An unreliable narrator cannot be trusted. He comes in many
guises. There is the delusional unreliable narrator, like Holden
Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, unaware of how the reader
and the other characters perceive him. There is the mad
narrator, as in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There are the
unreliable narrators who lie to themselves to make the unreality
appear real. Middle-aged professor Humbert Humbert in Lolita
famously lies to the jury and to himself, believing his sexual
affair with the drastically under-aged Lolita is not criminal.
Yet Vladimir Nabokov, the author, gives a wink to the reader: We
know the protagonist is not being honest with himself. These
characters are coming undone — the reader slowly notices
fissures in their thinking, which clue us in that these
narrators are living in an alternative universe. Then there is
the more subtle unreliable. Nick Carraway, who narrates The
Great Gatsby, is not to be trusted because of the way he chooses
to tell his story. From the first word