This paper contains an unreliable narrator in writing, what types of unreliable narrators are, what is first-person narration by discussing Gunter Grass’s Die Blechtrommel and its narrative techniques, and most importantly, the use of unreliable narration by Grass to tell the story of post-war Germany.
Realist novels tend to offer a rational speaking voice telling a story that meets a reader’s expectations. But what if the narrator gives the reader reason to doubt, because he or she is insane, or has a distorted perception of the world, or is very young, or lying? Before the phrase “unreliable narrator” was first coined by literary critic Wayne C. Booth in his 1961 book Rhetoric of Fiction, authors were using this literary technique long before that.
Several writings of modern writers like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca, Winston Groom’s Forrest Gump to Mark Twain’s 1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Vladimir Nabokov’s 1995 Lolita, and our prescribed text Gunter Grass’s Die Blechtrommel (1959). Taking inspiration from contemporary writers such as Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Voltaire, Theodore Fontane, and more Grass started penning down the first book of the famous Danzig Trilogy, Die Blechtrommel or The Tin Drum, featuring his hometown Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). The novel is told from Oskar Matzerath’s point of view, the protagonist and an unreliable narrator, as his sanity or insanity, never becomes clear.
Before going to the further analysis of the unreliable narrator and narrations we have to understand who is an unreliable narrator? An unreliable narrator is a narrator whether in literature, film, or theater whose credibility has been seriously compromised. A narrator who describes what he witnessed accurately, but misinterprets those events. Or, a narrator who intentionally misleads the reader. Sometimes the narrator’s unreliability is made immediately evident. For instance, a story may open with the narrator making a false or delusional claim or admitting to being severely mentally ill or the story itself may have a frame in which the narrator appears as a character with clues to the character’s unreliability. More dramatic use of the device delays the revelation until near the story’s end. In some cases, the readers discover that in the foregoing narrative the narrator had concealed or greatly misrepresented vital pieces of information such a twist ending forces readers to reconsider their point of view and experience of the story. In some cases, the narrator’s unreliability is never fully revealed but only hinted at leaving the reader to wonder how much the narrator should be trusted and how the story should be interpreted.
“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.”
-George Elliot
Who is telling a story and from what perspective are some of the most important choices an author has to make. Told from a different point of view, a story can be transformed completely. In a first-person narrative, a story can change dramatically depending on which character is the narrator. Constraints are not necessarily a bad thing, they can help focus a story or highlight certain elements. For example, a third-person narrator is necessarily a bit removed from the characters. But that can be good for stories where a feeling of distance is important.
A third-person narrator can be either be limited, meaning they stick close to one character’s thoughts and feelings, or they can be omniscient, able to flit between characters’ minds and give readers more information. A first-person story creates closeness between the reader and the narrator. It’s also restricted by the narrator’s knowledge. This can create suspense as the readers find out information along with the character. A first-person narrator does not necessarily have to represent the character’s experience faithfully, they can be delusional or dishonest. While unreliable narrators are almost by definition first-person narrators, arguments have been made for the existence of unreliable second or third-person narrators, especially within the context of film and television.
There are two types of unreliable narrators – one, who intentionally mislead. This type of unreliable narrator misleads the readers intentionally because they are guilty of something and they don’t want the readers to find out or they want to showcase themselves in a better light because they want the readers to be sided with them, not against them. Liars, criminals, and the guilty fall under this group. The liar is the most deliberate of all the unreliable narrators. Just to paint a better picture of themselves or achieve a desired outcome they fabricate stories. Dr. James Sheppard in Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd acts as a helper to detective Hercule Poirot to investigate the murder of a mutual friend. Sheppard acts as an ally and trusted confidante. But when Poirot solved the crime, it is revealed that Sheppard was the actual killer – the readers have been fooled all the way. These similar kinds of traits can be spotted in Grass’s Die Blechtrommel’s protagonist Oskar as he fabricates the story according to his convenience. Oskar provides the readers with his version of the story, not the original one.
Two, narrators who misinterpret. This type of narrator is basically with limited understanding, personal bias, or the mentally ill. Most popular kind of limited understanding unreliable narrator is the child narrator. It is simply because kids don’t know what adults do so sometimes their stories are inaccurate. Some of the popular limited understanding/ child unreliable narrators can be spotted in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and even Yann Martel’s narrator stretches credulity in Life of Pi, with his tale of life adrift with a tiger – and then offer a different option. There are several other examples of a limited understanding unreliable narrator – if the narrator is physically or mentally disabled, if the narrator is dumb, if it’s someone who wasn’t present at important events, someone who only knows one side of the story and the list goes on and on.
The personal bias unreliable narrator means they have a personal reason to support or oppose someone or something, so they don’t portray the events accurately. They concealed important facts. Gretchen is an example of such personal bias unreliable narrator because, throughout Mean Girls (a film based on Rosalind Wiseman’s 2002 bestselling self-help book, Queen Bees & Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends & Other Realities of Adolescence.), she portrayed herself how she is such a good person undeserving of the treatments she gets but in reality she is not a good person. She is positively biased towards herself. Such examples can also be found in Wuthering Heights, The Turn of a Screw, The Moonstone, etc.
The mentally ill unreliable narrator is the most popular plot twist, we find a lot of examples in various books and movies. Any time you have a narrator that has multiple personality disorder, chronic memory loss, amnesia, imaginary friend anything like that they fall under this type of unreliable narrator. Bret Easton Ellis’s serial killer Patrick Bateman speaks through a yuppie archetype in American Psycho, Fight Club, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest are some famous examples.
Gunter Grass has been described as “the conscience of a nation” for his darkly satirical portrait of the rise of Nazi sympathies in ordinary families and the aftermath of the war in Die Blechtrommel. History is happening
Oskar has all kinds of above-mentioned unreliable narrator features. He is mentally unstable as we find him in a mental asylum in West Germany. Oskar introduces himself from his bed in a “mental hospital” where he has been held following his murder trial. He explains that until the age of 20 he was just three feet tall, having arrested his growth on his third birthday by sheer force of will.
“… I stuck to my drum and didn’t grow a finger’s breadth from my third birthday on.”
Under the narrative umbrella of the protagonist’s mental capriciousness, Oskar as a child is unable to understand the dynamics of the adult world, as an adult, he is deluded into absurd self-incrimination, agonized by the surfacing, but still largely an implicit sense of being a non-resistant German during the World War II. In this sense, the overt joy and lust of telling and the concomitant fugitiveness can be seen as Oskar’s disengagement from the excruciating gravity of the world in which he lives, as his escape into a parallel universe. As much, they represent themselves as appropriate means of expression for the unreliable and self-admit insane narrator.
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