"humans are inherently fallible"
~Yacobi (2001)
Judging narrator (Un)reliability is a subjective practice. Human perceptions change constantly and are influenced by countless paradigms. Previous conceptions of cultural norms, trustworthy characteristics, and acceptable morals leads to the possibility of numerous interpretations and judgments to be passed on the same narrative character. The most common determinate of narrator unreliability is the age of the narrator. Children are judged as not being able to accurately interpret the adult world and therefore are seen as unreliable sources for re-conveying a "world" which they do not have the capabilities to understand (Spencer, 1992). This is entirely subjective and immediately implies that all narrators of young adult literature are therefore unreliable (being that almost all narrative characters in these texts are young children or young adolescents).
This lack-of-faith in child narrators is a creation of today's culture. In previous centuries (and even in some cultures around the world today) children were thought of as sources of truth, purity, ancient spirits reborn in innocent vessels, and even thought of as adults at extremely young ages. These notions transform from culture to culture and generation to generation. So if one narrative character is labeled as unreliable, there is a strong possibility that this interpretation will change in the years to come or with each new reader. McCormick (2009) explains that "it is individual readers—not an implied author or textual signals alone—who ultimately decide if and how a narrator is unreliable. In addition, it has been argued that any individual act of labeling a narration “unreliable” is historically, culturally, and normatively variable."
Understanding the variance of textual receptiveness, Olsen (2003) asks, "If detecting unreliability functions as a quality of individual reader response, how can stable textual signals exist to typify the phenomenon of unreliability?" The answer is, they can't. So why do readers insist on label narrative characters with whom they don't agree with or understand as unreliable? According to Marcus (2006), this is due to the need for the reader’s superiority to the narrator—the reader’s belief that he or she excels the narrator in his or her moral qualities, cognitive abilities, or both. Sensitivity of one's ego can lead to biased judgments of narrative characters even without reader awareness of the biases being imposed upon the text.
Judging narrator (Un)reliability is a subjective practice. Human perceptions change constantly and are influenced by countless paradigms. Previous conceptions of cultural norms, trustworthy characteristics, and acceptable morals leads to the possibility of numerous interpretations and judgments to be passed on the same narrative character. The most common determinate of narrator unreliability is the age of the narrator. Children are judged as not being able to accurately interpret the adult world and therefore are seen as unreliable sources for re-conveying a "world" which they do not have the capabilities to understand (Spencer, 1992). This is entirely subjective and immediately implies that all narrators of young adult literature are therefore unreliable (being that almost all narrative characters in these texts are young children or young adolescents).
This lack-of-faith in child narrators is a creation of today's culture. In previous centuries (and even in some cultures around the world today) children were thought of as sources of truth, purity, ancient spirits reborn in innocent vessels, and even thought of as adults at extremely young ages. These notions transform from culture to culture and generation to generation. So if one narrative character is labeled as unreliable, there is a strong possibility that this interpretation will change in the years to come or with each new reader. McCormick (2009) explains that "it is individual readers—not an implied author or textual signals alone—who ultimately decide if and how a narrator is unreliable. In addition, it has been argued that any individual act of labeling a narration “unreliable” is historically, culturally, and normatively variable."
Understanding the variance of textual receptiveness, Olsen (2003) asks, "If detecting unreliability functions as a quality of individual reader response, how can stable textual signals exist to typify the phenomenon of unreliability?" The answer is, they can't. So why do readers insist on label narrative characters with whom they don't agree with or understand as unreliable? According to Marcus (2006), this is due to the need for the reader’s superiority to the narrator—the reader’s belief that he or she excels the narrator in his or her moral qualities, cognitive abilities, or both. Sensitivity of one's ego can lead to biased judgments of narrative characters even without reader awareness of the biases being imposed upon the text.