love unreliable narrators in books. I love going back and questioning everything. It totally indulges my “over-analyse everything” gene. I remember the punch in the gut when Gone Girl switched over the “real” Amy. It wears brilliant.

I knew you would mention Lolita

i love lindsey ellis!! this video is so interesting, i learned a lot thank you!

I highly recommend Machado de Assis' "Dom Casmurro" for an interesting take on unreliable narrators. It's great literature, and outside of the traditional US-Europe axis for lit canon.

The boy in the striped pajamas has an unreliable narrator too. It makes it hard to understand if you don't know anything about the holocaust, which my younger sister found out too late.

I feel every youtube video as unreliable narator

Highly recommend reading 'The People In The Trees' if you're interested in some more complex and unreliable narration

The only more obvious example of an unreliable narrator is Bateman in American Psycho. Was pleasantly surprised he didn't show up

'hand model' is such a great job description.

One of my favorite unreliable narrators is Lemony Snicket from a Series of Unfortunate Events. Retelling a story while admitting within the text that he doesn’t have all the facts retelling the events from characters who themselves can not be considered reliable, leaving you question what did or didn’t happen though most of it until the nature of the Medium of written word itself is brought into question. What I find particularly interesting about any narration told in general is that we read all the narration in our head with our own voice. Right now as you are reading this comment, you are listening to it in your head with YOUR voice not MY voice. Heck, right there, just by capitalizing a few letters, the tone of your internal voice in your head shifted. It’s a fascinating phenomenon.

7:30 "Trained with a critical eye, and open mind and an armful of good books", sound words to live by as a citizen of the world in this internet age where mendacity dominates. Thanks Lindsay :)

I love this host and hope she goes on to do many more projects. Thank you PBS, these are wonderful.

Very insightful. Love these videos

I only just realised the movie The Innocents was based on a book - I'll definitely check it out!

Excellent, thank you very much!

My favorite example of unreliable narration is A Series of Unfortunate Events- one not often sung for being unreliable but one which you realize (especially as an adult) when re-reading the series that our narrator is a brokenhearted and perhaps not 100% innocent member of a shadowy organization which KIDNAPS CHILDREN and that he's essentially been so entrenched in this idea of "noble" vs "villanous" his entire life that it changes how he views the world. And by the end even HE is realizing that! He admits he's scewing the story to obstruct things by the end! Even our relationship with the main villain may be skewed by our narrator's past history with him; his villainous traits stretched and his noble ones scrubbed away.

that "experiencing self" vs. "narrating self" thing...I, well, - experience - that often when I lucid dream. The narating self is the one trying to influence the direction of the events in the dream that the experiencing self is...expiriencing, and therefore can look past anything emotional (for instance 'scary' ) that is happening in the dream. This is why I seldom have actual nightmares anymore. I have dreams that non-lucid-dreamers would probably consider nightmares, but since the "narating self" is assumed to be the "real" self, I know that that 'scary' thing is not real and can't hurt me. (I call these 'quasi-nightmares') It can be annoying when my subconcious fights with me for control over the dream though, which happens fairly commonly for me. XD;

Garnet talking about Rose Quartz is like, Baby's First Unreliable Narrator

My favorite unreliable narrator is the one from The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by Kristopher Jansma. It's about a guy trying to write his first novel and his misadventures. On whim I picked the book up for a dollar from the dollar store and the story itself is pretty meta and even a little satirical in having an unreliable narrator telling the story in the narrative while being written by an unreliable narrator who might change little details here and there. It's a very great book and everyone should read it if they enjoy a little meta humor and some interesting meta observations in their literature. It plays with the concepts of the Unreliable Narrator very well.

Lindsay is just... so great. I'm so glad she's hitting the big times with *PBS, *baby*!*

Hey, the Curious Incident makes perfect sense, it is allistics who narrate incorrectly. XD

Talking about praxis on a PBS video! Never change, Lindsay!

my first thought when i saw the title was Lolita and i was just waiting for u to mention it disappointed girl on the train wasn't mentioned ? it honestly has one of the most interesting and compelling twists on unreliable narrator that i've ever seen, and it uses it to create this incredibly honest and vivid portrayal of trauma and abuse

I really needed this video. I only just recently became aware that a narrator could be unreliable.

In 7th Grade I had a chance to read The Tell-Tale Heart to the class. They appreciated my adding sound-effects for the heartbeat.

My narating self tries to make sense of my dreams 2 seconds after I wake up and it usually comes up with some pretty cool stories :)

Lindsay, it's not Nábokov's it's Nabókov's. Love ya!

This whole concept always makes me think of Code Name Verity

Ellis is such a good host. And everything is so well thought out.

One of my favorite books is Code Name Verity. The story is all written documents of what a captured WWII spy is telling the Nazis. You never get to see anything outside what she's writing down so you spend most of the book questioning if she is a reliable narrator and what the truth actually is.

I don't know if I said this for the last video, I certainly thought it, I love that as these come out they get more and more Lindsay-ish (for lack of a better word)

Never been so early. Great as always

Heyyyy, this video was gr8! Mixed with facts, and humor. I like it. 😎😎

Lindsey: "So maybe the most powerful character of the literature is not actually the narrator, maybe it's *you,* the reader." Roland Barthes from his grave: *and I approve of this message.*

One of my favourite unreliable narrators is Severian from The Book Of The New Sun. Imagine a fantasy sword & sorcery story that turns out to be set in the distant future where your narrator is a sociopath who believes his memory is perfect, but constantly contradicts himself. Often you're not even sure about the basic facts about characters he's traveling with, like - what species they even are, because he himself isn't sure (even though he always talks as if he is sure about everything), and you realise he cannot actually keep track of relationships between other people. Super recommended.

A great example is The Princess Bride. Goldman starts by saying that this is a version of a longer book that his grandfather would read him but cut out the boring parts. None of which is true. Here Goldman has produced not one but two other narrators (S. Morgenstern and his grandfather), this allows him to disavow any ownership of the story. I find it funny how so many people think that this is a great love story (mainly because of the movie) but it really is an indictment of how literature has depicted "true love". He does this is several ways, in the novel after they escape things immediately go horribly wrong (events not contained in the movie). Goldman has also kept the joke going over subsequent printings of the book. One is where he said that he had written a wonderful romantic reunion between Westley and Buttercup but his editor would not allow it because it wasn't in S. Morgenstern's original text but you could write to Goldman and he would send you the pages; there are no pages. Goldman also wrote that he was trying to produce a sequel called Buttercup's Baby but was having problems doing so because of Morgenstern's estate. Of course no such sequel exists because there has never been a S. Morgenstern.

Holly 🐧, I loved it. I always wanted to be a writer and I always feel a little bit drowned and lost regarding how to write, to who, and how to send the message. This video, even though it is not answering any of my questions, at least give me some motivation to look through narration and maybe how to give the world I am buoding to future readers. Thanks a lot!

I wrote about unreliable narrators on my blog a couple of years ago. It's such a fascinating subject, though at the same time it can be difficult to write at times. At least, that's my experience.

Lindsay's videos are always great. American Psycho is another great example of this as are #SPOILERS .... The Basic Eight and The Hole (Guy Burt).

Very good. Thanks.

I would actually like to know what Lindsay Ellis thinks about a new theory I recently found, It was an article that theorized that Brad Pitt's character in Fight Club was actually the spirit of a car crash victim. Then he goes on to show that Edward Norton works in a car insurance company, and they also make sure to mention, that Ed's boss wasn't actually a bad guy. Or maybe that was another article.

When I started reading The Sound and The Fury I was like "wtf??! I can't read this!"... but I approached its reading as it was some kind of game, where I had to piece all together, and it was really rewarding

Robert Cormiear's "After The First Death" springs to mind when it comes to unreliable narrators.

Love this series, glad to see more regular Lindsay in my notifications :)

There's a really good Norwegian trilogy called "Innsirkling" that explores this in a super interesting ways. The characters all write letters to the same person and tell the story of their relationship and you find out more and more throughout the series what may have caused the stories to be different from reality. And the stories contradict each other all the time so it's a really interesting take on the question "how can we know what's actually real?"

We've always lived in a castle is also a book was unreliable narrator, but it's an interesting one because it both childlike and dangerous and distorted at the same time

The Great Gatsby and Mean Girls also have UN's

A Clockwork Orange. Alex make himself to be the leader of his group but he's the youngest and his 'droogs' left him high and dry at the cat lady's place.

One of my favourite literary devices.