Unreliable Narrator

A narrator who speaks and narrates in a fashion that is not in accordance with the implied author’s norms, often understood as a narrator who, intentionally or not, lies and/or deceives
Kelly Chuang 2026-09-16

Explication

In his seminal 1961 work, The Rhetoric of Fiction, Wayne C. Booth mentions that stories do not take place by themselves, that narrators do the work of transforming an event into a story. Narration is present in every story, and thus, a narrator is present in every story. In the same work, Booth identifies that not every narrator is the same – that there are reliable and unreliable narrators. The latter is most often that “the narrator is mistaken, or he believes himself to have qualities which the author denies him” (Booth 159). A general example of a reliable narrator is the voiceover on a nature documentary; a general example of an unreliable narrator might be an influencer promoting a product as part of a brand deal, narrating a fabricated anecdote. The first hypertext fiction, afternoon, a story, famously has an unreliable narrator (Ensslin). 

Narrators who lie deliberately also fall under the term of unreliable narrator: a general literary example is murder mystery narrators who are revealed to be the killer and lie by omission for the duration of the narrative. In the digital space, this might be social media users who post AI-generated videos with the intention of passing them off as real. Users who troll and ragebait can also be interpreted into this category – gaslighting other commenters, for example, into believing they misinterpreted the original poster’s argument –  although it is difficult to track the genuine intentions of any user.  

But there are also narrators who do not realize their unreliability; this is the specific kind of unreliable narrator that Booth identifies in his definition. James Sunderland of the video game, Silent Hill 2, exemplifies this kind of cognitive dissonance. Like James, the player navigates and shares the experience of returning to the town of Silent Hill following a letter from his late wife, Mary, whom James narrates died of illness. The player only realizes later in the game, alongside James, that he killed his wife out of resentment and inability to cope with her disease (“What Silent Hill 2…”). James is “mistaken” in believing Mary succumbed to her illness for the majority of the game, until he is snapped out of his delusion by seeing a videotape of himself committing her murder – until the game (or the ‘author’) explicitly denies him the “quality” of sanity. 

While artificial intelligence and narratology have long been in conversation (Galloway; Hunter), recent narratological critique has turned to the specific inquiry of AI’s potential for generating narrative. Literature on narrative AI takes on a broad range of opinions: the generated, synthetic nature of an AI narrative can defamiliarize readers from the story via noting the rhetorical ‘deceptive’ moves made by the model (Caracciolo); LLMs’ inability to stray from text-centric analysis and utilize rhetorical analysis (via “tacit shared knowledge”) is what bars it from successfully recognizing or writing unreliable narration (Phelan, “ChatGPT” 204). 

The unreliable narrator is a complex narrative element that is still heavily contested within literary discourse. See the Further Reading section for further recommended readings on narratology and the unreliable narrator.

See Also

• Algorithmic Narrativity - The combination of the human ability to understand experience through narrative with the power of the computer to process and generate data that results in the development, modification, and distribution of narratives
• Chatbot - Software application designed to simulate conversation with human users, often used in digital narratives to provide interactive storytelling experiences
• Conspiracy Theory - Explanatory framework based on belief and speculation that attributes major events to a secret, often malevolent group of actors, typically lacking verifiable evidence and contradicting official accounts
• Contemporary Posteriority - Phenomenon of experiencing the past through the lens of present technologies, often exploring how digital media shapes our understanding of history and memory
• Cybertext - Print or digital texts that require active participation from the reader not just to interpret the meaning of the text but also to navigate through it, for example by choosing alternative paths or entering data that alters the output
• Implied Reader - Hypothetical reader of a text as inferred from its characteristics
• Interactive Fiction - Born-digital electronic literature where users navigate narrative and ludic elements by inputting textual commands or making choices
• Participatory Narrative - Form of storytelling that actively involves the audience in the creation or progression of the narrative, often facilitated by digital platforms that enable collaboration and interaction
• Player Agency - Degree to which users or players can influence the direction or outcome of a story or game, highlighting the interactive aspect of digital media
• Posthuman Poetics - Literary arts that question humanist notions of subjectivity, embodiment, and agency in the context of advanced technology
• Virtual Reality (VR) - Technology that creates immersive digital environments, allowing users to spatially interact with and experience a computer-generated world as if it were real, often used in digital art and narrative to enhance spatial and sensory engagement

Works Referenced

“What Silent Hill 2 and Mouthwashing Can Teach Us about Abuse.” YouTube, uploaded by SableStew, 25 January 2025, https://youtu.be/y-FseWu9IVI?si=9Z9yvhFAs7nxgFVC. 

Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction, University of Chicago Press, 1961. 

Caracciolo, Marco. “‘Check Out Narratology Maybe’: Fictional Imaginaries of AI Narration.” Narrative, vol. 34, no. 1, 2026, pp. 71–89. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/nar.2026.a980959. 

Ensslin, Astrid. “‘I Want to Say I May Have Seen my Son Die this Morning’: Unintentional Unreliable Narration in Digital Fiction.” Language and Literature, vol. 21, no. 2, 2012, pp. 136–149. SagePub, https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947011435859. 

Galloway, Patricia. “Narrative Theories as Computational Models: Reader-Oriented Theory and Artificial Intelligence.” Computers and the Humanities, vol. 17, no. 4, 1983, pp. 169–74. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30204087. 

Hunter, Lynette. “Rhetoric and Artificial Intelligence.” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, vol. 9, no. 4, 1991, pp. 317–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1991.9.4.317. 

Phelan, James. “Reliable, Unreliable, and Deficient Narration: A Rhetorical Account.” Narrative Culture, vol. 4, no. 1, 2017, pp. 89–103. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.13110/narrcult.4.1.0089. 

---. “ChatGPT and the Territory of Contemporary Narratology; or, A Rhetorical River Runs through It.” Poetics Today, vol. 45, no. 2, 2024, pp. 197–205. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-11092778.

Further Reading

Abbott, H. Porter. “Unreadable Minds and the Captive Reader.” Style, vol. 42, no. 4, 2008, pp. 448–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.42.4.448. 

Boyd, Zelda. “Jane Austen’s ‘Must’: The Will and the World.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 39, no. 2, 1984, pp. 127–43. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3044635. 

Cohn, Dorrit. “Discordant Narration.” Style, vol. 34, no. 2, 2000, pp. 307–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.34.2.307. 

de Reuck, Jenny. “Etching ‘Inconscience’: Unreliability as a Function in Narrative Situations.” https://doi.org/10.1080/02564719008529956. 

Fletcher, Angus. “Shakespeare Didn’t Brainstorm: Why Literature Proves that There’s More to Intelligence than AI.” The Routledge Handbook of AI and Literature, Routledge, 2024, pp. 125–135. Taylor & Francis, https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003255789-15/shakespeare-didn-brainstorm-literature-proves-intelligence-ai-angus-fletcher. 

---. “Why Computers Will Never Read (or Write) Literature: A Logical Proof and A Narrative.” Narrative, vol. 29, no. 1, 2021, pp. 1–28. 

Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Cornell University Press, 1980. https://15orient.com/files/genette-on-narrative-discourse.pdf. 

Genette, Gérard, et al. “Fictional Narrative, Factual Narrative.” Poetics Today, vol. 11, no. 4, 1990, pp. 755–74. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1773076. 

Keen, Suzanne. “Readers’ Temperaments and Fictional Character.” New Literary History, vol. 42, no. 2, 2011, pp. 295–314. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23012545. 

Labrie, Ross. “Henry James’s Idea of Consciousness.” American Literature, vol. 39, no. 4, 1968, pp. 517–29. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2923839. 

Lanser, Susan S. “Toward a Feminist Narratology.” Style, vol. 20, no. 3, 1986, pp. 341–63. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42945612. 

Nünning, Ansgar. “‘But Why Will You Say That I Am Mad?’ On the Theory, History, and Signals of Unreliable Narration in British Fiction.” AAA: Arbeiten Aus Anglistik Und Amerikanistik, vol. 22, no. 1, 1997, pp. 83–105. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43025523. 

Olson, Greta. “Reconsidering Unreliability: Fallible and Untrustworthy Narrators.” Narrative, vol. 11, no. 1, 2003, pp. 93–109. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20107302.  

Reynolds, William. “The Language Game: Truth Is Fiction, Fiction Truth.” The English Journal, vol. 64, no. 6, 1975, pp. 14–15. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/815944. 

Shen, Dan. “What is the Implied Author?” Style, vol. 45, no. 1, 2011, pp. 80–98. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.45.1.80. 

Zerweck, Bruno. “Historicizing Unreliable Narration: Unreliability and Cultural Discourse in Narrative Fiction.” Style, vol. 35, no. 1, 2001, pp. 151–76. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.35.1.151.

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