{"id":430,"date":"2017-02-09T06:43:53","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T06:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=430"},"modified":"2017-02-09T15:00:46","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T15:00:46","slug":"merry-the-unreliable-narrator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/02\/09\/merry-the-unreliable-narrator\/","title":{"rendered":"Merry- The Unreliable Narrator"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the aspects in A Head Full of Ghosts<\/em> that I have found to be the most compelling is the choice of the narrator being Merry Barrett. Something that we touched on in our earliest classes was whether Merry is a reliable narrator for the events of the novel. I do not feel that we spent enough time on this debate, especially after Merry\u2019s big reveal to Rachel about how her family died in chapters 25 and 26.<\/p>\n

In chapter 3, Merry says, \u201cmy memories mix up with my nightmares, with extrapolation, with skewed oral histories from my grandparents and aunts and uncles, and with all the urban legends and lies propagated within the media, pop culture, and the near continuous stream of websites\/blogs\/YouTube channels devoted to the show\u2026so all of it hopelessly jumbles up what I knew and what I know now\u201d (Tremblay 13).<\/p>\n

This quotation called into question whether or not Merry is a reliable narrator, through Merry\u2019s own admission. Throughout the novel, I forgot that Merry said this, and became fully trusting of her recounting. This trust was most likely brought on by Merry\u2019s narration switching from her 23-year-old self to her 8-year-old self so seamlessly (even though, in the diegetic world, the 23-year-old Merry is saying what we are hearing the 8-year-old Merry says). However, once Merry revealed that she was the one who slipped the potassium cyanide into the pasta sauce that poisoned her sister and parents, this quotation popped back into my mind.<\/p>\n

I am not sure that Merry made up the fact that she was the one who put the potassium cyanide in the sauce; I definitely do not think that someone would lie about that fact. Yet, I am not sure that I trust Merry admitting to the poisoning either Merry, however, goes on to say that, \u201cI\u2019ve never told anyone what I\u2019ve admitted to you. The police, psychologists, my aunt; no one\u201d (Tremblay 281) Merry thus shows that she has been lying for many years.<\/p>\n

For some reason, this called a lot of the narrative into question\u2014at least for me\u2014that we are given because it is given to the reader by Merry, someone who I find to be an unreliable narrator, much like Pi from Life of Pi<\/em> or Huck Finn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em>. Can we trust what Merry has told us? Can we trust a 23-year-old woman recounting something that happened when she was 8? Even if it was something so traumatic, I think the answer is no.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Pi from Life of Pi<\/a> is a great example of an unreliable narrator. Which version of his story is true?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Tremblay, Paul. A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel<\/i>. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2015. Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the aspects in A Head Full of Ghosts that I have found to be the most compelling is the choice of the narrator being Merry Barrett. Something that we touched on in our earliest classes was whether Merry is a reliable narrator for the events of the novel. I do not feel that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Merry- The Unreliable Narrator”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[39,61,60,56,57,50,59,62,58],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-c","tag-a-head-full-of-ghosts","tag-huckleberry-finn","tag-life-of-pi","tag-merry","tag-narrator","tag-paul-tremblay","tag-poison","tag-trust","tag-unreliable-narrator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":466,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions\/466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}