The Mind is An Unreliable Narrator

One of my favorite plot devices in mystery stories is the “unreliable narrator.” As the name implies, it means the narrator of the story might not be telling the truth or is not 100% objective in their motivations. It’s a clever way to really mess with the mind of a reader or listener, most of whom are used to the omniscient and objective third person narration, or at the very least expect the person telling the story within the story to be a character of good. There are plenty examples of this trope throughout literature, film and TV, from Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart to Mr. Robot (or Legion) and from The Usual Suspects to Fight Club to name a few. This style of storytelling deepens the mystery and almost always forces me to go back and re-watch or reread to understand all the nuances and subtleties of how the unreliable narrator was messing with the reader or listener. 

Recently, I’ve begun to wonder if I enjoy this deceitful dance because I understand a fundamental truth about the mind that many don’t wish to acknowledge. You see, I believe that most of us fail to see that we’re literally always walking around with an unreliable narrator within out midst.

Plot twist; you have to catch the rest of the story on Medium by clicking on the title, the image or the link right here.