Talk:Unreliable narrator

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Merge

Merge: This is just Mindfuck in another disguise. The same question should be raised here. Does it warrant a seperate article, or is it just another example of plot twisting? I say the latter. --Hunter61 22:39, 5 April 2008 (PDT)

Delete

  • Merge with other similar content into an appropriately named article. On Wikipedia, the same films being exampled, and the same Lost plot twists are used in this article ---- LOSTonthisdarnisland 23:55, 8 April 2008 (PDT) I now think Delete; see other section for reasons. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 04:38, 16 April 2008 (PDT)
  • Merge but it has nothing to do with Mindf*ck. We defined mindf*ck, as in giving it our own definition, and this is not it. However, since unreliable narrators are used to present plot twists, I think it should be merged as a section of the plot twist article. --     c      blacxthornE      t     15:20, 15 April 2008 (PDT) I now say Delete; I believe I've read a strong enough case to conclude that UN and PT were "apples and oranges", and further discussion below (1) (2) led me to believe that UN is not an efficient way to analyze the show. I believe there's no need to keep this article now. --     c      blacxthornE      t     03:42, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
  • Delete, if no consensus examples of an unreliable narrator can be found to add to the article. As it is now, the article is just a poor man's version of a general article. Only Lost-specific articles get to stay on Lostpedia. Robert K S (talk) 19:06, 21 April 2008 (PDT)
    • Comment: Because most of us agree that it generally applies to Lost as a whole story, I've included it on literary techniques, so effectively this is obsolete without specific examples (which I contend we'll never find, because it's all one story; the episodes could be considered acts or chapters). -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 22:55, 21 April 2008 (PDT)
      • I don't follow. "All of Lost has been told by an unreliable narrator" is not a fact worthy of an article. It's a theory. And if there are no Lost specific-examples contained in this article, there's no reason to keep it around. We can link to a Wikipedia article just the same. Robert K S (talk) 05:27, 22 April 2008 (PDT)

Keep it

  • Mindfuck is the result of using an Unreliable narrator, but you can produce it using other narrative techniques too. They are like cause and effect, but there's more causes that can produce the same effect.

--Desmondfan999 18:31, 9 April 2008

  • I don't think this should be merged, since we have categorized "unreliable narrator" as a story device, and a "plot twist" as a plotting device. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 08:50, 13 April 2008 (PDT)
    • Right, but we also can't cite any appropriate examples on this article since Lost is the story. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 12:30, 19 April 2008 (PDT)

Not Unreliable Narrator

The examples cited in this article are not examples of an unreliable narrator, they're just plot twists. I've discussed this somewhere else but I can't remember where. Basically Lost doesn't have a 'narrator' as such. Many of the examples given are cases where the show deliberately withholds information or implies things in order to surprise us later on, but the actual information given is always correct. Hallucination sequences could possibly count, although it's usually made clear afterwards what was real and what wasn't. I would say that the Unreliable Narrator is not a device that is used in Lost, since we almost never even have a narrator, so this article is fairly redundant.Liquidcow 09:30, 11 April 2008 (PDT)

  • This is definitely debateable, because I agree, there isn't a true "narrator". However, I think some people would consider the "narrator" of any given episode to be the "centric-character" of that episode, since the show will sometimes focus on only showing things from that "unreliable" centric-perspective. I think the wikipedia definition is broad enough to accept this interpretation. But, alas, this is all analysis, so it is probably prudent to add a section to the document that lists your valid criticism. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 14:00, 11 April 2008 (PDT)
  • But the person being a central character doesn't make them a narrator, it just means that we focus on what happens to them. The flashbacks are showing something objectively that happened in the past, it is not the character recounting a story. In fact we even see stuff happen in flashbacks that the character will lie about or not mention in the present (Kate is the best example), which proves that there is no 'unreliable narrator'. I get what you say about how an episode focusing on a certain character will show things from their perspective, but it's still 'factually correct', that is, if the character sees something, then we know it is what they saw, they are not mis-remembering or lying. They might not see something, which might be misleading to us as an audience, but that's a storytelling technique, not an unreliable narrator. It's only an unreliable narrator when there's a possibility that the information we're being given might be inaccurate or false, and the only example I can think of so far is Meet Kevin Johnson, because that's the only time when the episode has been a story recounted by one character to another, but it's too early to tell if it really was a case of an unreliable narrator.Liquidcow 12:15, 13 April 2008 (PDT)
    • You make some very good points. I do agree that flashbacks show things objectively, and are usually not using the "unreliable narrator". In some cases, though, the flashbacks are shown objectively, but are shown from the character's flawed perspective. For example, the audience is often shown Hurley's hallucinations as if they are real. This seems to be a case where the character is not lying or mis-remembering, but his view of reality (past or present) is not reliable. The information that the audience is given is strictly shown from Hurley's inaccurate perspective and the audience is only shown the "truth" much later.-- Dagg talk contribs4 8 18:13, 13 April 2008 (PDT)
      • Hallucinations or dream sequences still don't count; although what they see is not real, we are being objectively told what they saw, and by the end of the episode it is revealed to us that it is a dream sequence or hallucination. There is no doubt over whether those events happened or not. Dave tells Hurley not to take the pills. Later we find out that Dave is a product of Hurley's imagination. But he still told Hurley not to take the pills, that event happened, we just didn't have all the information we needed to understand what was happening. If anything, the reveal that Dave is imaginary makes it a more reliable narrator. In an unreliable narrator situation we would be left with some ambiguity about whether it happened that way or not.
      • I think the difference can be summed up like this: If Kate sees a horse in the show, we know that she definitely saw a horse, even if it wasn't really there or it was something else in the form of a horse or whatever, that definitely happened. In an 'unreliable narrator' situation, she might claim to have seen a horse, but we would have some reason to suspect that maybe she's making it up or remembering wrong. Say we compare Lost to The Usual Suspects (I assume the movie is so well known that everyone knows the twist ending, but I'm about to give it away). In Lost everything we see is 'true', it would never happen that the show would claim that someone hallucinated seeing something when they didn't. In The Usual Suspects, the narrator (and remember Lost doesn't even have one) turns out to be the villain, and to have made certain details up (by taking the names from objects around the room). This means that when we look back on the story, we cant be sure if any of it really happened in terms of the world that the film is set. That just doesn't happen on Lost.
      • Also, the 'Analysis' section of the page makes it sound like people who agree with the above are 'stricter' or somehow more extreme than people who don't, which is misrepresentative. It is not a 'stricter' interpretation, it is the only correct interpretation.Liquidcow 02:23, 14 April 2008 (PDT)
        • I agree that a "The Usual Suspects" is different than what is happening in Lost, because the "narrator" in "The Usual Suspects" is lying. But I didn't think the "unreliable narrator" had to lie? I thought that hallucinations and dream sequences did count as an unreliable narrator, as long as the dream sequences are not clearly delineated. I would compare Hurley's hallucinations to the hallucinations in "A Beautiful Mind". -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 08:06, 14 April 2008 (PDT)
          • They don't have to lie, no, but there has to be a reason to suspect that the information they give us might be false. They might be mentally unbalance, they might not remember things the way they actually happened, or they might have a self-interest in hiding the truth. Humbert Humbert in Lolita, for example, is clearly a deluded and self-deceiving character, therefore we can imagine that what he tells us might not be entirely accurate, whether he is aware of this or not.
          • I haven't seen A Beautiful Mind myself, but as far as dream sequence go, they are clearly delineated in Lost, just sometimes only after they've happened. Like I said, if we are shown that a character sees something, it's because they actually saw it, whether it's a hallucination or real. I know you could say of The Usual Suspects that it is made clear that Kevin Spacey is lying by the end, but it's different because it's still not clear which parts of his story were true or false or somewhere inbetween. In Lost you might not realise that a something is a hallucination until the end of the scene, but that's not unreliable narrator, it's no different really to scenes where we think it's a flashback until we realise we're on the island. The way the information is delivered is done in a way to confuse us, but the actual information itself is not unreliable. The dream or hallucination is a real event that is occurring. Only if a character was telling us that they had a dream or hallucination which they didn't really have would it be unreliable narrator, but since Lost doesn't have a narrator that never happens.Liquidcow 09:27, 14 April 2008 (PDT)
            • I don't want to give spoilers for "A Beautiful Mind" or "Vanilla Sky" to anyone, but suffice it to say, both of those movies have been compared to the Lost episode "Dave" (only one scene for "Vanilla Sky"), and both of those movies are considered by many to use an "unreliable narrator". -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 10:32, 14 April 2008 (PDT)
            • I've seen Abre Los Ojos (remade as Vanilla Sky) so I know what you're referring to there. But considered by who? Just because a lot of people think something doesn't mean they're correct, and if you're just talking about regular people who might be misunderstanding the term then it doesn't really mean anything even if a lot of them (incorrectly) consider it an 'unreliable' narrator. It is a fairly complex concept, and one that is fairly uncommon, so I can see that a lot of people maybe don't quite grasp it. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I do have a good degree in this field, so I know what I'm talking about.
            • I haven't seen A Beautiful Mind, but I have just looked it up, and as I thought, it is based on a true story, which makes it very useful to make my point. This is what I mean, I know that for people who don't know about the real guy it comes as a surprise at the end that those characters are hallucinations, but he actually did in real life have hallucinations, and the film is showing us those hallucination because they happened. Yes the people weren't really there, but he really saw them, and the film shows us that he saw them. It witholds the information that they're hallucinations until later but again, with-held information is different to unreliable information. So in Lost, Hurley really sees Dave, but the truth about what Dave really is comes later.Liquidcow 12:26, 14 April 2008 (PDT)
              • I agree that just because a lot of people think something doesn't mean they're correct (that would be called wikiality :) ). Can you suggest a different web site or book that describes "Unreliable narrator" how you are describing it? I have been using Wikipedia as a source, and I think it is mostly this paragraph on Wikipedia that has created this "wikiality" in my mind:
“

"Sometimes it is not a character narrating a story but the manner in which scenes in the film are presented that gives the audience an unreliable impression of what happened. Important events may occur off-screen, or be presented in a misleading way. Examples include the films A Beautiful Mind and The Sixth Sense. In both cases the main characters suffer from mistaken ideas or delusions about their own situations, with the films designed to make the perceptions of these characters appear correct to the audience.

”
  • The exposure of an UN has to, by definition, be a plot twist by virtue of the surprising revelation; we are led to believe one thing in the plot, only to find with the revelation it has been twisted into something else. I think the problem with this article revolves around misapplying UN and using bad Lost examples. Although it wouldn't be a reliable source, a good layman's description of UN can be found here. Ben would be considered a UN; we are never sure whether anything coming out of his mouth is the truth, a half-truth, or a lie, and we have to decide as we go along whether to believe him or not because he is a proven liar. An example for this article would be the fake Henry Gale; Ben is an UN when he tells everyone a large lie to infultrate the survivors, with just enough truth to make the lie more believable. Until the real Henry Gale has been exhumed and the licence found, everyone suspects he is lying, but cannot kill him because they are not 100% sure he is lying. OTOH, the "Locke used to be in a wheelchair" entry is not UN because we have no reason, outside of a personal inability to suspend disbelief, to doubt Locke was once in a wheelchair and now he is not. The surprising revelation is a plot twist, because we have incorrectly assumed he could always walk, but it does not involve UN. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 20:11, 14 April 2008 (PDT)
  • That Wikipedia quote does not have a source so it is just as likely to be wrong as anything here. The John Hewitt thing seems accurate, though I don't know who he is exactly, at least he appears to be a professional writer and have at least some kind of authority in the field.
Ben is not an example of an unreliable narrator though, he is simply a character who lies. There is not doubt cast as to whether Ben said his name was Henry Gale. Furthermore he isn't even narrating the story. You are right about the Locke point however; I was going to remove points like that which clearly are not cases of unreliable narrator, but that would leave an almost empty page, which I thought might be taken as vandalism or something.Liquidcow 11:08, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
Mass removal should be discussed here, probably. We are doing something similar with plot twist, going over a mass of examples, where only a small percentage fit the bill. I think editors get overeager, including any surprising event. I didn't intend the link as an RS; just a guideline to help determine an accurate definition and way to note which examples are correct.
NB I didn't say Ben merely saying his name was Henry Gale was UN (that's a lie); the background he "reveals" about himself on each occasion as the fake HG, however, is UN. He attempts to mislead everyone by including just enough truth mixed in his lies to make (the viewers and) the other characters wonder if he could possibly be telling the truth, and wonder if everyone might be over-reacting. I'd put Ben under "The narrator may have a personality flaw such as pathological lying or narcissism" on the source I provided, or something very similar. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 11:35, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
Ben is simply not a narrator, he is a character in the story, there's a massive difference. The narrator is not Ben, it is the third-person, omniscient view of the camera, and what it sees is reliable information. If what it sees is Ben telling a lie about himself, then that is the truth of what happens. Whether or not what Ben says is true or not is completely irrelevant. It's like if I tell a story, and I say that Joe told me he had no gold, then I search Joe's house and find that he's hiding some gold under hid bed. Joe was lying, but he is not an 'unreliable narrator' - he isn't even the narrator at all. You didn't know he was lying until I gave you some information that proved that he was, but that doesn't make me an unreliable narrator, since everything that I did say was accurate.Liquidcow 14:56, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
Similar conversation as below. Answered there. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 18:54, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

Lost, like any story, has one or several narrators

A text or a tv show is a narrative that is enunciated by an agent. This agent, whether he/she/it is part of the story (homodiegetic) or not (heterodiegetic) is immaterial. Without a narrator or narrators there is no story. Barthes commented in "Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits", "he who speaks (in the narrative) is not he who writes (in life) and he who writes is not he who is." A typical pronouncement about the narrator is given by Wolfgang Kayser in "Qui raconte le roman?: "the narrator is not the author . . . ; the narrator is a fictional being the author has turned into. Desmondfan999 03:47, 15 April 2008

Right but that doesn't mean the narrator is unreliable. There is only an unreliable narrator when there is a discrepancy between the 'truth' of the fictional world in which the story is set, and what is reported to us by the narrator. In the majority fiction we can trust the narrator to be truthful in what they tell us. An unreliable heterodiegetic narrator, if such a thing is conceivable, would probably be intolerable to most, if not all, audiences. An unreliable narrator must be part of the story in order to have cause to be unreliable. Lost does not have a first person narrator, it is clearly a heterodiegetic one. There is a vast difference between a heterodiegetic narrator that is selective with the order in which it conveys information, and a homodiegetic narrator who might not be telling the whole truth.
Sorry but it seems that people are trying to shoe-horn in a literary term that simply does not apply to Lost.Liquidcow 11:31, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
For most examples given, I'd have to agree with you. However, (as with my FHG/Ben example above) sometimes a character narrates events, and we have to consider whether the character is reliable or not in the telling. Michael talking to Desmond and Sayid on the freighter jumps to mind. If Michael was a proven liar, his story was contradictory to events shown simultaneously, and/or is revealed to be false in whole or part in future episodes, the conversation could be listed here as a UN, IMO. Telling a lie is not enough to be UN, but telling a story full of lies could be. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 11:47, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
As far as I remember, Michael's story in Meet Kevin Johnson is the only example on the show where a story has been conveyed to us the audience in such a way. However, it's a tricky one - do we see Michael start to tell his story, then cut to a third-person telling of his story the way it happened, or does the story represent Michael's (possibly flawed) telling of it? It appears to be shown objectively, and I doubt that we'll find that any of it was a lie as it would be too confusing for viewers, but as you say, it is too early to tell whether any of it is questionable or not so it can't be called a case of unreliable narrator for sure.Liquidcow 15:00, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

Still trying to understand, sorry

The truth of the fictional worldWhat the audience is shownCentric-perspective given to the audience
"Dave" is not real"Dave" is shown to be a real person for the first half of the episodeHurley

It seems that Hurley's perspective is not reliable, because he has hallucinations. Which criteria of "unreliable narrator" is not satisfied by this example? I am sorry that I still fail to understand. I am not trying to be "over-eager", and I am not trying to "shoe-horn" anything. Thank you for your patience. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 12:58, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

First of all, an unreliable narrator is by definition a first-person narrator. Lost does not have this, it focuses on one particular character by following them, but the character is not narrating the story, it is not their re-telling of the event that we are witnessing, we are witnessing the event itself. Yes, we see Dave, who doesn't really exist, but then Hurley does really see Dave, and how else is the show supposed to represent him? It's like they've broken down the truth into sections and given it to us bit-by-bit...

The whole truthFact 1Fact 2
Hurley is told by Dave, who is a figment of his imagination, not to take the pillDave tells Hurley not to take the pillDave is a figment of Hurley's imagination

Neither of those things are false, they are just revealed to us at different times. In an Unreliable Narrator situation, we might look back on the episode and think 'maybe that didn't really happen'. In 'Dave' we don't think that Dave didn't really tell Hurley not to take the pill, we just know that Dave wasn't who we originally thought. In an unreliable narrator situation, Hurley would actually be telling the story to us, the audience (in fact we know he's not because he's not aware of Libby's presence), and we would be unsure of exactly what happened. As it is, we know what happened (or as much as we've been told), we're not unsure of whether Dave is real or not, we know that he's not, but we're also not unsure that it was Dave, in Hurley's imagination, who told him not to take the pill and to escape. I hope I've made it more clear, it is quite difficult to explain, but Lost categorically does not use an Unreliable Narrator, and in fact few things do.Liquidcow 15:24, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

  • I disagree. If that was the case, then The Usual Suspects would not be a case of unreliable narrator. Nor would A Beautiful Mind, or anything, for that matter. If someone tells a lie or imagines something, and we know that--then yes. It's not an unreliable narrator case. But if we are shown that lie or imagination as if it were true, then it is a case of an unreliable narrator. Regardless of who the narrator of the story is as a characteri, the real narrator on Lost is, well, Lost itself. If Lost tells you that there's a guy named Dave on the Island, then this narrator is unreliable, as it suggests (although for a short duration) that something imaginary is real, only to reveal that it was in fact a figment of imagination later. --     c      blacxthornE      t     15:35, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
  • This article: http://www.ehow.com/how_2159373_write-unreliable-narrator.html seems to suggest that an "unreliable narrator" is not limited to a first-person narrator. They can be written from a third-person limited point of view. Is it accurate to say that portions of Lost episodes are shown in a "third-person limited" point-of-view? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 16:36, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
    • Well I'm not sure eHow is a reliable source as I think it's similar to Wikipedia in that it's user-edited. But an unreliable narrator can be writing in the third-person, yes, but they still have to be a character from the fictional world narrating a story to us. An example might be Atonement, in which the fictional narrator is writing about everyone, including herself, in the third person, but she herself is part of the wider story Iain McEwan has created. Lost doesn't use this technique though, even in flashbacks, it is showing us something that happened to a particular character, but it's not the character recounting the story directly to us. We even sometimes see things that the character is not aware happened. This is the 'heterodiegetic' narrator (to use the term quoted above) showing us scenes to develop the character, it is not the character themself narrating a story.Liquidcow 17:51, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
Here's the difference between The Usual Suspects and Lost: In The Usual Suspects we can't look at any aspect of Kevin Spacey's story without wondering if it really happened like that, or at all. Maybe that character didn't actually say those words, or do that thing. In Lost, we know that Dave said that line or did that action, we just didn't know that he only existed in Hurley's mind. The show hasn't 'told' us 'hey, there's a real guy named Dave on the Island' and then said 'actually he's not a real guy, we lied', it's shown Hurley talking to Dave, which really happened, and then revealed that Dave exists only in Hurley's mind, it's all objectively true in the world of the story. The 'suggestion' that Dave is real is merely the viewers interpretation of the facts (personally I figured it out when you saw Dave at the basketball game), the facts themselves are not false.Liquidcow 17:45, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

The analysis section

What it says is wrong. In a story with several points of view there is a greater likelihood of having an unreliable narrator. The author gives voice to several characters' narrations and gives credence to none, or juxtaposes different narrations to raise doubts in the viewer about their reliability. The author deceives the audience into believing one character and not the other by not committing to anything himself. Desmondfan999 04:15, 15 April 2008

UN?

  • "In 4x02 Confirmed Dead the audience is lead to believe that Oceanic 815 had been found in a deep oceanic trench in the Sunda Straits. In 4x08 Meet Kevin Johnson, the audience is told that that was all staged by Charles Widmore." We find out this information from Naomi, a narrator in effect. Therefore, we have to determine if she is unreliable, mistaken, or mislead/misinformed by an external source. Simply being presented with conflicting information isn't enough to make this determination. I vote we hold off on including this example until we are sure that Naomi was unreliable, rather than Ben (through Tom) lying to Michael with documentation which might be as fake as all those passports. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 12:06, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
    • No, she's not a narrator, she is a character. Ben is not a narrator either. They are both characters who may or may not be lying. The whole 815 thing is a case of one character saying one thing and another saying something that contradicts it. Clearly one of them (or both?) must be lying, but it's nothing to do with narration. See my example above; if I tell a story in which a character lies, that does not make me unreliable since the information I give is still correct.Liquidcow 15:04, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
    • This isn't about Naomi. No matter what she says, truth or not, she cannot be an unreliable narrator. There's an unreliable narrator if the literary work itself shows what an unreliable narrator says as if it was real. The Sunda Trench story was real, they did find that plane. That is to say: Everything you have seen there (although not true) is real. The fact that it wasn't actually Oceanic 815 is not about an unreliable narrator: It's just a lie, a scam, or whatever you might wanna call it. If the literary work shows that lie as if it was true, then there's an "unreliable narrator", as a literary term. Not every lie/scam makes an unreliable narrator, and if that were the case, we would have to list a thousand UN examples for Ben's lies alone. But the news, the staged plane crash, everything was real, and the show did not tell us something that wasn't real. A Beautiful Mind, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects all do that. Lost does not do that here. --     c      blacxthornE      t     15:07, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
    • Thank you, I'm glad someone else seems to understand what an unreliable narrator is - although I don't think The Sixth Sense uses one, it just very carefully places the facts that it gives to us (Lost does the same), The Usual Suspects is actually a story that is narrated directly to us, so that counts.Liquidcow 15:29, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
      • I agree, but I'm just not with you on taking the word "narrator" too literally. Movies rarely ever use actual narrators (some voiceover that narrates the whole thing) but they still tell a story. "Telling" something in cinema is actually showing it. Most of them tell (show) the truth, but some of them don't, they tell you the story the way that an unreliable character tells, or even perceives (as in The Sixth Sense). That should still count as an unreliable narrator, because if it were a book and you were to read it, the exact same story would actually tell you what the guy perceived to be the reality in a first-person view, as if it were real. And that would make an unreliable narrator. The exact same story. --     c      blacxthornE      t     15:43, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
        • It's fairly rare for a movie to have a narrator I guess, but this is my point; the Unreliable Narrator technique itself can only apply when there is one, and even then it's fairly uncommon because it's challenging for an audience. I can't remember if The Usual Suspects uses voiceover or not, but it's made clear from the beginning that we're seeing the story as related by Kevin Spacey's character. The Sixth Sense is actually probably a better demonstration of something that is not an unreliable narrator, because in the world in which it is set, there is such a thing as ghosts. It uses certain visual techniques to show which characters can see them and which can't, but the fact that there was a ghost under the table for example is definitely true in the story. You can't really say for certain how it would be written as a book, but the film is more from a third-person viewpoint anyway (not all the scenes have Bruce Willis' character in them for a start). It shows us select truths, which can mean you don't figure out the 'twist' until the end, but there is no reason to say that what the film does tell us is unreliable. Like I said, not telling us something and telling us something that may be false are two different things.Liquidcow 17:00, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
          • I guess I was considering related examples could be stories within the Lost story (Michael, Ben, & Naomi in the examples were all telling a story to others), rather than thinking strictly along the lines of an overall story like "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". Strictly speaking, I don't think we'll find enough appropriate examples to warrant the retention of an entire article, and we should create an article of similar literary devices like Archtype in which this would be a small subsection. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 18:54, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
            • I think this is what is causing some of the confusion; people seem to think that a character who we see speaking is a narrator, but they are not, they are simply a character speaking lines. The narrator is telling us what they said, Naomi or Ben are not telling us, the audience, a story directly.
There are some TV shows that usually have a third person narrator but for one episode use a first-person, possibly unreliable narrator. An example might be King of the Hill, where the show is usually a third-person, objective viewpoint, but there was one episode ('A Fire Fighting We Will Go') where the same incident was related by each of the main characters (similar to Rashomon), who were each clearly unreliable as their stories differed and presented biased viewpoints. But we knew that we were getting that character's version of events that might be false. A case like this has not happened on Lost yet - perhaps Meet Kevin Johnson, but there's no evidence yet that anything in that tale was unreliable.Liquidcow 03:35, 16 April 2008 (PDT)

Examples from article needing review

I think the following should be removed:

  • "In 2x12 Fire+Water, it is unclear whether Charlie took drugs or not. The audience is lead to believe that Charlie rescued Aaron from the sea, but in reality Aaron's cradle had never moved from the beach camp."
  • Episode 3x14 Exposé. The audience is deceived into believing that Nikki and Paolo are dead until the last flashback where the truth of what is happening is revealed: they are being buried alive.

In the first, confusing events =/= UN. We are shown an entire camp which believes Charlie is somehow off, whether from drugs, sleepwalking, or Island induced paranoia. There isn't a story taking us one direction then giving a big reveal it's all been a deception, so I vote definite no on the first. In the second example, firstly, it incorrectly implies they are being buried alive the entire story (like Owl Creek Bridge), necessitating a rewrite if it's retained; secondly, I don't think it qualifies as there isn't a deceptive story. We are told about the spiders fairly quickly and surmise the outcome long before the reveal at the end. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 19:13, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

  • A big, BIG NO on the second one. The first one, however, is somewhat debatable: We see his vision as if it were true. Now I'm not suggesting that this is a case of UN, but if it's not, then there's no UN on Lost and there has never been one, because all occurences that even remotely remind you of UN are such visions/dreams: including Dave, and Boone's vision about Shannon's death. If we say no to this, we might as well say good-bye to the article, since we will not even need to merge it, we would have to delete it altogether. The only two occurences that are not like this are Jack's first flash-forward and Jin's last flashback. I don't think that they're UN at all, because there's no lie/error/deception in those cases. They're legitimate flashes, and you make assumptions on them. This is just like when you think that it's a flashback at the beginning of season 2 but it turns out to be on the Island: Yes, they do want to deceive you, but they do not show you anything deceiving, everything is real and you just make assumptions. So I also say no to Jack's and Jin's flashes. This leaves us with a couple of occasions like Charlie's dream, Boone's vision and Hurley's imaginary friend. I'm not supporting them 100%, but I admit that they're the closest things to UN on Lost. --     c      blacxthornE      t     03:58, 16 April 2008 (PDT)
  • As I said, I was considering a story within a story in the instances I referenced with Ben, Naomi, and Michael. But this discussion has brought up good points. In An Occurence at Oak Creek Bridge, a common example when teaching/learning UN, the narration tells the reader the rope broke and Farquhar got away to get back to his family, only to reveal in the third act it was all a vision in the midst of Farquhar's hanging. The narration is UN. In Lost, we are told and shown things later found to be completely false, misleading, or contradictory to be sorted out in future episodes. So, in our careful review, we are finding there aren't any true examples of strict UN because Lost itself is the UN. If we aren't bending the normal view of UN to include narrations within the story, then you're correct, Blacx, there aren't any examples, and perhaps this article should be removed. BTW, I agree with you about the Paulo and Nikki example; my strong viewpoint on a different article caused a couple people to think I was stepping on their toes, so I was trying to be diplomatic here to avoid problems. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 04:32, 16 April 2008 (PDT)
"I don't think that they're UN at all, because there's no lie/error/deception in those cases. They're legitimate flashes, and you make assumptions on them." - This is what I've been getting at all along, we see something, we assume something about it, but our assumption turns out to be wrong. The thing that we see is not a lie, the error lies with us, the viewer. However, I still think that dream sequences and hallucinations do not count either for the following reasons: There's no diegetic narrator who could be recounting events innacurately. The truth of the matter is made clear to us (by the end of the sequence we are not left wondering whether or not it was a dream). The dream and the hallucinations are still accurate representations of those things. That is, what we see is a truthful representation of what Boone saw, or what Hurley saw, it's just that we are only told later that it was a dream/hallucination. Again it's our interpretation as a viewer that is innacurate, it's not a lie on the show's part. The quote below says that Lost "convey[s] actions and characters within a character's hallucinations as if these actions and characters really existed outside of the character's hallucinations", but it doesn't, nothing actually happens in the show that would happen differently if the hallucination was real. All that happens is that we, the viewer, are given the priveliged position of being able to see what is happening in the character's head.Liquidcow 16:51, 17 April 2008 (PDT)
  • I agree, and as I said, it's all a matter of interpretation from that point on. And as you said, "all that happens is that we, the viewer, are given the priveliged position of being able to see what is happening in the character's head." But this is 'point of view', and that's somewhat connected to narration, right? Well, not technically, I agree, but still you see things as some character (not narrates, but) interprets it. Let's say we have a character in a movie. There is no narration whatsoever. We do not even see anything from the character's point of view. Everything is seen from a third-person's eye. Then we see a flashback of the character in a movie. Later, we find out that it was not an actual flashback (as in the movie showing us what happened earlier), but a memory. It turned out to be false, simply because the character misremembers it. Now is this case of unreliable narrator or not? I say it is, as long as we don't get too technical about the "narration". If it is a case of UN, then these dreams and visions would have to be too. If not, then neither would these. It's debatable. But even if there's no unreliable narrator, there are definitely some unreliable points of view, and I just think they're too close and we shouldn't just coin new terms to be technically flawless. Call it an unreliable "narrator" and that'll be it. Please note the one word I used in bold letters. --     c      blacxthornE      t     17:15, 17 April 2008 (PDT)
  • I think we all agree so far, and are just presenting our opinions differently. I believe we are saying the entire Lost story is comprised of plotting devices which show events that might or might not be reliable, might mislead, or might even be lying to other characters and the audience. These events would be catagorised using plotting devices (like plot twist) because they are plot, part of the overall story. Since episodes are not isolated from each other, each with their own separate story (e.g., Twilight Zone), they cannot be separated and analysed in isolation from each other to determine if the single story in an episode fits UN. Therefore, Lost is, in the strictest interpretation of the story device, the unreliable narrator itself, right? Therefore, no examples would every be appropriate and this article is obsolete. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 23:14, 18 April 2008 (PDT)
I think I should also point out why I did that. After the inputs of Robert K S and LOSTonthisdarnisland about my plot/story confusion, I think I've come to the point that I was going to after a little more orbiting around it. A point I think all three of us in this particular discussion agree. My conclusion is:
  1. There is no single narrator, or multiple narrators on Lost. The "narrator" in its broad sense, is Lost itself.
  2. Lost is reliable as a "narrator". It tells the story in basically three timeframes: Past, present, and now future. All three are consisted of reliable information. The flashback events are not memories; the flashforwards are not plans, fears, thoughts or instincts about the future. They're all facts. Thus, Lost does not (at least openly) give unreliable information to the audience.
  3. Dreams and visions are the only exceptions, and they're shown in a certain character's point of view. This is not, however, an unreliable narrator technique, but merely an "effect" of the dream/vision. Furthermore, dreams and visions are often not presented as the truth; but their nature are left ambiguous. Lost merely tells the audience about the dream/vision without explicitly pointing out to the fact that it is one. Still, whether the audience perceives it as the truth or not is a subjective matter. Thus I render my previous suggestion about Lost being possibly an unreliable narrator obsolete, since I now believe there's not enough grounds to cover that. --     c      blacxthornE      t     03:42, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
Yeh what Blacxthorne says here is correct in my opinion. I would also add that there's an issue of semiotics here, in that some people are confusing what the term has come to mean with a literal interpretation of the words. The term 'unreliable narrator' is used in literary discourse specifically to signify first-person narrators such as Humbert in Lolita or the main character in Catcher in the Rye and so forth. Even if you could interpret the phrase itself to mean a third-person non-diegetic narrator (if such a thing is conceivable) that's not what it means as a literary term.Liquidcow 03:50, 23 April 2008 (PDT)
I completely agree. My earlier discussion was refering to the use of "unreliable narrator" to describe the character narrating, not the literary technique itself. Being encyclopaedic, we must keep to the literary technique since we are using it in that manner as part of the literary technique portal. Therefore, Blacx points are correct, and the article is obsolete. If it is by some chance retained, it must be removed from the portal where editors will mistakenly use it on Lost examples. As Robert (?), and then I, pointed out, this isn't Wikipedia. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 23:45, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

Merge with Plot twist

I have re-read all the points in this discussion, and I agree that many of the current entries (e.g., Nicki and Paulo) do not seem to match closely enough with the accepted definition. As a compromise, I suggest merging this article as a small blurb in the plot twist article, something like this:

“

An unreliable narrator is a literary device in which the first-person narrator of a story cannot be trusted. Although Lost does not have a first-person narrator, some fans still attribute this device to scenes that convey actions and characters within a character's hallucinations as if these actions and characters really existed outside of the character's hallucinations.

”

I think we could start with something like that, and expand it later if there was any demand. Does this sound doable? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 14:35, 16 April 2008 (PDT)

PT is a plotting device, while UN is a story device. We should put PT examples onto the PT article where they belong, but do not merge UN onto PT as if it were a subcategory of PT, sorry. I still vote delete because Lost is the UN, not specific examples within Lost, in the strictest interpetation. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 23:01, 18 April 2008 (PDT)
I was going to comment on that, actually. I'm aware of the plot-story thing, but I also looked at the source you cited as an example, and I did not find unreliable narrator anywhere. Do you have another source (or certain first-person knowledge) about it, or was it just a judgement call (because I know *I* would put it under story devices if I had to guess :))? Anyway there's another question: Story devices, plotting devices, and other literary devices surely serve for the same purpose, although in different ways. Still, one can be used for another right? Unreliable narrator is basically a tool to... umm... "construct"... a huge plot twist, right? Is it so wrong to admit that and put it as a subsection of PT? This is important: Having a UN section as a subsection of PT article does not really suggest that UN as a literary device, is a sub-device of PT. We can make it clearer by explicitly saying that "Unreliable narrator is a story device that (...)", while the PT article starts with "Plot twist is a plotting device that (...)"--I don't see why it can't happen. It's not like Jerry's boys and Kramer's boys, I think they can share the same neighborhood :). --     c      blacxthornE      t     03:47, 19 April 2008 (PDT)
(Huh? LOL) Are you referring to "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"? The short story is commonly used as a teaching tool (usually to primary students) when teaching UN. Bookrags excerpt "The quintessential example of an unreliable narrator" "Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and the Unreliable Narrator" It's very short, if you want to read it yourself. Actually, your conclusion is back-to-front, Blacx. The plot is "all the events in a story". Therefore, a story device could never be the means to "construct" a plotting device, because the plotting devices are used to tell the story. It might be easier to understand if you think of UN as a categorisation (rather than device). AOaOCB is "categorised" as UN because, well it has an UN (laugh), but it "uses" a big plot twist to tell the story, which is a device, the means in which the UN is driven, if you like. The two are very different, so one couldn't rightly be a subsection of the other. Placing it on PT would suggest that very thing, because PT is the main topic of the article. It would be different if both were subsections of literary devices. ---- LOSTonthisdarnisland 12:27, 19 April 2008 (PDT)

Alternative to merge/keep/delete

In the short-term, we could rewrite this article to look something like this:

“

An unreliable narrator is a literary device in which the narrator of a story cannot be trusted. Fans of Lost disagree as to how the term applies to the show. Some alternative applications are listed in the sections below.


Alternative #1: Does not apply

The term does not apply because ...

Alternative #2: The show itself is the unreliable narrator

Lost, itself, is the ...

Alternative #3: The character's point-of-view acts as an unreliable narrator

Hallucinations ...

Alternative #4: The flashbacks are narrated by the characters

The contents of the flashbacks are not objective ...

”

Any of the pre-existing examples could be rewritten and moved to their corresponding heading, or deleted if they do not apply.

And if there isn't enough content, we could merge the content into a different article.

This is an analysis article, and an analysis article can document several different opinions. For example, the Economics featured article gives several differing opinions on how the term applies to the show. Explaining all sides seems like an encyclopedia-thing to do. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 14:30, 19 April 2008 (PDT)

I appreciate your attempt here, but different fan opinions =/= facts if the opinions come from wrong information. Story is the tapestry, while Plot is the threads. We cannot correctly subcategorise story (device) under plot (device). (See my talk page for a more detailed explanation.) -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 01:35, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
This site does not just document factual information. A fan opinion is never equal to a fact. All of the analysis articles on this site contain fan opinions, and are not factual: economics, irony, A-Missions, etc.-- Dagg talk contribs4 8 08:27, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
I'm sorry, let me clarify what I meant by my statement. Literary analysis devices are not defined by fan opinion; the definitions are facts. Therefore, just as we shouldn't allow editor opinions override canon and TPTB (Lost facts), we should not allow editor or fan opinions to override established definitions of literary devices. We define them appropriately in the articles, and from there, fan and editor opinions as to which examples "fit" the defintion are up for debate and consensus (if necessary). I also think we should indicate which examples are fan opinion with a simple statement to that fact before them, separating them from examples coming directly from TPTB or directly from canon (Boone calling himself a redshirt in an episode, for example). Otherwise, we are not a 'pedia, but an outlet for theory, supposition, and opinion. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 08:53, 20 April 2008 (PDT)

External link

I finally had time to read through all 43-odd pages of the forum thread through the external link. I find while some of the discussion is interesting, most of it involves unsupported theories (from mainly one editor over 2 years). When challenged, for example someone brought up So It Begins as throwing a spanner in the works, the challenge was dismissed as something the theorist wasn't going to discuss. Ignoring contrary evidence points to weakness in the theory. Regardless of whether I agree with any of it or not, it has no reliable source, involving only editor opinions on a forum. We should retain external links on this article (if it's kept) only if they are reliable sources for literary analysis. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 04:00, 20 April 2008 (PDT)

  • Should we also delete the rest of the forum links on this site? Here is one example: redshirt, but I know I've seen several others. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 08:14, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
    • In my personal opinion? Yes, when it's intended to support the information on an article like this. Forum thread links aren't a big deal when they are used on theory pages, but unless it's directly showing a quote by Gregg Nations, for example, I don't think they fit reliable source criteria. General_usage_guide#Citing_Sources isn't policy (yet), but it's wise advice. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 08:32, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
    • I agree. Why do we link forum threads anyway? I shouldn't be to support validity of the article content, surely. Besides, don't we have a forum of our own? I would understand if there was a link on every single article, to a forum thread of Lostpedia Forums (for convenience), but I don't see why we should cite a forum thread to support factual information (for example, literary terms, like unreliable narrator). Just because it's popular? I don't think so. Forums can only be cited as examples of fan discussions (say, a notable controversy, criticism, etc.) but definitely not as sources of information. --     c      blacxthornE      t     08:53, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
      • Right. If we were trying to show an example of fan opinion on a certain subject (e.g., "Fans sometimes mistake the signal fire smoke for the monster"[forum link here]), linking to forums would be a responsible citation for what fans are saying. You know when you go to the source that you are getting support for your factoid regarding fan confusion, but the information located within the threads are still opinion, not a reliable authority. We all have come in contact with people on forums, I'm sure, who think they are the authority in a subject, as we scratch our heads in wonder how they ever came up with such a silly, theoretical synthesis (usually completely lacking in any reliable scholarship). We, as a 'pedia, really shouldn't be pointing to them as reliable sources, indicating we support their content. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 08:58, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
        • Several questions. Would it be ok to re-list the external link if it was properly described for what it is? Should we delete the link to Wikipedia, since it has incorrect and non-factual information? Does anyone have a reliable source for the definition of "unreliable narrator" as it relates to TV/Movies? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 15:50, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
          • I don't know. Personally, I'd vote no after reading through the content. It's just someone's theory being argued, stretched over far too many pages. Wikipedia is a worry; I wondered about deleting it myself. I justified keeping it because there is a banner on the top of the article indicating it needs work, so it comes with a warning. I'm personally fine with either side of the decision. I have some in my posts on this talk page; I'll move one I think we can agree with to the article. Feel free to add more. However, we really should come to a consensus regarding keeping the article, whether it has any valid Lost examples. Otherwise, some of this information could be moved to the short story page, and it wouldn't make sense to continue to flesh out the article if it's going to be deleted, since this is LP not WP :) -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 18:34, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
            • Neither of those 2 new external links seem to define "unreliable narrator". I guess I'm still confused by this, because I watched "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" in school many years ago, and I watched it again on a Twilight Zone DVD about a year ago, and the film seems to follow the format of Boone's vision in "Hearts and Minds". I.e., the film version of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" does not seem to have a first person narrator (there is very little if any dialog in the whole film), but the audience is presented the main character's visions as if they were true. In Lost, the audience is presented with Boone's vision as if it was true. Is the difference too subtle for me to see? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 19:36, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
              • I'm not sure how they treated the film version, but the short story was definitely UN because it has a narrator. We are not presented with Farquhar speaking from his perspective, saying "I broke free" and "I see my wife"; we have a third person narration. OT: I honestly wondered if this is where the writers were going to go, where "the Island" takes place in the seconds before the death of the 815 passengers. I still wonder if they were headed this direction, but changed due to fan feedback that it would really suck if they did it.-- LOSTonthisdarnisland 21:21, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
  • Dagg, your last post appears to be preaching to the choir by pointing out LOST is an UN in its entirety. I've said it, and I'm sure others said it before me. However, Lost episodes and examples within the episodes, are not UN. That's what we were trying to suss out here, if I'm not mistaken. If there are no examples from within Lost, then a mention of UN on Lost might be appropriate, but a separate article would really not be worthwhile. Edit: BTW, while we agree now on AOAOCB, note what the reference you provided actually said, "The [AOAOCB] story is a classic example of the unreliable narrator, and expands a minute into nearly a day's time. It's a technique used in every episode of Lost and across the narrative as a whole; for the audience, over two years have passed, but on the island, only 65 days have gone by." NB the comparison here is not to Lost as a UN (which we agree is true), but rather that Lost uses the "expands a minute into nearly a day's time" technique; the next sentence goes on to explain how Lost uses that technique. Mentioning UN in the same sentence doesn't make this a reliable source for UN as far as Lost is concerned (although it is one for AOAOCB). -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 23:23, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
    • Given that several people agree that Lost is an UN, then I don't think the article satisfies any criteria for deletion: The term is valid, and the term is relevant to Lost. If Lost is indeed an UN in its entirety, then the article could explain why. Maybe the article won't be several pages long, but there are much smaller articles on the site. I definitely would not object to merging the article to an appropriate place, but I don't think the Lost article is that place. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 23:42, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
      • What we really need is Literary techniques as a separate article, fashioned by category like Portal:Literary techniques. LT could define and outline each technique, with links to subarticles when a larger representation is needed (like Plot twist) with several Lost-related examples. It would be a single place to gather all the stub techniques like this one. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 00:11, 21 April 2008 (PDT)
        • I agree, that would be very cool.-- Dagg talk contribs4 8 00:19, 21 April 2008 (PDT)
          • I've started the process here, but I'm still working on it. Gives you a rough idea what I mean, though. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 00:45, 21 April 2008 (PDT)
I agree that the external link is nowhere near reliable. It's one guys opinion on a forum (who doesn't know what he's talking about if you ask me). Message board posts should not be considered reliable sources.Liquidcow 03:53, 23 April 2008 (PDT)

Consensus?

So have we reached a consensus that this article has no Lost specific examples, and therefore has become obsolete? Or is it still on the table? -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 05:55, 23 April 2008 (PDT)

Unless you're counting the guy who says "Previously on Lost...", Lost has never had a narrator, thus there's no one to be unreliable. If we're going to deal in established literary terms, let's interpret them strictly, not re-interpret the terms to mean whatever we want them to mean. "Narrator really means the whole show itself" is a theory that strays from the original meaning of the term and is not consensus-accepted over on Wikipedia:Unreliable narrator, where language about The Sixth Sense and A Beautiful Mind has been removed. As one user puts it on the talk page for that article, "I don't think it is strictly accurate to say that any movie has an 'unreliable narrator' ... except for voice-over narration... It would be more accurate to say that these movies employ an unreliable point of view." Lost has never espoused any single point of view, much less a reliable one. Robert K S (talk) 09:53, 24 April 2008 (PDT)
As I said above, the question is not what the phrase 'unreliable narrator' could be made to mean literally, but what it has come to signify as an accepted term in literary criticism. It is a term that has been coined specifically to describe first-person narrators such as those in Lolita, To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, etc. The whole point of the term is that it is quite unusual, hence in the vast majority of stories it is not used. So yes, I hope we have reached a consensus that the article is redundant and that not every literary term out there can be applied to Lost.Liquidcow 16:17, 24 April 2008 (PDT)
I think it would help me understand, if somebody told me that the film "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" does not use UN. The film does not have a first-person narrator, but the current unreliable narrator article links to an article about the film, and the link implies that this 'civil war movie' is 'the quitessential example of an unreliable narrator'. I will cut and paste the link here:
  • The Seven Best Civil War Movies: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ("The quintessential example of an unreliable narrator"). 2 February 2007. CS Weekly Archive. accessed 21 April 2008.
This link has contributed to my confusion. I understand that the book does use UN. But does the film use UN? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 16:46, 24 April 2008 (PDT)
Again, as I said on the other talk page, this is apples and oranges. Regardless of the story device used on a book or film which is a self-contained story, comparison cannot be rightly made to separate plot points in an on-going story known as episodes. Boone lives to have another adventure until he dies; Shannon lives to have more adventures until she dies. The story was not finished, therefore, the UN cannot be applied to a small portion of their story, a plot point known as an episode (akin to a chapter in a book). -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 00:29, 25 April 2008 (PDT)
You did not answer my question, and I do not know why: "Does the film use UN" ? I only ask because LiquidCow seems to suggest that UN must use "first-person narrators", and Robert K S is suggesting that UN can only happen in tv/film if there is a voice-over narrator. Perhaps they can answer whether they believe An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge uses UN? That film doesn't have a first-person narrator, and does not have any voiceovers whatsoever. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 01:09, 25 April 2008 (PDT)
I gave you an answer; you apparently just don't like it. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 02:23, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

Reasons to delete - disputed

I am going to attempt to list the reasons that other people say this article should be deleted, and I'll explain my counter-argument for each one:

  • Argument #1: Delete this article, because there are no examples:
    • Counter-argument: The only reason this article doesn't have any examples, is because an editor deleted them all while this discussion was still underway. The current state of the article should not be used as a reason to delete it. In essence, the article is "under construction".
  • Argument #2: Delete this article, because UN can only be used when there is a first person narrator.
    • Counter-argument: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge does not have a first person narrator, and yet reliable sources consider it "The quintessential example of an unreliable narrator".
  • Argument #3: Delete this article, because UN can only be used in tv/film when there is voice-over narration.
    • Counter-argument: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge does not have voice-over narration, and yet reliable sources consider it "The quintessential example of an unreliable narrator".
  • Argument #4: Delete this article, because UN is a story device, and portions (or episodes) of Lost are not stories and therefore cannot have UN.

-- Dagg talk contribs4 8 07:13, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

  • I don't mean to disrespect, but I just want to understand: So this is going to go on until everybody else just gives up? All those arguments have been discussed. We (as those who oppose the article) do not accept those examples, deleted or not. That doesn't mean we're right, but it just means that we've already made our point on that. Actually the other three arguments are debatable, but the first one: Everyone told what they thought about it and you seem to be the only one who's convinced that they count. I repeat: I personally advocated those examples as UN, but in the end even I was not convinced. So enough is enough. I don't see a point in pushing it so far. I'm sick of this discussion, and I really want to unwatch this goner page and the literary techniques page, just because of this discussion popping out of nowhere, over and over again. But I also don't want to unwatch it because the minute we stop arguing, you'll have another argument, saying that there's no opposition to your argument, so the page has to stay. But there is opposition, there always has been.
Again: dreams and visions should not count, because they're just there for effect. Yes, maybe if this was a movie that used these dreams and visions all the time--This is not the case on Lost. Visions are almost always known to be visions, as dreams to be dreams, but there are some instances where it's not obvious at first, but they're very temporary examples. And they do not apply. Here's why:
An Unreliable Narrator tells you some things are true while they're false. Lost never does that. It shows you visions, but never says that they're true: You know the Island makes people see visions all the time right from the beginning (White Rabbit). So if you make assumptions, don't blame the show and say that it lies. It doesn't. That's why many people look for voice-over or first-person narration. Because these are the kinds of movies that tell you that what they're saying is true while it's not. Lost is not such a narrator. It tells you the truth all the time. It shows flashbacks (which are not memories), Island events (which are not "all in someone's mind") and flashforwards (which are not hopes and dreams). And it shows you dreams and visions, that are known to be dreams and visions (like Yemi). Then, it shows you some dreams that are not revealed from the beginning, but does not tell you (as an unreliable narrator would do) that it's true. You just assume it is. Your fault. A better example would be:
A reliable narrator could, to maintain the effect, tell you about their dream, without telling you that it's a dream right away. Let's say that they begin the chapter (equivalent of an episode) just as they begin each chapter:
"I was running through the streets. The rain was pouring down. I saw many of my friends, they were screaming for help, but weren't really in danger. I knew that I wasn't going to make it, but I had to try anyway... Then I woke up. It was all a dream, but I was still very frightened."
I know that sucks writing-wise but I wrote it as I went. It sucks even as a simple example. But what I mean is, can you say that a narrator is unreliable just because they withheld the revelation only to give you the feel of the dream? --     c      blacxthornE      t     14:39, 25 April 2008 (PDT)
A narrator is someone who says "This is this and that is that." Lost only shows and never tells. I don't see how the person of the narrator (first person vs. third person) is material. Fix your Argument #2 to remove the words "first person" and then try to refute it. Robert K S (talk) 15:56, 25 April 2008 (PDT)
I apologize for frustrating some of you. I'll try to ask my original question again: "Does the film "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" use UN?" That movie only 'shows', and never 'tells'. The movie doesn't have any voice-over narration, or any dialog whatsoever, but I was told by LOSTonthisdarnisland that is was the "quintessential example" of UN. There are only 2 possibilities: 1. LOSTonthisdarnisland added the example mistakenly, and the film is not UN or 2. The film is UN, even though it doesn't have a narrator. Which is it? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 16:18, 25 April 2008 (PDT)
I haven't seen the film version, so I can't comment on it. I'm not trying to be tricky here. I don't see how it's reasonable to say that something has a narrator if there's no narration. The Princess Bride has a narrator. Desperate Housewives has a narrator. Scrubs has a narrator. Lost doesn't have a narrator. Before we can even talk about an unreliable narrator, we have to establish a narrator. Robert K S (talk) 16:32, 25 April 2008 (PDT)
Maybe you now understand my confusion. Why was it suggested that a film that doesn't have a narrator is a ""quintessential example" of UN? You can watch the film on Youtube if you want to see what I'm talking about (you can just watch Part 1 a