Which narration seems more “reliable”?

Chapter Nine of Enduring Love switches narration from first person through the novel’s main character, Joe, to a third person narrative.

When a central figure is telling the story using “I” the reader is aware of their inner thoughts. A sense of intimacy and personal understanding for Joe comes across as we directly experience what he goes through (we feel we “are” Joe’s character) and are able to obtain a clearer insight of his feelings which we may otherwise not know about.

However, there are disadvantages of using first person narrative, involving issues such as the trustworthiness of the narrator, and the limitations of understanding the other characters as we focus on only one person’s interpretations of events. This bias can be avoided using a third person narrator, who in Chapter Nine is omniscient of both Joe and Clarissa’s thoughts:

“She is already wondering if she has gone too far.”

If this extract was written in first person speech, we would not know what she was really thinking. However it does seem unrealistic to know the thoughts of every character as in real life we ar

Some topics in this essay:
Chapter Nine, Ian McEwan, Enduring Love, Joe Clarissa’s, Chapter Ten, Chapter Six, person narrative, chapter nine, third person, mcewan describes, story using “i”, third person narrative, narrative bias, joe’s character, story using, written third person, using “i”, own words, person narrator,