Quote:
Originally Posted by Freakin
An unreliable narrator doesn't have to be deliberately misleading the audience. Stupid and deluded and misinformed narrators are all examples of unreliable narrators.
Perhaps this is an argument of semantics, but from that point of view, virtually all narrators (except omniscient POV narrators) are unreliable. Because they are all presenting the world from their point of view with all their biases, and based on their limited knowledge about what is happening.
I would only call narrators unreliable when they misrepresent the truth whether deliberately or through madness or extreme simpleness. Like the narrator-detective in the Agatha Christie mystery who was the real murderer. Like Tyler Durden in Fight Club, or the Russell Crowe character in Beautiful Mind, or Verbal in Usual Suspects.
If you call Tyrion an unreliable narrator simply because Shae can deceive him about her true motives, then you take away all meaning from the term.
If Tyrion was to turn out to actually have ordered the hit on Bran, after us being privy to his thoughts which indicated he didn't, then he'd be an unreliable narrator.
As far as I'm concerned, the narrators in GoT are often wrong, but, because we can trust that their thoughts (and descriptions of what happened) are true, they are all reliable narrators.
Last edited by ValarMorghulis; 02-28-2014 at 04:42 PM.