We rely on the narrator to tell us what is going on in a story, but what if we can’t trust the narrator? For example, in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” what clues does the author give us that the narrator is unreliable? Why would an author create an unreliable narrator? Can you think of other stories you have read in which the narrator cannot be trusted? What about in real life? How can you tell if you can believe a person who is telling you a (real or not) story?
Sometimes, we really can't trust the narrator, because what he or she thinks might not be true and correct, and might lead the audience to believe the wrong things. In "The Tell-Tale Heart", we can tell that the narrator is not to be trusted, because he keeps on saying he is not mad, but everything he says just proves that he has lost his mind. I think the author created the unreliable narrator and make them say the wrong things to prove just how wrong they really are. Like in "The Tell-Tale Heart", the narrator is not reliable and keeps on saying that he is sane, but instead, it just proves how seriously mentally unstable he is. I think I've never really read any other story that has a narrator as unreliable as the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" though. In real life, people do tell a lot of very unrealistic stories and you can definitely tell that they are making it up and it's not true. An easy way to tell if someone is reliable is to just find out about his or her previous records and how trustworthy he or she is. I think someone told me before that a great way to tell if someone is lying is to just look into their eyes. But, a person can be an unreliable narrator even if they are not lying, because they might have wrong beliefs. Like for example, a little kid might say that pranking their siblings is a nice and fun thing, but you know it's not.
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