Unit 6 · Topic 6.5

6.5 Bias and unreliable narrators

Every narrator decides which details to include, and those choices can reveal bias, a slant that favors some people or views over others. When you spot bias, you may decide a narrator is unreliable. That changes how you judge the events, the other characters and their motives.

Key terms

bias
unreliable narrator
reliability
motive
first-person narrator

Bias and reliability

Bias is a leaning that shapes how someone sees and reports things. All narrators have a perspective, but bias goes further: it bends the account in a consistent direction. A reliable narrator is one you can mostly trust. An unreliable narrator is one whose account you have reason to doubt.

Unreliability comes in different kinds. Some narrators lie or hide things. Some are honest but naive, like a child who doesn't understand what they see. Some are blinded by self-interest, prejudice or strong feeling. Mark Twain's Huck Finn is honest but naive: he reports everything, yet often misjudges what it means.

Clues that a narrator might be unreliable

The narrator's claims about themselves don't match their actions.
Other characters react in ways that contradict the narrator's version.
The narrator insists too hard on their own fairness or honesty.
Details slip out that the narrator doesn't seem to notice.
The narrator has a strong stake in how events are judged.

Two first-person narrators to test

Wuthering Heights (1847) opens with the new tenant, Lockwood, praising his landlord: "A perfect misanthropist's Heaven—and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow!" Heathcliff has just greeted him coldly. Lockwood is so pleased with his own image as a loner that he badly misreads the man in front of him. Within two chapters he is attacked by Heathcliff's dogs and stranded by a snowstorm. Brontë signals early that this narrator's judgments can't be trusted.

Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby (1925) is trickier. He begins by saying, "I'm inclined to reserve all judgements," then spends the novel judging almost everyone. Later he announces, "I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known." A narrator who certifies his own honesty invites you to check. He also helps arrange Gatsby's private meeting with Daisy, a married woman, so he is part of the story he judges.

Why it matters for interpretation

A biased narrator also colors how you judge everyone else. If a narrator dislikes a character, you may hear only that character's worst moments and only the narrator's guesses about their motives. Ask whether the facts reported would support a kinder (or harsher) reading. In Wuthering Heights, Nelly Dean tells most of the story, and she has her own loyalties and grudges, so readers argue about how fairly she presents Heathcliff and Catherine.

Deciding a narrator is unreliable doesn't mean throwing out everything they say. It means reading two stories at once: what the narrator tells you and what the details show. The space between them is often where the meaning is. If Nick's judgment is slanted, then your view of Gatsby, Daisy and Tom has to be rebuilt from the evidence, not just from Nick's verdicts.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Testing a narrator's self-description
Early in The Great Gatsby, Nick says, "I'm inclined to reserve all judgements." A few paragraphs later he says that "after a certain point I don't care" what someone's conduct is founded on. Later still: "I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known." Write a short claim about Nick's reliability and support it.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Compare the claims: Nick says he withholds judgment, then admits a limit to his tolerance almost at once.
2. Step 2: Look at the honesty claim. Calling yourself one of the few honest people you've ever known is both a judgment of everyone else and hard to prove.
3. Step 3: Avoid overstating. Nick isn't lying about plot events; his bias shows in his verdicts on people.
4. Step 4: Write a claim that says what kind of unreliability this is and why it matters.
Answer: Sample answer: Nick is reliable about what happens but not about what it means. He opens by claiming to "reserve all judgements" and then admits within the same page that his tolerance "has a limit," and his boast that he is "one of the few honest people" he has ever known is itself a sweeping judgment of everyone else. Because his self-description keeps contradicting itself, readers should weigh his praise of Gatsby and his scorn for Tom and Daisy as the views of an involved, slanted witness rather than as the novel's final word.

Common mistakes

Calling every first-person narrator unreliable. You need specific evidence of bias or misjudgment.
Assuming an unreliable narrator is lying. Many are honest but naive, self-deceived or limited.
Mixing up narrator and author. The author can build in clues that the narrator is wrong.

On the exam

Multiple-choice questions may ask what a narrator's comment reveals about the narrator, or which detail suggests the narrator's view is limited. Look for gaps between what the narrator says and what the details show.
In the literary argument essay, a narrator's bias can be the backbone of a sophisticated thesis, but only if you show the evidence that exposes it.

Connected topics

Videos

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Check yourself

5 questions on 6.5 Bias and unreliable narrators. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

“And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

He was the only man of us who still “followed the sea.” The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them—the ship; and so is their country—the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899; in book form 1902), the opening. Two excerpts: three paragraphs describing the sunset and the river’s history are left out between paragraphs 3 and 4.

Question 1 of 5

The narrator’s statement that for Marlow “the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale” (paragraph 6) prepares readers to expect that Marlow’s story will

1801—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist’s Heaven—and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name.

“Mr. Heathcliff?” I said.

A nod was the answer.

“Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant, sir. I do myself the honour of calling as soon as possible after my arrival, to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by my perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange: I heard yesterday you had had some thoughts—”

“Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir,” he interrupted, wincing. “I should not allow any one to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it—walk in!”

The “walk in” was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, “Go to the Deuce!” even the gate over which he leant manifested no sympathising movement to the words; and I think that circumstance determined me to accept the invitation: I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself.

The apartment and furniture would have been nothing extraordinary as belonging to a homely, northern farmer, with a stubborn countenance, and stalwart limbs set out to advantage in knee-breeches and gaiters. Such an individual seated in his arm-chair, his mug of ale frothing on the round table before him, is to be seen in any circuit of five or six miles among these hills, if you go at the right time after dinner. But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose. Possibly, some people might suspect him of a degree of under-bred pride; I have a sympathetic chord within that tells me it is nothing of the sort: I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling—to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He’ll love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again. No, I’m running on too fast: I bestow my own attributes over-liberally on him. Mr. Heathcliff may have entirely dissimilar reasons for keeping his hand out of the way when he meets a would-be acquaintance, to those which actuate me. Let me hope my constitution is almost peculiar: my dear mother used to say I should never have a comfortable home; and only last summer I proved myself perfectly unworthy of one.

While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I “never told my love” vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return—the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame—shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp.

By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 1 (1847). Two excerpts: a description of the house is left out between paragraphs 6 and 7. Mr. Lockwood, a newcomer renting a nearby house from Mr. Heathcliff, is the narrator.

Question 2 of 5

Lockwood’s exclamation “A capital fellow!” (paragraph 1) is undercut chiefly by

Question 3 of 5

In paragraph 6, Lockwood’s interpretation of Heathcliff’s “walk in!” reveals that Lockwood

Question 4 of 5

In paragraph 7, the sentence “No, I’m running on too fast: I bestow my own attributes over-liberally on him” primarily

Question 5 of 5

The anecdote in paragraph 8 about the “most fascinating creature” at the sea-coast affects the reader’s view of Lockwood chiefly by

0 of 5 answered