I’m inclined to go full English teacher on this, but I’ll try to keep it short. Literature taught us, millenia ago, to rely on the narrator. Roman satire played with the unreliable narrator; the most famous example now being the unnamed narrator of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” But that’s satire; the unreliable narrator didn’t move in to non-satirical work widely until the 19th century. And the greatest use of it is in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Nothing about that gothic horror cum pulp fiction tale is credible. Especially the dismemberment of the body, done in very short time, leaving behind not a trace of blood. The narrator even tears up the floorboards of the bedroom, stuffs some parts there which, inconveniently, won’t fit in the tub with the others (and all the blood), and repairs his efforts flawlessly, also removing the tub without spilling a drop, all before the police can arrive.
And then he entertains them in the same room; and becomes more agitated as they sit politely, hearing the beating of the dead man’s heart. He curses, he raves, he swears, he tells us. And still the police trio don’t notice. He beats his chair on the floor to drown out the noise; they chat amiably. Finally he screams out his confession: “IT IS THE BEATING OF HIS HIDEOUS HEART!”, and the story ends.
Now, this story begins with the narrator confessing (!) he is “nervous,” but challenging, too: “But will you say that I am mad?” Is he talking to us? How could he be? We don’t know him. We don’t know anything about him? Why would we say he is mad?
But he isn’t talking to us. He’s talking to a silent, nameless character in the story. Browning did the same in “My Last Duchess.” The Duke starts telling the story of the portrait of his “last duchess,” and interrupts himself with an invitation: “Will’t please you sit and look at her?” He’s not talking to us, the readers of the poem. He’s talking to an agent of the Count on the occasion of the story: the arrangement of his next marriage, to the Count’s daughter. But while the Duke is a monster, he is a reliable narrator. Poe’s narrator is not, and Poe tells us so in the first lines of the story.
So where is the narrator, that he would declare he is not mad? In police custody? We assume that from the end of the story. But people in police custody are not necessarily mad. So why the challenge?
Now consider the tale: the obsession with the landlord’s eye; the hyper-acute hearing; the murder, the clean-up, the impossibility of the police ignoring his fervor. Clearly, from the story, he is mad. His sense of hearing excuses him hearing the beating of a…dead heart. Wait, that’s not right. Oh, it’s his conscience betraying him. Any other evidence in the story that he has one? He never expresses regret. And what is it with those oblivious police officers?
There are simply too many things wrong with the murderer’s story for it to be credible. And why should we think it is? He starts off stating to the silent witness of the tale he tells that he is “nervous,” but he attributes that to his hearing, hearing that allows him to hear all things in heaven and on earth and under the earth. I guess that would make you nervous; or indicate you are quite mad. But he insists on his rationality, his ratiocination, to cite a favorite Poe word. And he declares that skill is what allowed him to plan and commit the perfect crime.
And despite all these indications, from beginning to end, we read the story and accept that it is true; that is, that it happened as we are told it happened, in that realm of suspended disbelief where we accept the validity of the events of “Lord of the Rings,” even as we also know no such world, or characters, ever existed. But why do we accept the narrative of a madman who tells a tale clearly reflecting the 19th century literary conventions of a “madman”? Why do we think we are meant to accept the tale as “true” because the criminal at the heart of it confesses his guilt?
Because we rely on the narrator, even when the narrator is wholly unreliable.
This is not Iago rousing Desdemona’s father with descriptions of the “black ram tupping [his] white ewe.” We all know what Iago is doing, as does Iago. No, Poe’s narrator is a man telling a story he believes is true, but which can’t possibly be true. Not in the disposal of the body, not in the calm indifference of the police to his raving and beating a chair on the floor. And if that’s not credible, why is any other part of his story credible? Was there a body? Was there a landlord? Was there a glazed eye? Was there a murder?
We, the reader, have only the narrator’s word for it. And he is mad; he is wholly unreliable. He’s more likely telling this story in an asylum than in a police station. We simply don’t know; and we make assumptions about his story, fill in the gaps, at our peril.
It rather like listening to Trump, or anyone in his Administration, declare anything to be a fact.
Examples abound:
Mehmet Oz: "When the program was created 60 years ago, it never dawned on anyone that you would take able-bodied individuals who could work and put them on Medicaid. Today the average able-bodied person on Medicaid who doesn't work, they watch 6.1 hours of television or just hang out. That's not fair. Go out and try to get a job."
(Sounds like a description of Trump, to me.) Because illness is a moral failing. Not heredity, or environment (most cancers are environmental), or access to fresh food (food deserts still abound, it’s just not popular to talk about them anymore), not bacteria and viruses and diseases. It’s your fault you’re so poor you’re on Medicaid. Now, get off! Billionaires need lower taxes!
Trump spews nonsense about Clinton, Obama, and Biden creating the Epstein Files nobody has seen, and rather than treat him as a liar or deranged (the ultimate unreliable narrator), we simply ignore him. I don’t think his claims have come up yet among “respectable” pundits or in the Sunday talk shows. If it comes up on CNN, someone will be there to assure us Trump always knows what he’s talking about, so the most groundless statements must be true.
Even
otherwise reasonable people have concluded, despite the fact the “Epstein files” are a fantasy of Q-Anon and and MAGA, that there must be a reliable narrator (or at least a pony) under all the piles of shit. But the narrator is Trump; and MAGA; and Q-Anon.
Just like some insist Poe’s tale is a horror story and a psychological study, and certainly not the perfect narrative example of a perfectly unreliable narrator.
So it goes.
