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0 pointsenriquto5y ago0 comments

Unreliable narrator [0] is literary device that any writer can chose to use, it has nothing to do whether the described events are facts or fiction: it can be used for both. I don't think at all that 1984 uses this technique, but if it did it could be interpreted that Smith was receiving mild torture but describing it as brutal.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator

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disown5y ago

I know what an unreliable narrator is. There are hints/clues within the story to show why the narrator may be unreliable. You can't say a narrator is unreliable because the fictional world does not align with the real world. That's my point.

It would be like saying bilbo baggins is an unreliable narrator in lord of the rings because magical rings don't exist in the real world. Absurd. But you could say the narrator in fight club may be unreliable since its revealed he has mental issues and the stories don't line up within the movie/book.

enriqutoOP5y ago

I agree, it is absurd to say that 1984 uses an unreliable narrator (and any other Orwell writings for that matter, it's just not his style).

0823498723498725y ago

It's not absurd because in 1984, Goldstein's writing shows evidence of thinking like Orwell (based on Orwell's other writing) and evidence of rational thought processes, while Smith is an extremely dislikable protagonist, a wannabe acid-throwing murderer[1], which makes me think he's cardboard, suitable for the "fast-forward".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737728

[1] part II chap 8. By comparison with 1984, the FBI usually gets violent nutcases to come up with their own scenarios without such explicit prompting, but in real life these sorts of people are not lacking for supposing that (their often paranoidly fictional) ends justify the (thankfully equally fictional, at least when they procure "bombs" from HumInt sources) means, either.

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