An unreliable narrator is a narrator who cannot be trusted and is biased. There are many reasons why they may be biased, some include ignorance, mentally unstable, or they want to tell the story from a point of view that does not incriminate them. Many authors who write fiction use unreliable narrators to add a certain aura to their stories. Two authors that use unreliable narrators in their stories are Fyodor Dostoevsky and Edgar Allen Poe. The Dostoevsky book that is being referred to in this essay is Crime and Punishment, and the Poe stories that are being assessed are The Tell-Tale Heart, Black Cat, and The Cask of Amontillado. Authors usually use unreliable narrators to darken the story, make the reader doubt the story, and portray guilt as a motif. .
An unreliable narrator has certain personality traits which help to achieve malevolence. These people are usually mentally unstable and ponder committing serious crimes, such as murder. They think it will better society or their own lives, and follow through with the murder. Two examples of such narrators are Raskolnikov and the narrator from The Tell-Tale Heart. Raskolnikov sanity has often been debated. On one hand, he murdered two people in cold blood and one person was completely innocent. On the other hand, he felt guilty to the point where he was physically ill, and he eventually turned himself in. Raskolnikov justified the act of killing Alyona by the fact that she cheated poor people, and beat her sister, Lizaveta. Although Alyona certainly would not be sentenced to death for her acts, she definitely did not deserve to be killed in such a cruel, brutal way. Lizaveta, however, was meek and shy, and appeared to be mentally challenged. She was innocent and did not deserve to die. Raskolnikov might have felt justified if he had just killed Alyona because he believed he was doing society a favour. But he had no reason to kill Lizaveta.
