unreliable narrator
Untrustworthy tale-teller
A storytelling device in which the narrator's account cannot be fully trusted.
The narrator may be lying, deluded, mentally unstable, or simply too naïve to understand what they're reporting.
Readers must piece together the truth from gaps and contradictions: I didn't realize until the end that the narrator was the killer.
The term comes from literary criticism but applies to any medium where someone tells a story.
- flashbackInvoluntary past memory
- metafictionLiterature aware of itself
- interior monologueCharacter's private thoughts narrated
- stream of consciousnessNarrative mimicking uninterrupted thought
- dramatic ironyAudience-character knowledge gap
deceptive · foreshadowing · misdirection · misleading · fabulist · inconsistent · self-deception · memory distortion · selective memory · gaslighting · raconteur · first-person · focalization · moral ambiguity · framing device · storyteller · psychological thriller · intertextuality
- literaturebooks, book, fiction, poetry, stories
- storytellingstorytelling, story, tale, storyteller, story time
- writingwriting, drafting, authors, author, books
- literary elementsplot, character, setting, theme, conflict
- mysteryclue, detective, suspect, clues, sleuth
- mystery fictionwhodunit, whodunnit, sleuth, murder mystery, detective novel
unreliable narratoromniscient narrator
Storyteller with unlimited knowledge
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