Talk: Unreliable narrator

Merge

Merge: This is just Mindfuck in another disguise. The same question should be raised here. Does it warrant a seperate article, or is it just another example of plot twisting? I say the latter. --Hunter61 22:39, 5 April 2008 (PDT)

Delete

• Merge with other similar content into an appropriately named article. On Wikipedia, the same films being exampled, and the same Lost plot twists are used in this article ---- LOSTonthisdarnisland 23:55, 8 April 2008 (PDT) I now think Delete; see other section for reasons. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 04:38, 16 April 2008 (PDT)
• Merge but it has nothing to do with Mindf*ck. We defined mindf*ck, as in giving it our own definition, and this is not it. However, since unreliable narrators are used to present plot twists, I think it should be merged as a section of the plot twist article. --     c      blacxthornE      t     15:20, 15 April 2008 (PDT) I now say Delete; I believe I've read a strong enough case to conclude that UN and PT were "apples and oranges", and further discussion below (1) (2) led me to believe that UN is not an efficient way to analyze the show. I believe there's no need to keep this article now. --     c      blacxthornE      t     03:42, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
• Delete, if no consensus examples of an unreliable narrator can be found to add to the article. As it is now, the article is just a poor man's version of a general article. Only Lost-specific articles get to stay on Lostpedia. Robert K S (talk) 19:06, 21 April 2008 (PDT)
  • Comment: Because most of us agree that it generally applies to Lost as a whole story, I've included it on literary techniques, so effectively this is obsolete without specific examples (which I contend we'll never find, because it's all one story; the episodes could be considered acts or chapters). -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 22:55, 21 April 2008 (PDT)
    • I don't follow. "All of Lost has been told by an unreliable narrator" is not a fact worthy of an article. It's a theory. And if there are no Lost specific-examples contained in this article, there's no reason to keep it around. We can link to a Wikipedia article just the same. Robert K S (talk) 05:27, 22 April 2008 (PDT)
      • You have a point. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 08:29, 22 April 2008 (PDT)

Keep it

• Mindfuck is the result of using an Unreliable narrator, but you can produce it using other narrative techniques too. They are like cause and effect, but there's more causes that can produce the same effect.

--Desmondfan999 18:31, 9 April 2008

• I don't think this should be merged, since we have categorized "unreliable narrator" as a story device, and a "plot twist" as a plotting device. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 08:50, 13 April 2008 (PDT)
  • Right, but we also can't cite any appropriate examples on this article since Lost is the story. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 12:30, 19 April 2008 (PDT)

Not Unreliable Narrator

The examples cited in this article are not examples of an unreliable narrator, they're just plot twists. I've discussed this somewhere else but I can't remember where. Basically Lost doesn't have a 'narrator' as such. Many of the examples given are cases where the show deliberately withholds information or implies things in order to surprise us later on, but the actual information given is always correct. Hallucination sequences could possibly count, although it's usually made clear afterwards what was real and what wasn't. I would say that the Unreliable Narrator is not a device that is used in Lost, since we almost never even have a narrator, so this article is fairly redundant.Liquidcow 09:30, 11 April 2008 (PDT)

• This is definitely debateable, because I agree, there isn't a true "narrator". However, I think some people would consider the "narrator" of any given episode to be the "centric-character" of that episode, since the show will sometimes focus on only showing things from that "unreliable" centric-perspective. I think the wikipedia definition is broad enough to accept this interpretation. But, alas, this is all analysis, so it is probably prudent to add a section to the document that lists your valid criticism. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 14:00, 11 April 2008 (PDT)
• But the person being a central character doesn't make them a narrator, it just means that we focus on what happens to them. The flashbacks are showing something objectively that happened in the past, it is not the character recounting a story. In fact we even see stuff happen in flashbacks that the character will lie about or not mention in the present (Kate is the best example), which proves that there is no 'unreliable narrator'. I get what you say about how an episode focusing on a certain character will show things from their perspective, but it's still 'factually correct', that is, if the character sees something, then we know it is what they saw, they are not mis-remembering or lying. They might not see something, which might be misleading to us as an audience, but that's a storytelling technique, not an unreliable narrator. It's only an unreliable narrator when there's a possibility that the information we're being given might be inaccurate or false, and the only example I can think of so far is Meet Kevin Johnson, because that's the only time when the episode has been a story recounted by one character to another, but it's too early to tell if it really was a case of an unreliable narrator.Liquidcow 12:15, 13 April 2008 (PDT)
  • You make some very good points. I do agree that flashbacks show things objectively, and are usually not using the "unreliable narrator". In some cases, though, the flashbacks are shown objectively, but are shown from the character's flawed perspective. For example, the audience is often shown Hurley's hallucinations as if they are real. This seems to be a case where the character is not lying or mis-remembering, but his view of reality (past or present) is not reliable. The information that the audience is given is strictly shown from Hurley's inaccurate perspective and the audience is only shown the "truth" much later.-- Dagg talk contribs4 8 18:13, 13 April 2008 (PDT)
    • Hallucinations or dream sequences still don't count; although what they see is not real, we are being objectively told what they saw, and by the end of the episode it is revealed to us that it is a dream sequence or hallucination. There is no doubt over whether those events happened or not. Dave tells Hurley not to take the pills. Later we find out that Dave is a product of Hurley's imagination. But he still told Hurley not to take the pills, that event happened, we just didn't have all the information we needed to understand what was happening. If anything, the reveal that Dave is imaginary makes it a more reliable narrator. In an unreliable narrator situation we would be left with some ambiguity about whether it happened that way or not.

• • • I think the difference can be summed up like this: If Kate sees a horse in the show, we know that she definitely saw a horse, even if it wasn't really there or it was something else in the form of a horse or whatever, that definitely happened. In an 'unreliable narrator' situation, she might claim to have seen a horse, but we would have some reason to suspect that maybe she's making it up or remembering wrong. Say we compare Lost to The Usual Suspects (I assume the movie is so well known that everyone knows the twist ending, but I'm about to give it away). In Lost everything we see is 'true', it would never happen that the show would claim that someone hallucinated seeing something when they didn't. In The Usual Suspects, the narrator (and remember Lost doesn't even have one) turns out to be the villain, and to have made certain details up (by taking the names from objects around the room). This means that when we look back on the story, we cant be sure if any of it really happened in terms of the world that the film is set. That just doesn't happen on Lost.

• • • Also, the 'Analysis' section of the page makes it sound like people who agree with the above are 'stricter' or somehow more extreme than people who don't, which is misrepresentative. It is not a 'stricter' interpretation, it is the only correct interpretation.Liquidcow 02:23, 14 April 2008 (PDT)
      • I agree that a "The Usual Suspects" is different than what is happening in Lost, because the "narrator" in "The Usual Suspects" is lying. But I didn't think the "unreliable narrator" had to lie? I thought that hallucinations and dream sequences did count as an unreliable narrator, as long as the dream sequences are not clearly delineated. I would compare Hurley's hallucinations to the hallucinations in "A Beautiful Mind". -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 08:06, 14 April 2008 (PDT)

• • • • • They don't have to lie, no, but there has to be a reason to suspect that the information they give us might be false. They might be mentally unbalance, they might not remember things the way they actually happened, or they might have a self-interest in hiding the truth. Humbert Humbert in Lolita, for example, is clearly a deluded and self-deceiving character, therefore we can imagine that what he tells us might not be entirely accurate, whether he is aware of this or not.

• • • • • I haven't seen A Beautiful Mind myself, but as far as dream sequence go, they are clearly delineated in Lost, just sometimes only after they've happened. Like I said, if we are shown that a character sees something, it's because they actually saw it, whether it's a hallucination or real. I know you could say of The Usual Suspects that it is made clear that Kevin Spacey is lying by the end, but it's different because it's still not clear which parts of his story were true or false or somewhere inbetween. In Lost you might not realise that a something is a hallucination until the end of the scene, but that's not unreliable narrator, it's no different really to scenes where we think it's a flashback until we realise we're on the island. The way the information is delivered is done in a way to confuse us, but the actual information itself is not unreliable. The dream or hallucination is a real event that is occurring. Only if a character was telling us that they had a dream or hallucination which they didn't really have would it be unreliable narrator, but since Lost doesn't have a narrator that never happens.Liquidcow 09:27, 14 April 2008 (PDT)
          • I don't want to give spoilers for "A Beautiful Mind" or "Vanilla Sky" to anyone, but suffice it to say, both of those movies have been compared to the Lost episode "Dave" (only one scene for "Vanilla Sky"), and both of those movies are considered by many to use an "unreliable narrator". -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 10:32, 14 April 2008 (PDT)
          • I've seen Abre Los Ojos (remade as Vanilla Sky) so I know what you're referring to there. But considered by who? Just because a lot of people think something doesn't mean they're correct, and if you're just talking about regular people who might be misunderstanding the term then it doesn't really mean anything even if a lot of them (incorrectly) consider it an 'unreliable' narrator. It is a fairly complex concept, and one that is fairly uncommon, so I can see that a lot of people maybe don't quite grasp it. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I do have a good degree in this field, so I know what I'm talking about.

• • • • • • I haven't seen A Beautiful Mind, but I have just looked it up, and as I thought, it is based on a true story, which makes it very useful to make my point. This is what I mean, I know that for people who don't know about the real guy it comes as a surprise at the end that those characters are hallucinations, but he actually did in real life have hallucinations, and the film is showing us those hallucination because they happened. Yes the people weren't really there, but he really saw them, and the film shows us that he saw them. It witholds the information that they're hallucinations until later but again, with-held information is different to unreliable information. So in Lost, Hurley really sees Dave, but the truth about what Dave really is comes later.Liquidcow 12:26, 14 April 2008 (PDT)
            • I agree that just because a lot of people think something doesn't mean they're correct (that would be called wikiality :) ). Can you suggest a different web site or book that describes "Unreliable narrator" how you are describing it? I have been using Wikipedia as a source, and I think it is mostly this paragraph on Wikipedia that has created this "wikiality" in my mind:

“

"Sometimes it is not a character narrating a story but the manner in which scenes in the film are presented that gives the audience an unreliable impression of what happened. Important events may occur off-screen, or be presented in a misleading way. Examples include the films A Beautiful Mind and The Sixth Sense. In both cases the main characters suffer from mistaken ideas or delusions about their own situations, with the films designed to make the perceptions of these characters appear correct to the audience.

”

• • • • • • • but there are quite a few references to "unreliable narrator"/"A Beautiful Mind" on Google that may be misleading me as well.-- Dagg talk contribs4 8 15:21, 14 April 2008 (PDT)

• The exposure of an UN has to, by definition, be a plot twist by virtue of the surprising revelation; we are led to believe one thing in the plot, only to find with the revelation it has been twisted into something else. I think the problem with this article revolves around misapplying UN and using bad Lost examples. Although it wouldn't be a reliable source, a good layman's description of UN can be found here. Ben would be considered a UN; we are never sure whether anything coming out of his mouth is the truth, a half-truth, or a lie, and we have to decide as we go along whether to believe him or not because he is a proven liar. An example for this article would be the fake Henry Gale; Ben is an UN when he tells everyone a large lie to infultrate the survivors, with just enough truth to make the lie more believable. Until the real Henry Gale has been exhumed and the licence found, everyone suspects he is lying, but cannot kill him because they are not 100% sure he is lying. OTOH, the "Locke used to be in a wheelchair" entry is not UN because we have no reason, outside of a personal inability to suspend disbelief, to doubt Locke was once in a wheelchair and now he is not. The surprising revelation is a plot twist, because we have incorrectly assumed he could always walk, but it does not involve UN. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 20:11, 14 April 2008 (PDT)

• That Wikipedia quote does not have a source so it is just as likely to be wrong as anything here. The John Hewitt thing seems accurate, though I don't know who he is exactly, at least he appears to be a professional writer and have at least some kind of authority in the field.

Ben is not an example of an unreliable narrator though, he is simply a character who lies. There is not doubt cast as to whether Ben said his name was Henry Gale. Furthermore he isn't even narrating the story. You are right about the Locke point however; I was going to remove points like that which clearly are not cases of unreliable narrator, but that would leave an almost empty page, which I thought might be taken as vandalism or something.Liquidcow 11:08, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

Mass removal should be discussed here, probably. We are doing something similar with plot twist, going over a mass of examples, where only a small percentage fit the bill. I think editors get overeager, including any surprising event. I didn't intend the link as an RS; just a guideline to help determine an accurate definition and way to note which examples are correct.

NB I didn't say Ben merely saying his name was Henry Gale was UN (that's a lie); the background he "reveals" about himself on each occasion as the fake HG, however, is UN. He attempts to mislead everyone by including just enough truth mixed in his lies to make (the viewers and) the other characters wonder if he could possibly be telling the truth, and wonder if everyone might be over-reacting. I'd put Ben under "The narrator may have a personality flaw such as pathological lying or narcissism" on the source I provided, or something very similar. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 11:35, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

Ben is simply not a narrator, he is a character in the story, there's a massive difference. The narrator is not Ben, it is the third-person, omniscient view of the camera, and what it sees is reliable information. If what it sees is Ben telling a lie about himself, then that is the truth of what happens. Whether or not what Ben says is true or not is completely irrelevant. It's like if I tell a story, and I say that Joe told me he had no gold, then I search Joe's house and find that he's hiding some gold under hid bed. Joe was lying, but he is not an 'unreliable narrator' - he isn't even the narrator at all. You didn't know he was lying until I gave you some information that proved that he was, but that doesn't make me an unreliable narrator, since everything that I did say was accurate.Liquidcow 14:56, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

Similar conversation as below. Answered there. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 18:54, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

Lost, like any story, has one or several narrators

A text or a tv show is a narrative that is enunciated by an agent. This agent, whether he/she/it is part of the story (homodiegetic) or not (heterodiegetic) is immaterial. Without a narrator or narrators there is no story. Barthes commented in "Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits", "he who speaks (in the narrative) is not he who writes (in life) and he who writes is not he who is." A typical pronouncement about the narrator is given by Wolfgang Kayser in "Qui raconte le roman?: "the narrator is not the author . . . ; the narrator is a fictional being the author has turned into. Desmondfan999 03:47, 15 April 2008

Right but that doesn't mean the narrator is unreliable. There is only an unreliable narrator when there is a discrepancy between the 'truth' of the fictional world in which the story is set, and what is reported to us by the narrator. In the majority fiction we can trust the narrator to be truthful in what they tell us. An unreliable heterodiegetic narrator, if such a thing is conceivable, would probably be intolerable to most, if not all, audiences. An unreliable narrator must be part of the story in order to have cause to be unreliable. Lost does not have a first person narrator, it is clearly a heterodiegetic one. There is a vast difference between a heterodiegetic narrator that is selective with the order in which it conveys information, and a homodiegetic narrator who might not be telling the whole truth.

Sorry but it seems that people are trying to shoe-horn in a literary term that simply does not apply to Lost.Liquidcow 11:31, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

For most examples given, I'd have to agree with you. However, (as with my FHG/Ben example above) sometimes a character narrates events, and we have to consider whether the character is reliable or not in the telling. Michael talking to Desmond and Sayid on the freighter jumps to mind. If Michael was a proven liar, his story was contradictory to events shown simultaneously, and/or is revealed to be false in whole or part in future episodes, the conversation could be listed here as a UN, IMO. Telling a lie is not enough to be UN, but telling a story full of lies could be. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 11:47, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

As far as I remember, Michael's story in Meet Kevin Johnson is the only example on the show where a story has been conveyed to us the audience in such a way. However, it's a tricky one - do we see Michael start to tell his story, then cut to a third-person telling of his story the way it happened, or does the story represent Michael's (possibly flawed) telling of it? It appears to be shown objectively, and I doubt that we'll find that any of it was a lie as it would be too confusing for viewers, but as you say, it is too early to tell whether any of it is questionable or not so it can't be called a case of unreliable narrator for sure.Liquidcow 15:00, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

Still trying to understand, sorry

The truth of the fictional world	What the audience is shown	Centric-perspective given to the audience
"Dave" is not real	"Dave" is shown to be a real person for the first half of the episode	Hurley

It seems that Hurley's perspective is not reliable, because he has hallucinations. Which criteria of "unreliable narrator" is not satisfied by this example? I am sorry that I still fail to understand. I am not trying to be "over-eager", and I am not trying to "shoe-horn" anything. Thank you for your patience. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 12:58, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

First of all, an unreliable narrator is by definition a first-person narrator. Lost does not have this, it focuses on one particular character by following them, but the character is not narrating the story, it is not their re-telling of the event that we are witnessing, we are witnessing the event itself. Yes, we see Dave, who doesn't really exist, but then Hurley does really see Dave, and how else is the show supposed to represent him? It's like they've broken down the truth into sections and given it to us bit-by-bit...

The whole truth	Fact 1	Fact 2
Hurley is told by Dave, who is a figment of his imagination, not to take the pill	Dave tells Hurley not to take the pill	Dave is a figment of Hurley's imagination

Neither of those things are false, they are just revealed to us at different times. In an Unreliable Narrator situation, we might look back on the episode and think 'maybe that didn't really happen'. In 'Dave' we don't think that Dave didn't really tell Hurley not to take the pill, we just know that Dave wasn't who we originally thought. In an unreliable narrator situation, Hurley would actually be telling the story to us, the audience (in fact we know he's not because he's not aware of Libby's presence), and we would be unsure of exactly what happened. As it is, we know what happened (or as much as we've been told), we're not unsure of whether Dave is real or not, we know that he's not, but we're also not unsure that it was Dave, in Hurley's imagination, who told him not to take the pill and to escape. I hope I've made it more clear, it is quite difficult to explain, but Lost categorically does not use an Unreliable Narrator, and in fact few things do.Liquidcow 15:24, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

• I disagree. If that was the case, then The Usual Suspects would not be a case of unreliable narrator. Nor would A Beautiful Mind, or anything, for that matter. If someone tells a lie or imagines something, and we know that--then yes. It's not an unreliable narrator case. But if we are shown that lie or imagination as if it were true, then it is a case of an unreliable narrator. Regardless of who the narrator of the story is as a characteri, the real narrator on Lost is, well, Lost itself. If Lost tells you that there's a guy named Dave on the Island, then this narrator is unreliable, as it suggests (although for a short duration) that something imaginary is real, only to reveal that it was in fact a figment of imagination later. --     c      blacxthornE      t     15:35, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
• This article: http://www.ehow.com/how_2159373_write-unreliable-narrator.html seems to suggest that an "unreliable narrator" is not limited to a first-person narrator. They can be written from a third-person limited point of view. Is it accurate to say that portions of Lost episodes are shown in a "third-person limited" point-of-view? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 16:36, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
  • Well I'm not sure eHow is a reliable source as I think it's similar to Wikipedia in that it's user-edited. But an unreliable narrator can be writing in the third-person, yes, but they still have to be a character from the fictional world narrating a story to us. An example might be Atonement, in which the fictional narrator is writing about everyone, including herself, in the third person, but she herself is part of the wider story Iain McEwan has created. Lost doesn't use this technique though, even in flashbacks, it is showing us something that happened to a particular character, but it's not the character recounting the story directly to us. We even sometimes see things that the character is not aware happened. This is the 'heterodiegetic' narrator (to use the term quoted above) showing us scenes to develop the character, it is not the character themself narrating a story.Liquidcow 17:51, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

Here's the difference between The Usual Suspects and Lost: In The Usual Suspects we can't look at any aspect of Kevin Spacey's story without wondering if it really happened like that, or at all. Maybe that character didn't actually say those words, or do that thing. In Lost, we know that Dave said that line or did that action, we just didn't know that he only existed in Hurley's mind. The show hasn't 'told' us 'hey, there's a real guy named Dave on the Island' and then said 'actually he's not a real guy, we lied', it's shown Hurley talking to Dave, which really happened, and then revealed that Dave exists only in Hurley's mind, it's all objectively true in the world of the story. The 'suggestion' that Dave is real is merely the viewers interpretation of the facts (personally I figured it out when you saw Dave at the basketball game), the facts themselves are not false.Liquidcow 17:45, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

The analysis section

What it says is wrong. In a story with several points of view there is a greater likelihood of having an unreliable narrator. The author gives voice to several characters' narrations and gives credence to none, or juxtaposes different narrations to raise doubts in the viewer about their reliability. The author deceives the audience into believing one character and not the other by not committing to anything himself. Desmondfan999 04:15, 15 April 2008

UN?

• "In 4x02 Confirmed Dead the audience is lead to believe that Oceanic 815 had been found in a deep oceanic trench in the Sunda Straits. In 4x08 Meet Kevin Johnson, the audience is told that that was all staged by Charles Widmore." We find out this information from Naomi, a narrator in effect. Therefore, we have to determine if she is unreliable, mistaken, or mislead/misinformed by an external source. Simply being presented with conflicting information isn't enough to make this determination. I vote we hold off on including this example until we are sure that Naomi was unreliable, rather than Ben (through Tom) lying to Michael with documentation which might be as fake as all those passports. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 12:06, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
  • No, she's not a narrator, she is a character. Ben is not a narrator either. They are both characters who may or may not be lying. The whole 815 thing is a case of one character saying one thing and another saying something that contradicts it. Clearly one of them (or both?) must be lying, but it's nothing to do with narration. See my example above; if I tell a story in which a character lies, that does not make me unreliable since the information I give is still correct.Liquidcow 15:04, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
  • This isn't about Naomi. No matter what she says, truth or not, she cannot be an unreliable narrator. There's an unreliable narrator if the literary work itself shows what an unreliable narrator says as if it was real. The Sunda Trench story was real, they did find that plane. That is to say: Everything you have seen there (although not true) is real. The fact that it wasn't actually Oceanic 815 is not about an unreliable narrator: It's just a lie, a scam, or whatever you might wanna call it. If the literary work shows that lie as if it was true, then there's an "unreliable narrator", as a literary term. Not every lie/scam makes an unreliable narrator, and if that were the case, we would have to list a thousand UN examples for Ben's lies alone. But the news, the staged plane crash, everything was real, and the show did not tell us something that wasn't real. A Beautiful Mind, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects all do that. Lost does not do that here. --     c      blacxthornE      t     15:07, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
  • Thank you, I'm glad someone else seems to understand what an unreliable narrator is - although I don't think The Sixth Sense uses one, it just very carefully places the facts that it gives to us (Lost does the same), The Usual Suspects is actually a story that is narrated directly to us, so that counts.Liquidcow 15:29, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
    • I agree, but I'm just not with you on taking the word "narrator" too literally. Movies rarely ever use actual narrators (some voiceover that narrates the whole thing) but they still tell a story. "Telling" something in cinema is actually showing it. Most of them tell (show) the truth, but some of them don't, they tell you the story the way that an unreliable character tells, or even perceives (as in The Sixth Sense). That should still count as an unreliable narrator, because if it were a book and you were to read it, the exact same story would actually tell you what the guy perceived to be the reality in a first-person view, as if it were real. And that would make an unreliable narrator. The exact same story. --     c      blacxthornE      t     15:43, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
      • It's fairly rare for a movie to have a narrator I guess, but this is my point; the Unreliable Narrator technique itself can only apply when there is one, and even then it's fairly uncommon because it's challenging for an audience. I can't remember if The Usual Suspects uses voiceover or not, but it's made clear from the beginning that we're seeing the story as related by Kevin Spacey's character. The Sixth Sense is actually probably a better demonstration of something that is not an unreliable narrator, because in the world in which it is set, there is such a thing as ghosts. It uses certain visual techniques to show which characters can see them and which can't, but the fact that there was a ghost under the table for example is definitely true in the story. You can't really say for certain how it would be written as a book, but the film is more from a third-person viewpoint anyway (not all the scenes have Bruce Willis' character in them for a start). It shows us select truths, which can mean you don't figure out the 'twist' until the end, but there is no reason to say that what the film does tell us is unreliable. Like I said, not telling us something and telling us something that may be false are two different things.Liquidcow 17:00, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
        • I guess I was considering related examples could be stories within the Lost story (Michael, Ben, & Naomi in the examples were all telling a story to others), rather than thinking strictly along the lines of an overall story like "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". Strictly speaking, I don't think we'll find enough appropriate examples to warrant the retention of an entire article, and we should create an article of similar literary devices like Archtype in which this would be a small subsection. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 18:54, 15 April 2008 (PDT)
          • I think this is what is causing some of the confusion; people seem to think that a character who we see speaking is a narrator, but they are not, they are simply a character speaking lines. The narrator is telling us what they said, Naomi or Ben are not telling us, the audience, a story directly.

There are some TV shows that usually have a third person narrator but for one episode use a first-person, possibly unreliable narrator. An example might be King of the Hill, where the show is usually a third-person, objective viewpoint, but there was one episode ('A Fire Fighting We Will Go') where the same incident was related by each of the main characters (similar to Rashomon), who were each clearly unreliable as their stories differed and presented biased viewpoints. But we knew that we were getting that character's version of events that might be false. A case like this has not happened on Lost yet - perhaps Meet Kevin Johnson, but there's no evidence yet that anything in that tale was unreliable.Liquidcow 03:35, 16 April 2008 (PDT)

Examples from article needing review

I think the following should be removed:

• "In 2x12 Fire+Water, it is unclear whether Charlie took drugs or not. The audience is lead to believe that Charlie rescued Aaron from the sea, but in reality Aaron's cradle had never moved from the beach camp."
• Episode 3x14 Exposé. The audience is deceived into believing that Nikki and Paolo are dead until the last flashback where the truth of what is happening is revealed: they are being buried alive.

In the first, confusing events =/= UN. We are shown an entire camp which believes Charlie is somehow off, whether from drugs, sleepwalking, or Island induced paranoia. There isn't a story taking us one direction then giving a big reveal it's all been a deception, so I vote definite no on the first. In the second example, firstly, it incorrectly implies they are being buried alive the entire story (like Owl Creek Bridge), necessitating a rewrite if it's retained; secondly, I don't think it qualifies as there isn't a deceptive story. We are told about the spiders fairly quickly and surmise the outcome long before the reveal at the end. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 19:13, 15 April 2008 (PDT)

• A big, BIG NO on the second one. The first one, however, is somewhat debatable: We see his vision as if it were true. Now I'm not suggesting that this is a case of UN, but if it's not, then there's no UN on Lost and there has never been one, because all occurences that even remotely remind you of UN are such visions/dreams: including Dave, and Boone's vision about Shannon's death. If we say no to this, we might as well say good-bye to the article, since we will not even need to merge it, we would have to delete it altogether. The only two occurences that are not like this are Jack's first flash-forward and Jin's last flashback. I don't think that they're UN at all, because there's no lie/error/deception in those cases. They're legitimate flashes, and you make assumptions on them. This is just like when you think that it's a flashback at the beginning of season 2 but it turns out to be on the Island: Yes, they do want to deceive you, but they do not show you anything deceiving, everything is real and you just make assumptions. So I also say no to Jack's and Jin's flashes. This leaves us with a couple of occasions like Charlie's dream, Boone's vision and Hurley's imaginary friend. I'm not supporting them 100%, but I admit that they're the closest things to UN on Lost. --     c      blacxthornE      t     03:58, 16 April 2008 (PDT)

• As I said, I was considering a story within a story in the instances I referenced with Ben, Naomi, and Michael. But this discussion has brought up good points. In An Occurence at Oak Creek Bridge, a common example when teaching/learning UN, the narration tells the reader the rope broke and Farquhar got away to get back to his family, only to reveal in the third act it was all a vision in the midst of Farquhar's hanging. The narration is UN. In Lost, we are told and shown things later found to be completely false, misleading, or contradictory to be sorted out in future episodes. So, in our careful review, we are finding there aren't any true examples of strict UN because Lost itself is the UN. If we aren't bending the normal view of UN to include narrations within the story, then you're correct, Blacx, there aren't any examples, and perhaps this article should be removed. BTW, I agree with you about the Paulo and Nikki example; my strong viewpoint on a different article caused a couple people to think I was stepping on their toes, so I was trying to be diplomatic here to avoid problems. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 04:32, 16 April 2008 (PDT)

• Let me save you the trouble then :) --     c      blacxthornE      t     04:55, 16 April 2008 (PDT)

"I don't think that they're UN at all, because there's no lie/error/deception in those cases. They're legitimate flashes, and you make assumptions on them." - This is what I've been getting at all along, we see something, we assume something about it, but our assumption turns out to be wrong. The thing that we see is not a lie, the error lies with us, the viewer. However, I still think that dream sequences and hallucinations do not count either for the following reasons: There's no diegetic narrator who could be recounting events innacurately. The truth of the matter is made clear to us (by the end of the sequence we are not left wondering whether or not it was a dream). The dream and the hallucinations are still accurate representations of those things. That is, what we see is a truthful representation of what Boone saw, or what Hurley saw, it's just that we are only told later that it was a dream/hallucination. Again it's our interpretation as a viewer that is innacurate, it's not a lie on the show's part. The quote below says that Lost "convey[s] actions and characters within a character's hallucinations as if these actions and characters really existed outside of the character's hallucinations", but it doesn't, nothing actually happens in the show that would happen differently if the hallucination was real. All that happens is that we, the viewer, are given the priveliged position of being able to see what is happening in the character's head.Liquidcow 16:51, 17 April 2008 (PDT)

• I agree, and as I said, it's all a matter of interpretation from that point on. And as you said, "all that happens is that we, the viewer, are given the priveliged position of being able to see what is happening in the character's head." But this is 'point of view', and that's somewhat connected to narration, right? Well, not technically, I agree, but still you see things as some character (not narrates, but) interprets it. Let's say we have a character in a movie. There is no narration whatsoever. We do not even see anything from the character's point of view. Everything is seen from a third-person's eye. Then we see a flashback of the character in a movie. Later, we find out that it was not an actual flashback (as in the movie showing us what happened earlier), but a memory. It turned out to be false, simply because the character misremembers it. Now is this case of unreliable narrator or not? I say it is, as long as we don't get too technical about the "narration". If it is a case of UN, then these dreams and visions would have to be too. If not, then neither would these. It's debatable. But even if there's no unreliable narrator, there are definitely some unreliable points of view, and I just think they're too close and we shouldn't just coin new terms to be technically flawless. Call it an unreliable "narrator" and that'll be it. Please note the one word I used in bold letters. --     c      blacxthornE      t     17:15, 17 April 2008 (PDT)

• I think we all agree so far, and are just presenting our opinions differently. I believe we are saying the entire Lost story is comprised of plotting devices which show events that might or might not be reliable, might mislead, or might even be lying to other characters and the audience. These events would be catagorised using plotting devices (like plot twist) because they are plot, part of the overall story. Since episodes are not isolated from each other, each with their own separate story (e.g., Twilight Zone), they cannot be separated and analysed in isolation from each other to determine if the single story in an episode fits UN. Therefore, Lost is, in the strictest interpretation of the story device, the unreliable narrator itself, right? Therefore, no examples would every be appropriate and this article is obsolete. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 23:14, 18 April 2008 (PDT)

• Fair enough. I changed my mind.--     c      blacxthornE      t     01:41, 20 April 2008 (PDT)

I think I should also point out why I did that. After the inputs of Robert K S and LOSTonthisdarnisland about my plot/story confusion, I think I've come to the point that I was going to after a little more orbiting around it. A point I think all three of us in this particular discussion agree. My conclusion is:

1. There is no single narrator, or multiple narrators on Lost. The "narrator" in its broad sense, is Lost itself.
2. Lost is reliable as a "narrator". It tells the story in basically three timeframes: Past, present, and now future. All three are consisted of reliable information. The flashback events are not memories; the flashforwards are not plans, fears, thoughts or instincts about the future. They're all facts. Thus, Lost does not (at least openly) give unreliable information to the audience.
3. Dreams and visions are the only exceptions, and they're shown in a certain character's point of view. This is not, however, an unreliable narrator technique, but merely an "effect" of the dream/vision. Furthermore, dreams and visions are often not presented as the truth; but their nature are left ambiguous. Lost merely tells the audience about the dream/vision without explicitly pointing out to the fact that it is one. Still, whether the audience perceives it as the truth or not is a subjective matter. Thus I render my previous suggestion about Lost being possibly an unreliable narrator obsolete, since I now believe there's not enough grounds to cover that. --     c      blacxthornE      t     03:42, 20 April 2008 (PDT)

Yeh what Blacxthorne says here is correct in my opinion. I would also add that there's an issue of semiotics here, in that some people are confusing what the term has come to mean with a literal interpretation of the words. The term 'unreliable narrator' is used in literary discourse specifically to signify first-person narrators such as Humbert in Lolita or the main character in Catcher in the Rye and so forth. Even if you could interpret the phrase itself to mean a third-person non-diegetic narrator (if such a thing is conceivable) that's not what it means as a literary term.Liquidcow 03:50, 23 April 2008 (PDT)

I completely agree. My earlier discussion was refering to the use of "unreliable narrator" to describe the character narrating, not the literary technique itself. Being encyclopaedic, we must keep to the literary technique since we are using it in that manner as part of the literary technique portal. Therefore, Blacx points are correct, and the article is obsolete. If it is by some chance retained, it must be removed from the portal where editors will mistakenly use it on Lost examples. As Robert (?), and then I, pointed out, this isn't Wikipedia. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 23:45, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

Merge with Plot twist

I have re-read all the points in this discussion, and I agree that many of the current entries (e.g., Nicki and Paulo) do not seem to match closely enough with the accepted definition. As a compromise, I suggest merging this article as a small blurb in the plot twist article, something like this:

“

An unreliable narrator is a literary device in which the first-person narrator of a story cannot be trusted. Although Lost does not have a first-person narrator, some fans still attribute this device to scenes that convey actions and characters within a character's hallucinations as if these actions and characters really existed outside of the character's hallucinations.

”

I think we could start with something like that, and expand it later if there was any demand. Does this sound doable? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 14:35, 16 April 2008 (PDT)

PT is a plotting device, while UN is a story device. We should put PT examples onto the PT article where they belong, but do not merge UN onto PT as if it were a subcategory of PT, sorry. I still vote delete because Lost is the UN, not specific examples within Lost, in the strictest interpetation. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 23:01, 18 April 2008 (PDT)

I was going to comment on that, actually. I'm aware of the plot-story thing, but I also looked at the source you cited as an example, and I did not find unreliable narrator anywhere. Do you have another source (or certain first-person knowledge) about it, or was it just a judgement call (because I know *I* would put it under story devices if I had to guess :))? Anyway there's another question: Story devices, plotting devices, and other literary devices surely serve for the same purpose, although in different ways. Still, one can be used for another right? Unreliable narrator is basically a tool to... umm... "construct"... a huge plot twist, right? Is it so wrong to admit that and put it as a subsection of PT? This is important: Having a UN section as a subsection of PT article does not really suggest that UN as a literary device, is a sub-device of PT. We can make it clearer by explicitly saying that "Unreliable narrator is a story device that (...)", while the PT article starts with "Plot twist is a plotting device that (...)"--I don't see why it can't happen. It's not like Jerry's boys and Kramer's boys, I think they can share the same neighborhood :). --     c      blacxthornE      t     03:47, 19 April 2008 (PDT)

(Huh? LOL) Are you referring to "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"? The short story is commonly used as a teaching tool (usually to primary students) when teaching UN. Bookrags excerpt "The quintessential example of an unreliable narrator" "Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and the Unreliable Narrator" It's very short, if you want to read it yourself. Actually, your conclusion is back-to-front, Blacx. The plot is "all the events in a story". Therefore, a story device could never be the means to "construct" a plotting device, because the plotting devices are used to tell the story. It might be easier to understand if you think of UN as a categorisation (rather than device). AOaOCB is "categorised" as UN because, well it has an UN (laugh), but it "uses" a big plot twist to tell the story, which is a device, the means in which the UN is driven, if you like. The two are very different, so one couldn't rightly be a subsection of the other. Placing it on PT would suggest that very thing, because PT is the main topic of the article. It would be different if both were subsections of literary devices. ---- LOSTonthisdarnisland 12:27, 19 April 2008 (PDT)

Alternative to merge/keep/delete

In the short-term, we could rewrite this article to look something like this:

“

An unreliable narrator is a literary device in which the narrator of a story cannot be trusted. Fans of Lost disagree as to how the term applies to the show. Some alternative applications are listed in the sections below. Alternative #1: Does not apply The term does not apply because ... Alternative #2: The show itself is the unreliable narrator Lost, itself, is the ... Alternative #3: The character's point-of-view acts as an unreliable narrator Hallucinations ... Alternative #4: The flashbacks are narrated by the characters The contents of the flashbacks are not objective ...

”

Any of the pre-existing examples could be rewritten and moved to their corresponding heading, or deleted if they do not apply.

And if there isn't enough content, we could merge the content into a different article.

This is an analysis article, and an analysis article can document several different opinions. For example, the Economics featured article gives several differing opinions on how the term applies to the show. Explaining all sides seems like an encyclopedia-thing to do. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 14:30, 19 April 2008 (PDT)

I appreciate your attempt here, but different fan opinions =/= facts if the opinions come from wrong information. Story is the tapestry, while Plot is the threads. We cannot correctly subcategorise story (device) under plot (device). (See my talk page for a more detailed explanation.) -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 01:35, 20 April 2008 (PDT)

This site does not just document factual information. A fan opinion is never equal to a fact. All of the analysis articles on this site contain fan opinions, and are not factual: economics, irony, A-Missions, etc.-- Dagg talk contribs4 8 08:27, 20 April 2008 (PDT)

I'm sorry, let me clarify what I meant by my statement. Literary analysis devices are not defined by fan opinion; the definitions are facts. Therefore, just as we shouldn't allow editor opinions override canon and TPTB (Lost facts), we should not allow editor or fan opinions to override established definitions of literary devices. We define them appropriately in the articles, and from there, fan and editor opinions as to which examples "fit" the defintion are up for debate and consensus (if necessary). I also think we should indicate which examples are fan opinion with a simple statement to that fact before them, separating them from examples coming directly from TPTB or directly from canon (Boone calling himself a redshirt in an episode, for example). Otherwise, we are not a 'pedia, but an outlet for theory, supposition, and opinion. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 08:53, 20 April 2008 (PDT)

External link

I finally had time to read through all 43-odd pages of the forum thread through the external link. I find while some of the discussion is interesting, most of it involves unsupported theories (from mainly one editor over 2 years). When challenged, for example someone brought up So It Begins as throwing a spanner in the works, the challenge was dismissed as something the theorist wasn't going to discuss. Ignoring contrary evidence points to weakness in the theory. Regardless of whether I agree with any of it or not, it has no reliable source, involving only editor opinions on a forum. We should retain external links on this article (if it's kept) only if they are reliable sources for literary analysis. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 04:00, 20 April 2008 (PDT)

• Should we also delete the rest of the forum links on this site? Here is one example: redshirt, but I know I've seen several others. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 08:14, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
  • In my personal opinion? Yes, when it's intended to support the information on an article like this. Forum thread links aren't a big deal when they are used on theory pages, but unless it's directly showing a quote by Gregg Nations, for example, I don't think they fit reliable source criteria. General_usage_guide#Citing_Sources isn't policy (yet), but it's wise advice. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 08:32, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
  • I agree. Why do we link forum threads anyway? I shouldn't be to support validity of the article content, surely. Besides, don't we have a forum of our own? I would understand if there was a link on every single article, to a forum thread of Lostpedia Forums (for convenience), but I don't see why we should cite a forum thread to support factual information (for example, literary terms, like unreliable narrator). Just because it's popular? I don't think so. Forums can only be cited as examples of fan discussions (say, a notable controversy, criticism, etc.) but definitely not as sources of information. --     c      blacxthornE      t     08:53, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
    • Right. If we were trying to show an example of fan opinion on a certain subject (e.g., "Fans sometimes mistake the signal fire smoke for the monster"[forum link here]), linking to forums would be a responsible citation for what fans are saying. You know when you go to the source that you are getting support for your factoid regarding fan confusion, but the information located within the threads are still opinion, not a reliable authority. We all have come in contact with people on forums, I'm sure, who think they are the authority in a subject, as we scratch our heads in wonder how they ever came up with such a silly, theoretical synthesis (usually completely lacking in any reliable scholarship). We, as a 'pedia, really shouldn't be pointing to them as reliable sources, indicating we support their content. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 08:58, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
      • Several questions. Would it be ok to re-list the external link if it was properly described for what it is? Should we delete the link to Wikipedia, since it has incorrect and non-factual information? Does anyone have a reliable source for the definition of "unreliable narrator" as it relates to TV/Movies? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 15:50, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
        • I don't know. Personally, I'd vote no after reading through the content. It's just someone's theory being argued, stretched over far too many pages. Wikipedia is a worry; I wondered about deleting it myself. I justified keeping it because there is a banner on the top of the article indicating it needs work, so it comes with a warning. I'm personally fine with either side of the decision. I have some in my posts on this talk page; I'll move one I think we can agree with to the article. Feel free to add more. However, we really should come to a consensus regarding keeping the article, whether it has any valid Lost examples. Otherwise, some of this information could be moved to the short story page, and it wouldn't make sense to continue to flesh out the article if it's going to be deleted, since this is LP not WP :) -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 18:34, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
          • Neither of those 2 new external links seem to define "unreliable narrator". I guess I'm still confused by this, because I watched "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" in school many years ago, and I watched it again on a Twilight Zone DVD about a year ago, and the film seems to follow the format of Boone's vision in "Hearts and Minds". I.e., the film version of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" does not seem to have a first person narrator (there is very little if any dialog in the whole film), but the audience is presented the main character's visions as if they were true. In Lost, the audience is presented with Boone's vision as if it was true. Is the difference too subtle for me to see? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 19:36, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
            • I'm not sure how they treated the film version, but the short story was definitely UN because it has a narrator. We are not presented with Farquhar speaking from his perspective, saying "I broke free" and "I see my wife"; we have a third person narration. OT: I honestly wondered if this is where the writers were going to go, where "the Island" takes place in the seconds before the death of the 815 passengers. I still wonder if they were headed this direction, but changed due to fan feedback that it would really suck if they did it.-- LOSTonthisdarnisland 21:21, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
              • I just re-watched the first part of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" on YouTube, and I personally think that the film is also UN with a third person narration. Here is a link so people can make up their own mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jLxlyTrAC4 . And here is a link to a book that compares "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" to Lost, and refers to UN: "Living Lost: Why We're All Stuck on the Island".-- Dagg talk contribs4 8 23:06, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
• Dagg, your last post appears to be preaching to the choir by pointing out LOST is an UN in its entirety. I've said it, and I'm sure others said it before me. However, Lost episodes and examples within the episodes, are not UN. That's what we were trying to suss out here, if I'm not mistaken. If there are no examples from within Lost, then a mention of UN on Lost might be appropriate, but a separate article would really not be worthwhile. Edit: BTW, while we agree now on AOAOCB, note what the reference you provided actually said, "The [AOAOCB] story is a classic example of the unreliable narrator, and expands a minute into nearly a day's time. It's a technique used in every episode of Lost and across the narrative as a whole; for the audience, over two years have passed, but on the island, only 65 days have gone by." NB the comparison here is not to Lost as a UN (which we agree is true), but rather that Lost uses the "expands a minute into nearly a day's time" technique; the next sentence goes on to explain how Lost uses that technique. Mentioning UN in the same sentence doesn't make this a reliable source for UN as far as Lost is concerned (although it is one for AOAOCB). -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 23:23, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
  • Given that several people agree that Lost is an UN, then I don't think the article satisfies any criteria for deletion: The term is valid, and the term is relevant to Lost. If Lost is indeed an UN in its entirety, then the article could explain why. Maybe the article won't be several pages long, but there are much smaller articles on the site. I definitely would not object to merging the article to an appropriate place, but I don't think the Lost article is that place. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 23:42, 20 April 2008 (PDT)
    • What we really need is Literary techniques as a separate article, fashioned by category like Portal:Literary techniques. LT could define and outline each technique, with links to subarticles when a larger representation is needed (like Plot twist) with several Lost-related examples. It would be a single place to gather all the stub techniques like this one. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 00:11, 21 April 2008 (PDT)
      • I agree, that would be very cool.-- Dagg talk contribs4 8 00:19, 21 April 2008 (PDT)
        • I've started the process here, but I'm still working on it. Gives you a rough idea what I mean, though. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 00:45, 21 April 2008 (PDT)

I agree that the external link is nowhere near reliable. It's one guys opinion on a forum (who doesn't know what he's talking about if you ask me). Message board posts should not be considered reliable sources.Liquidcow 03:53, 23 April 2008 (PDT)

Consensus?

So have we reached a consensus that this article has no Lost specific examples, and therefore has become obsolete? Or is it still on the table? -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 05:55, 23 April 2008 (PDT)

Unless you're counting the guy who says "Previously on Lost...", Lost has never had a narrator, thus there's no one to be unreliable. If we're going to deal in established literary terms, let's interpret them strictly, not re-interpret the terms to mean whatever we want them to mean. "Narrator really means the whole show itself" is a theory that strays from the original meaning of the term and is not consensus-accepted over on Wikipedia:Unreliable narrator, where language about The Sixth Sense and A Beautiful Mind has been removed. As one user puts it on the talk page for that article, "I don't think it is strictly accurate to say that any movie has an 'unreliable narrator' ... except for voice-over narration... It would be more accurate to say that these movies employ an unreliable point of view." Lost has never espoused any single point of view, much less a reliable one. Robert K S (talk) 09:53, 24 April 2008 (PDT)

As I said above, the question is not what the phrase 'unreliable narrator' could be made to mean literally, but what it has come to signify as an accepted term in literary criticism. It is a term that has been coined specifically to describe first-person narrators such as those in Lolita, To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, etc. The whole point of the term is that it is quite unusual, hence in the vast majority of stories it is not used. So yes, I hope we have reached a consensus that the article is redundant and that not every literary term out there can be applied to Lost.Liquidcow 16:17, 24 April 2008 (PDT)

I think it would help me understand, if somebody told me that the film "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" does not use UN. The film does not have a first-person narrator, but the current unreliable narrator article links to an article about the film, and the link implies that this 'civil war movie' is 'the quitessential example of an unreliable narrator'. I will cut and paste the link here:

• The Seven Best Civil War Movies: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ("The quintessential example of an unreliable narrator"). 2 February 2007. CS Weekly Archive. accessed 21 April 2008.

This link has contributed to my confusion. I understand that the book does use UN. But does the film use UN? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 16:46, 24 April 2008 (PDT)

Again, as I said on the other talk page, this is apples and oranges. Regardless of the story device used on a book or film which is a self-contained story, comparison cannot be rightly made to separate plot points in an on-going story known as episodes. Boone lives to have another adventure until he dies; Shannon lives to have more adventures until she dies. The story was not finished, therefore, the UN cannot be applied to a small portion of their story, a plot point known as an episode (akin to a chapter in a book). -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 00:29, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

You did not answer my question, and I do not know why: "Does the film use UN" ? I only ask because LiquidCow seems to suggest that UN must use "first-person narrators", and Robert K S is suggesting that UN can only happen in tv/film if there is a voice-over narrator. Perhaps they can answer whether they believe An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge uses UN? That film doesn't have a first-person narrator, and does not have any voiceovers whatsoever. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 01:09, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

I gave you an answer; you apparently just don't like it. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 02:23, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

Reasons to delete - disputed

I am going to attempt to list the reasons that other people say this article should be deleted, and I'll explain my counter-argument for each one:

• Argument #1: Delete this article, because there are no examples:
  • Counter-argument: The only reason this article doesn't have any examples, is because an editor deleted them all while this discussion was still underway. The current state of the article should not be used as a reason to delete it. In essence, the article is "under construction".
• Argument #2: Delete this article, because UN can only be used when there is a first person narrator.
  • Counter-argument: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge does not have a first person narrator, and yet reliable sources consider it "The quintessential example of an unreliable narrator".
• Argument #3: Delete this article, because UN can only be used in tv/film when there is voice-over narration.
  • Counter-argument: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge does not have voice-over narration, and yet reliable sources consider it "The quintessential example of an unreliable narrator".
• Argument #4: Delete this article, because UN is a story device, and portions (or episodes) of Lost are not stories and therefore cannot have UN.
  • Counter-argument: Lost has story within a story and story arcs, and both of those things can have UN.

-- Dagg talk contribs4 8 07:13, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

• I don't mean to disrespect, but I just want to understand: So this is going to go on until everybody else just gives up? All those arguments have been discussed. We (as those who oppose the article) do not accept those examples, deleted or not. That doesn't mean we're right, but it just means that we've already made our point on that. Actually the other three arguments are debatable, but the first one: Everyone told what they thought about it and you seem to be the only one who's convinced that they count. I repeat: I personally advocated those examples as UN, but in the end even I was not convinced. So enough is enough. I don't see a point in pushing it so far. I'm sick of this discussion, and I really want to unwatch this goner page and the literary techniques page, just because of this discussion popping out of nowhere, over and over again. But I also don't want to unwatch it because the minute we stop arguing, you'll have another argument, saying that there's no opposition to your argument, so the page has to stay. But there is opposition, there always has been.

Again: dreams and visions should not count, because they're just there for effect. Yes, maybe if this was a movie that used these dreams and visions all the time--This is not the case on Lost. Visions are almost always known to be visions, as dreams to be dreams, but there are some instances where it's not obvious at first, but they're very temporary examples. And they do not apply. Here's why:

An Unreliable Narrator tells you some things are true while they're false. Lost never does that. It shows you visions, but never says that they're true: You know the Island makes people see visions all the time right from the beginning (White Rabbit). So if you make assumptions, don't blame the show and say that it lies. It doesn't. That's why many people look for voice-over or first-person narration. Because these are the kinds of movies that tell you that what they're saying is true while it's not. Lost is not such a narrator. It tells you the truth all the time. It shows flashbacks (which are not memories), Island events (which are not "all in someone's mind") and flashforwards (which are not hopes and dreams). And it shows you dreams and visions, that are known to be dreams and visions (like Yemi). Then, it shows you some dreams that are not revealed from the beginning, but does not tell you (as an unreliable narrator would do) that it's true. You just assume it is. Your fault. A better example would be:

A reliable narrator could, to maintain the effect, tell you about their dream, without telling you that it's a dream right away. Let's say that they begin the chapter (equivalent of an episode) just as they begin each chapter:

"I was running through the streets. The rain was pouring down. I saw many of my friends, they were screaming for help, but weren't really in danger. I knew that I wasn't going to make it, but I had to try anyway... Then I woke up. It was all a dream, but I was still very frightened."

I know that sucks writing-wise but I wrote it as I went. It sucks even as a simple example. But what I mean is, can you say that a narrator is unreliable just because they withheld the revelation only to give you the feel of the dream? --     c      blacxthornE      t     14:39, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

A narrator is someone who says "This is this and that is that." Lost only shows and never tells. I don't see how the person of the narrator (first person vs. third person) is material. Fix your Argument #2 to remove the words "first person" and then try to refute it. Robert K S (talk) 15:56, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

I apologize for frustrating some of you. I'll try to ask my original question again: "Does the film "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" use UN?" That movie only 'shows', and never 'tells'. The movie doesn't have any voice-over narration, or any dialog whatsoever, but I was told by LOSTonthisdarnisland that is was the "quintessential example" of UN. There are only 2 possibilities: 1. LOSTonthisdarnisland added the example mistakenly, and the film is not UN or 2. The film is UN, even though it doesn't have a narrator. Which is it? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 16:18, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

I haven't seen the film version, so I can't comment on it. I'm not trying to be tricky here. I don't see how it's reasonable to say that something has a narrator if there's no narration. The Princess Bride has a narrator. Desperate Housewives has a narrator. Scrubs has a narrator. Lost doesn't have a narrator. Before we can even talk about an unreliable narrator, we have to establish a narrator. Robert K S (talk) 16:32, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

Maybe you now understand my confusion. Why was it suggested that a film that doesn't have a narrator is a ""quintessential example" of UN? You can watch the film on Youtube if you want to see what I'm talking about (you can just watch Part 1 and Part 3 if you just want to see the "setup" and "revelation"). -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 16:45, 25 April 2008 (PDT)

• I linked to a reliable source which said the story is a QE of UN, on which the film was later based ("The quintessential example of an unreliable narrator, Ambrose Bierce's unforgettable short story became the source of a short film by Robert Enrico."). So your confusion may lie with either not reading what I wrote carefully enough, not going to the link I provided, and/or wanting to believe what you want to believe and paraphrasing me inappropriately. Again, no one seems to agree with you; consensus does not mean you argue with everyone and become the last man standing. You said you are confused, and you do not seem to understand what UN is and what it is not; therefore, you can not even be sure yourself that your points are correct. I kindly suggest you give this argument up, because from here on out, it's just us repeating ourselves to you ad nauseam. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 02:25, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

• I read what you wrote very carefully. Here is what actually happened. I don't know if you did this to purposely misinform me, or if you did not read my original question (listed below) carefully enough:

• I asked: "Does anyone have a reliable source for the definition of "unreliable narrator" as it relates to TV/Movies?" [1]
• You replied: "I have some in my posts on this talk page; I'll move one I think we can agree with to the article." [2]
• And here is the link you made on the article: "The Seven Best Civil War Movies: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ("The quintessential example of an unreliable narrator"). 2 February 2007. CS Weekly Archive. accessed 21 April 2008."

• This link is (and still is) extremely deceptive, because you titled it The Seven Best Civil War Movies ... 'The quintessential example of an unreliable narrator'. The link and surrounding text strongly imply that the movie uses UN. And you added that link in direct response to my question about UN in TV/Movies. Why did you add that link as a response to my question about UN in TV/movies? This is the heart of my confusion. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 08:18, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

• I said it could have been any one and/or up to the three things I mentioned; not going to the link I provided(or not reading it carefully enough) must have been the fault. While "I have some in my posts on this talk page; I'll move one I think we can agree with to the article. Feel free to add more" had some instead of some links, links was implied. The context of the proceeding part of that particular post is where you should concentrate before quoting me out-of-context. I was not directly answering any question about TV and Movies; in fact, I specifically said I read the story but had not watched the film. I'm not interested in watching the film, because it makes not a bit of difference in the determination related to Lost because the film would, again, be the entire story we are being told, not plot points like you keep arguing to include. I was saying the forum link was not an appropriate external link, and (related to external links) I had already posted some in a separate post that we could agree upon. That last part should have also indicated context; I was not providing new links to answering any questions (your question "Does anyone have a reliable source" indicates someone providing a new source), but talking about external links I'd already posted. The title of the webpage is used in correct citation manner for external links. Again, following through and actually reading the blurb on the website, you should have seen it clearly states the story is the UN. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 09:15, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

• Any reasonable person would think you were responding [3] to my post [4] , because you wanted to answer my direct question about 'UN in TV/movies'. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 09:36, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

• Only if they didn't pay attention to where I specifically said I read the story, but had not watched the film, and if they did not pay attention to where I was bringing old links to external links as I was discussing rather than finding new links as you were looking for. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 10:09, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

In my opinion, Owl Creek does employ the UN device. It is certainly a legitimate film term and used by many credible writers - unfortunately, I have yet to find a useful 'cut and paste' definition to help this along. But for another example of a film using this technique, Google "Rashomon" and UN. Personally I feel that this technique can be used without a person literally vocalising the story and that the camera and POV can be the narrator, but can I see why many would disagree. Either way, it still feels like there is enough to validate the article as analysis of a technique that may be applicable to Lost.--TechNic|talk|conts 08:55, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

If you feel that way, and you have good reasons for doing so outside of your own opinion, there should be no problem providing a multiplicity of references to bolster the argument. Until then, it's an argument, one that essentially redefines the word "narrator" to mean whatever is serviceable. If camera and POV can be the narrator, can dialogue? Are all Ben's lies examples of an unreliable narrator, just because they might have been at some point believable? How far does the metaphor extend? Robert K S (talk) 09:19, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

I don't believe it is redefining the word. This dictionary gives its first definition as "To tell (a story, for example) in speech or writing or by means of images.". No, I don't consider dialogue to be the same. The narrator would tell the story of what is happening, whereas the dialogue is part of what is actually happening. I consider the term to apply in the broader sense to describe the narrative technique, rather than the more literal interpretation of a person providing a commentary.--TechNic|talk|conts 09:37, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

AOAOC definitely employs UN in the story; it's very often used to teach UN related to analysis of story, not plot. It doesn't matter if the film version uses UN or not, because, again, it's an entire story. Lost as a whole is the story, episodes and parts of episodes are plot, which is the defining factor on which we need to concentrate. Then, since there can be no Lost plot examples—story devices are not used to analyse plot points—we need to decide whether this needs to be retained, if the bit on literary techniques is sufficient, or if we dispose of the entire thing. I vote dispose of it all. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 10:09, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

I have disputed this point several times now, and I do not believe it has been addressed. You are arguing that Lost cannot have examples of UN, because any sub-parts of Lost are not sub-stories, and cannot have UN. I disagree, because Lost does have stories within stories, and story arcs, and both of those things can have UN. For example, the story of Boone's hallucination can easily be discussed as a story-within-a-story. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 10:42, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

Dispute not valid

• "A first person narrator who, because of specific biases and/or limitations in his/her ability to understand what is being witnessed, presents an inaccurate account of the events and/or characters of the story. The reader must decipher what has really happened by understanding the limitations of the narrator, recognizing narratorial unreliability from clues provided by the author." [5]
• "The first person narrator can relate only what he/she sees, feels, knows and thinks. The reader therefore gets to know this character very well and may sympathize and identify with him/her. First-person narratives are often exciting, convincing and engaging. However, they may also be deceptive as the narrator may not always be reliable. Example: Edgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart" The narrator of this horror story is raving mad. He has killed an old man because he was repelled by his staring eye. He is telling the story of how and why he did this and how the crime was eventually discovered. Throughout the story he claims to be sane though the events and the tone of the narrative demonstrate the opposite. Clearly a case of the unreliable narrator." [6]
• "The narrator is considered an unreliable narrator since the story is told only from her point of view in a series of secretly written journal entries. As her mental health deteriotes so does her writing. She is considered an unreliable narrator since we only know her emotions and feelings and she suffers a mental breakdown." (Teacher answer)[7]
• (regarding Poe's short story:) "The Cask of Amontillado, which first appeared in Godey's Lady's Book in 1846, is a classic example of the use of an unreliable narrator. Montresor tells his tale of revenge smugly, as he invites the reader to applaud his cleverness much like the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart." By telling the story from Montresor's point of view, Poe forces the reader to look into the inner workings of a murderer's mind." [8]
• "An imaginary storyteller or character who describes what he witnesses accurately, but misinterpets those events because of faulty perception, personal bias, or limited understanding. Often the writer or poet creating such an unreliable narrator leaves clues so that readers will perceive the unreliablity and question the interpretations offered. Examples of unreliable narrators arguably include "Geoffrey the pilgrim" in the Canterbury Tales, the character of Forest Gump in the movie of the same name, and possibly Wilson in "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber." [9]
• "In a first person narrative, there is always some value in considering the reliability of the narrator. “An unreliable narrator reveals an interpretation of events that is somehow different from the author’s own interpretation of those events. Often, the unreliable narrator’s perception of plot, characters, and setting becomes the actual subject of the story, as in Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener.’ Narrators can be unreliable for a number of reasons: they might lack self-knowledge (like Melville’s lawyer), they might be inexperienced, they might even be insane." [10]
• "A narrator who misinterprets the story due to prejudice, madness, etc." [11]
• In each of these, note it is the entire story, not a story within a story, not a part of the plot, and not a chapter. Why can't it be, Dagg? Because that's not UN, no matter how much you argue you'd like it to be. Here are a multitude of examples from reliable sources that make the point clear. ---- LOSTonthisdarnisland 11:11, 27 April 2008 (PDT)
  • Many of the examples immediately above claim that UN must be a first-person narrator; but the short story version (and the film version) of An Occurrence at Oak Creek Bridge does not have first-person narration (here is the text of the story for anyone who hasn't read it: Project Gutenberg). Can we agree that a UN does not have to include a first-person narrator? I want to clear up this particular point, because if we used some of the definitions above, then the short story An Occurrence at Oak Creek Bridge could not be included as UN. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 15:36, 27 April 2008 (PDT)
  • Second point: There are books (and films, such as Rashomon) that have multiple UN [12]. Can we agree that if a story has multiple UN, then each UN must apply to a sub-part of the story? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 15:36, 27 April 2008 (PDT)
    • You are focusing on the wrong thing here with AOAOCB, which was given as an example to try to straighten out your misconceptions. We are not Wikipedia; we are not creating a general article to analyse AOAOCB or any other story! Focus, please, instead on each reference, showing you are greatly mistaken about parts of stories because each reliable source states UN relates to the entire story. In "The Cask of Amontillado, Montresor is the narrator, he is unreliable because he is telling the story from the point-of-view of being a murderer, so the story employs UN. Forest Gump in Forest Gump has lower than average intelligence which leads to him not understanding some things in life, so his perception is unreliable as a narrator, so the story employs UN. In each case, analysis does not point incorrectly to 30 different instances within the book or film, and state each is an example of UN. Instead, analysis would properly state the story employs UN, and then cite supporting evidence of that claim including each reference where the narrator misunderstood the world around him, was insane, etc. Likewise, with the misapplied "multiple UN", notice the incorrect usage is being found on forums and blogs! So, no, we cannot agree with your mistaken conclusion. There can be multiple narrators, each of whom are unreliable, but that makes the entire story employ UN. Let me explain. Each narrator tells the story from their point-of-view, but the stories conflict more than the allowable minor differences found in parallel views. This means the entire story is suspect, because we are not sure which point-of-view is the correct one, if any of them are, or if it's a case of parts of each point-of-view will be "reality". Therefore, the entire story is analysed as UN because it is unreliable to the audience. Since this is again moving far beyond the scope of Lost (i.e., again, we are Lostpedia, not Wikipedia), I draw focus back to Lost, the plot of which cannot be analysed using a story device. Finally, I point out again Boone, Shannon, and Locke exist before and beyond the example of Boone's vision; it is not a story within a story. Dagg, at this point, I can only suggest a good class on literary analysis, because we are not here to teach you terms which confuse you in the limited space and time we each have available to spend on this wiki. Literary analysis is a complex subject; it would be like someone coming here talking about calculus terms or scientific terms or theological terms, and not understanding them properly, arguing them to death against those who do understand them. It becomes an effort in futility because you are not applying them correctly, you are just stating 'what about this', and 'what about that', citing improper examples or examples that use the term improperly. Therefore, there has to come a point where consensus has to be drawn despite one person being told repeatedly he is wrong and still not giving up his wrong conclusions. ---- LOSTonthisdarnisland 21:00, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

Added more external links

I added some more external links to Entertainment Weekly, the Jay and Jack podcast, The Washington Post, and a "cryptic" ( :) ) post by Gregg Nations. The Jay and Jack podcast is a questionable link, but I included it, because Lostpedia does list that podcast on the Unofficial podcasts page, and may therefore be interesting to Lostpedia readers. The rest of the links all seem relevant to Lost, and they all seem reliable enough for an external link on a Lostpedia page. For example, the fact that editors at Entertainment Weekly and The Washington Post question whether Lost uses "Unreliable Narrator" is interesting. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 17:53, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

• I removed the one you point out is questionable because caller question =/= reliable source. NB the Washington Post link states "the hint that the "Lost" story -- like this book -- may be told by one or more unreliable narrators", shows they think the entire story employs UN (the only other mention of UN is related to a book, not Lost). This, again, supports you are incorrect in your assessment regarding parts of the overall Lost story. ---- LOSTonthisdarnisland 21:00, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

Added Literary references to unreliable narrators

I added a new section to the article for "Literary references to unreliable narrators". This new section follows the same format used in Dreams and visions#Literary references to dreams and visions, and a few other pages on this site. I copied the list of books from the referenced EW.com article. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 18:28, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

• This isn't Wikipedia. Fleshing out the aricle when there are no Lost examples is an effort in futility. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 21:00, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

Reasons to keep

Here are some reasons to keep this article:

• Several vocal editors believe that: "The Lost story itself is sometimes viewed as the unreliable narrator, utilizing various literary techniques in the plot to manipulate the audience."
• At least 3 books referenced on the show has Unreliable Narrators. I'm not suggesting that the writers specifically chose these 3 books because they have Unreliable Narrators, but the editor at EW.com is suggesting just that.
• Several reliable sources, such as Washington Post editors and an editor at EW.com have publicly and verifiably discussed UN as it relates to Lost.
• Dozens of blog postings and forum posts have been dedicated to the discussion of UN as it relates to Lost. I understand that these are not reliable sources, but it illustrates that the Lost community clearly has an interest in the topic.

I think Lostpedia is better off with this article, then without. I understand it may be difficult for people to continuously keep up with editors that may misunderstand, or misuse terms, but this is a wiki, and will continuously need edited, fixed, and improved. People are going to keep adding stuff that other people disagree with, and people will get frustrated... but the wiki will always (against all odds, it seems) continue to get better. Best of luck, and I thank all of you for patiently answering my many questions. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 22:08, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

• Books referenced within Lost which employ UN are added as separate book pages with information about each book. Maintaining a separate literary analysis article solely for the purpose of mentioning the books with Lost as an afterthought, moves focus to the books rather than Lost, and again, this isn't Wikipedia. If consensus determines LP feels UN is employed by the Lost story, then a "Similarities and shared themes" mention on each relevant book article would suffice. The only reason we have a separate page for Dreams and visions is because there are Lost specific examples to reference on the article. Otherwise, there'd only need to be a subsection mention on the book pages. It's the difference between examining Lost, and examing the books with Lost in mind.
• If the Lost story as analysed by reliable sources (NOT blogs and forums) becomes the reason for retaining this article, that information must be reported responsibly. Either way, the technique needs to be removed from the literary portal because it promotes the confusion leading editors to use it on Lost examples.
• Finally, all these points appear to be covered by Dreams_and_visions#Literary_references_to_dreams_and_visions. ---- LOSTonthisdarnisland 00:10, 28 April 2008 (PDT)

Poll

This has gone on now for over 90 kilobytes. We need to come to a decisions as soon as possible so this long discussion can be archived. Delete or retain as small blurb on Literary techniques. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 12:01, 28 April 2008 (PDT)

• Retain: I've thought long and hard about this, and I believe that Lostpedia is better off with this article then without. I used this criteria: 1. Does the article have enough content to justify its own article? In my opinion, yes. 2. Is the term, itself, legitimate? Yes, definitely. 3. Does the Lost community use the term when discussing Lost? Yes: see references for Entertainment Weekly and Washington Post. 4. Does the Lost creative team consider UN when creating the show? I say 'yes', because 3 UN books have been shown on the show, and Gregg Nations used the term when answering a question from a fan. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 12:17, 28 April 2008 (PDT)
• Retain +: :For what it's worth, I went and checked out the article in question. I had assumed it would be about how maybe the flashbacks aren't reliable - that they represent fallible memories, a theory I disagree with. But actually, the article is trying to figure out what the significance is of the Swan orientation film being hidden in the novel The Turn of The Screw. The article suggests that the writers might be trying to get us to pay attention to the idea of the unreliable narrator (within the show - not as a technique of the show), suggesting maybe Desmond's story is suspect or perhaps the story suggested by the film. I personally doubt the former but could support the latter. This link might be valuable on the literature and Swan Orientation film pages. We have seen evidence that DHARMA edits and even falsifies information in it's films - on the other hand we haven't seen much evidence of Desmond doing the same. So I would suggest it belongs on the other two pages but not the Desmond page except if just for completeness sake. That said, I think the "unreliable narrator" idea is *only* supportable as a commentary on the dialogue and artifacts found within the plot - I don't think the show itself uses it as a technique in the writing of the plot. --Jackdavinci 23:40, 28 April 2008 (PDT)
• Retain: It is a legitimate term and is applicable to elements within Lost. Analysis of this and structed arguement over its use would be good for the article.--TechNic|talk|conts 09:40, 30 April 2008 (PDT)

Discussion

• (answering Jack above in the poll section:) Since it cannot support plot because it's a story device, this becomes a moot point, no? One incorrect usage doesn't redefine an established definition of a term as evidenced by multiple reliable sources which define it properly. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 08:10, 29 April 2008 (PDT)

I am moving have moved this discussion to a separate section. The response below from LOSTonthisdarnisland was given to Jackdavinci's poll decision directly above. Please keep the poll "clean". Anyone is free to modify their own poll "decision" at any time, but all replies should go into a new section, or this section. Best of luck, -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 08:53, 30 April 2008 (PDT)

• • I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say. Are you saying that UN cannot refer to "stories within stories"? I don't think that's clear from looking at the wikipedia article. Otherwise we'd need some sort of additional terminology for unreliable narrators within stories. --Jackdavinci 11:50, 29 April 2008 (PDT)
    • What I'm trying to say is [[unreliable narrator]] has been around since (IIRC) 1961; we shouldn't be attempting to redefine it here. I think the confusion stems from, for example, reading the Washington Post editors write Desmond is a narrator and write Desmond is unreliable in that capacity, then drawing a false conclusion that Desmond is an [[unreliable narrator]]; this is not correct. Understood correctly, the WPeditors say Desmond is a narrator who is unreliable, "unreliable narrator" in only the loosest descriptive sense, but this should not to be confused with [[unreliable narrator]], a literary (story, not plot) device. Linking Desmond to unreliable narrator indicates a person is a literary device. Wikipedia is not clear; that's why I included a number of links above to reliable sources which provide clearer understanding. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 07:32, 30 April 2008 (PDT)
      • Wow I hadn't realized how much discussion had already happened when I joined the fray. I've read all the arguments above now and your various links. I'm sorry but I just can't agree with you that somehow stories within stories are magically immune from using literary devices. It seems silly to me to state that writing a story from multiple viewpoints or with different levels creates some kind of shield or barrier to analysis. I believe stories-within-stories or even parts of stories that are clearly stylistically unique from other parts of the same story, can themselves be analyzed in the same manner as their envelope stories. I think the multiple narrator argument above is a solid one - each narrator is a UN, not the story as a whole. I agree that Lost's camera-as-narrator is generally reliable even in the flashbacks (except in the sense of that the producers purposely sometimes limit where they point the camera), but I do think that the use of UN in the stories within a story is an integral part of the plot and style of the show. --Jackdavinci 08:01, 30 April 2008 (PDT)

I hate to say that, but it's all screwed up again. This is not how a poll is supposed to take place. You turned it into another so-called "discussion". But I have to say that this is not a discussion, but a broken record simulation. Everyday I take a look at this page and I feel like it's all February 2nd again. --     c      blacxthornE      t     08:29, 30 April 2008 (PDT)

I apologise, but I felt the comments Jack made might sway people in the wrong direction based on an inaccurate representation of the Washington Post article in relation to this topic. And, Jack, I'll just comment that instead of just saying I think something is true, I provided several resources that show it's true. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 08:40, 30 April 2008 (PDT)

I think both you and others gave some good resources to argue your points. I just have a problem with your interpretation of your own sources. And I'm not sure what I said about the WP article that you think is inaccurate. --Jackdavinci 10:38, 30 April 2008 (PDT)

New proposal suggestion

I'd like to suggest a new proposal to solve this problem and the ones stemming from it. If we must retain this article (despite the comments I agree with pointing out we are not Wikipedia), then it must be modified or forked because it's just wrong as it currently stands. So my proposal entails:

1a. Rename this article Unreliable narrator (literary device) and create Unreliable narrator (person), allowing for the correct indicator of one used for story analysis, and the other used to identify, in the loosest sense, a narrator who is unreliable.

1b. (a better option, perhaps) A complete rewrite of this article, first outlining the Unreliable narrator-person (which some might—incorrectly, I feel—find examples within Lost of narrators who are unreliable), then a following section describing the literary device, with subsections under each for examples of each.

2. The NavTemplate for literary devices must be adjusted because UN is used incorrectly on it. If the article is forked, the link is adjusted to UN (person); if it is not forked, the link is adjusted to the UN (person) section of the article, and the navtemplate identifies it as such rather than simply UN.

We are a 'pedia, and if we are going to have discussions and debate over the last name of characters who aren't even identified by their last name, we must correct this because it is plainly established already, and it's being incorrectly represented. I'm proposing these changes as a compromise to try to achieve some level of accuracy. Then others can fight over whether narrators are or aren't present, etc., because it's then being discussed regarding a loose term, rather than the established device. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 09:18, 30 April 2008 (PDT)

Thanks for putting some thought into a compromise. I think you are missing the point, though. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we care about the unreliability of narrators outside of the literary sense. At issue is whether the narrator in question has to be the sole narrator of the entire story or whether if the entire story changes viewpoint during different sections, or has stories nested within the main story with a different viewpoint from the main narrative, the narrator in question can be considered just for that part of the story. I appreciate the work you did to find definitions and sources, but frankly, most of them just don't address this issue at all, and those that approach addressing it don't seem to support your view (i.e. can be either 1st or 3rd person). The only sources I've seen here that specifically address the issue of a non-continuous viewpoint story (The WP article, the multiple narrator example) support the idea that literary devices can indeed be be used for less than an entire story. Perhaps it will help to look at it this way: let's agree that Desmond and other characters are not "unreliable narrators (literary sense)". However, we could say that "Mikhail's story" or "The Pearl Orientation Film" were presented using the unreliable narrator literary device. I agree that the article should not present people as unreliable narrators (literary sense), but it *can* look at some of the specific *stories* or *narratives* told by the characters or shown in artifacts like the orientation film and the Widmore video. There is always a "narrator" associated with the UN literary device (whether it's 1st or 3rd person, a character or multiple characters, or the camera itself) but this doesn't mean that we are saying the narrator is the device itself. --Jackdavinci 11:04, 30 April 2008 (PDT)

• Jack, because I think you might have misunderstood me. This article identifies UN as "a literary device in which the narrator of a story cannot be trusted."; therefore, saying Desmond is a UN, is effectively saying Desmond is "...a literary device in which the narrator of a story cannot be trusted" (i.e., exactly "...saying the narrator is the device itself"). Therefore, if people are going to be identified as UN, the article must reflect same, rather than just saying it's a literary device. There are half a dozen definitions to choose from above, as well as more on the Internet, which would straighten this out. Then examples would need to be proven that they are narrators, and that the narrators are unreliable. Nothing so far suggests Desmond is unreliable, except one discussion between WP editors, and IIRC, they didn't support their theory with reason. (and Mikhail lying is not UN.)
• As for the rest of this, I'm finished with this discussion and this topic now. I've done everything I can to explain the proper usage, including providing links to reliable sources and attempt a compromise that might make it just a bit more accurate, just to be met with editor opinion that the world outside LP is wrong and they are correct. My level of frustration has peaked over my level of caring about this one article; my time can be much better spent not beating my head against a brick wall. If others outside LP laugh, like they did at out timeline, then at least I'll know I tried to make the corrections. -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 19:42, 30 April 2008 (PDT)

Does the article have enough content to justify its own article?

This is its problem. The article's content is entirely dedicated to justification of the article's existence. There's no substantive material here, only tidbits that seem like arguments. Any time an article is mostly arguments for itself, it's gotta go. (As I'm not a disinterested party, I won't be the one to delete it.) Robert K S (talk) 22:10, 6 May 2008 (PDT)

• There was a long discussion earlier. I learned a lot about unreliable narrator, and I still think the literary term is relevant to the show. I'm willing to go with whatever the consensus wants to do with this article, but I think the readers of Lostpedia are interested in these "tidbits" from ew.com, the Washington Post, etc. If we deleted this content, then I think it brings us down the road of deleting other "analysis" articles like Apophenia, and Verisimilitude which (unlike this article) do not have any references from reliable sources. It sounds like you are suggesting we should delete this content, so I'll ask the question: Does it improve Lostpedia if we start deleting these "tidbits" ? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 23:08, 6 May 2008 (PDT)
  • Yes, when those "tidbits" are argumentative BS, like making Ben's sequence of lies about being Henry Gale out to be a "narration", as if he were telling a fictional story for the purpose of entertainment. Ben is not an "unreliable narrator", he is simply a liar. Robert K S (talk) 07:28, 8 May 2008 (PDT)
    • All "analysis" is subjective, and therefore argumentative. I would contend that the symbolism article has much more subjective content, and yet that article was made a "featured article". By all means, if noone else on Earth can interpret Ben as an unreliable narrator during that particular story arc, we should delete the content. But what if 10% of the people see it that way? What about 49% or 51%? I don't think we should delete content in "analysis" articles with the reasoning of "some people disagree with the content". I think it is more proper for an encyclopedia to list all reasonable interpretations. One featured article on Lostpedia that shows multiple reasonable interpretations of a topic is the Economics article. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 10:17, 8 May 2008 (PDT)
      • And some lawyers hope judges and juries buy into their "reasonable interpretations" of their cases. "My client isn't guilty of perjury, your honor, he or she was just telling a fictional story to the jury and using a well-known literary device. My client isn't a liar, just an unreliable narrator." The judge wouldn't buy it, the jury wouldn't buy it, and neither does anybody else. So you have to decide what's more important to you, creating a quality article, or throwing the kitchen sink at it and hoping something sticks for the sole purpose of saving the article? Robert K S (talk) 11:27, 8 May 2008 (PDT)
        • I agree that jury's shouldn't accept that argument, because your hypothetical client lives in the real world. Ben, on the other hand, is a fictional character telling a fictional story on a television show that is scripted for the Lost audience's entertainment. There is a big difference, there. I would also agree with you if you said that all lies are not evidence of an unreliable narrator. I contend that this particular lie by Ben was different, because Ben lied about his entire back-story for the entire story arc (over several episodes). And, the key difference between a normal lie and this particular lie is that Ben's lie about his entire back-story was perpetrated on the Lost audience. Ben's real back-story was omitted in Ben's narrative only to shock the audience later in an unexpected revelation. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 11:55, 8 May 2008 (PDT)
• Unfortunately, Robert, that's another problem. You're right about not deleting it because you have been one of the participants and it seems like the right ethical choice, but you also seem to be the only still-active admin. Anyway I'm not suggesting that you delete it, and honestly I don't even care anymore. The discussion has gone so far, constantly repeating itself, and polls are just showing back up, without the previous ones even being resolved. There's a merge/delete/keep vote at the top where I voted Delete. Then there were so many new sections, which debated the same thing. The same people kept bringing up their arguments they should've summarized in that very first poll, and decided just to add new sections instead of just voting. The sections #Merge with Plot twist is a fancy Merge vote, #Alternative to merge/keep/delete is a fancy Rewrite (alternative) vote, #Consensus? is just a call for closure (still essentially about the poll), #Reasons to delete - disputed is a fancy Keep vote (section created by Dagg who also created the sections that suggested the Merge and Rewrite), #Reasons to keep is another Keep vote/section by Dagg, and #New proposal suggestion is an attempted compromise that didn't seem right. Oh, then there was another #Poll for delete/retain for whatever reason--I don't know what the hell happened to the first poll anyway--which had its own subsection of #Discussion. And now there's yet another poll under the name "#Clarification: Merge or not?", although this one is initiated by an admin. But at the end, all this... It's ridiculous. I give up. I did not vote in the newer straw polls, and I'm not going to. As long as the polls are handled like this, there's no point anyway. --     c      blacxthornE      t     23:34, 6 May 2008 (PDT)

• I think the problem is that every time there is a poll attempt, a new conversation hides it. Perhaps the poll could be moved to the bottom, with discuss on top, that way the poll is the last thing on the page. However, like Blacx (although I did vote again), I'm sick of it. It's become an argument of last man standing, rather than any attempt at consensus. I moved the poll to the bottom of the page, hoping that will help.-- LOSTonthisdarnisland 00:23, 7 May 2008 (PDT)

Added some examples

I added 2 examples to the article. Both examples assume that smaller parts of the larger Lost story can have unreliable narrators. I think these types of examples are valid, as long as they are clarified as being stories within the larger Lost story. Here is at least one source that gives an example of unreliable narration in a smaller part of a TV show: [13]. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 08:01, 7 May 2008 (PDT)

Added leading paragraph about 'analysis' in this article

I copied the idea from the symbolism article to add a leading paragraph which explains that this article contains subjective analysis. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 10:51, 8 May 2008 (PDT)

Must include third-person limited narration

Someone recently added information that (I believe) conflicts with the rest of the article. The definition was changed to include this partial sentence: "An unreliable narrator is a first-person narrator of a story ..." . This conflicts with the information that states that the third person limited narrated story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has an unreliable narrator. Here is more info:

• The short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is "the quintessential example of an unreliable narrator". [14]
• The book An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is an example "of trickster fiction that employ what lit majors call an unreliable narrator". [15]
• The short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a "classic example of the unreliable narrator". Living Lost: Why We're All Stuck On the Island (p 77-78)

This short story about Peyton Farquhar has an unreliable narrator, but does not have a first-person narrator. One reliable source says: "In An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, the third-person narrator relates the story with special emphasis on the thoughts and perceptions of the main character, Peyton Farquhar" [16]. It is easily arguable that the short story is primarily narrated from a third person limited point-of-view.

In summary, I think the current listed definition on the unreliable narrator article here on Lostpedia is incomplete. We should improve the definition so it does not exclude third-person limited narration. The show Lost is often narrated from a third-person limited perspective, so I believe this is important. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 12:08, 11 May 2008 (PDT)

I expanded the definition the best I could to include things like 3rd person, stories within stories, and different media, while also trying (not sure I totally succeeded here) to keep the definition about the "unreliable narrator" device and not about the "unreliable narrator" person. --Jackdavinci 16:39, 11 May 2008 (PDT)

Clarification: Merge or not?

Please vote without epic discussion like with Mindf*ck: merge or not with merge with Plot twist or Literary techniques, etc.

• Merge: Considering recent decision over Mindf*ck etc, I think this should be merged. --Nickb123 (Talk) 09:01, 6 May 2008 (PDT)
• Not Merge: Here is my reasoning: 1. Does the article have enough content to justify its own article? In my opinion, yes. 2. Is the term, itself, legitimate? Yes, definitely. Noone has suggested otherwise. 3. Does the Lost community use the term when discussing Lost? Yes: see references for Entertainment Weekly and Washington Post, and the dozens of blog and forum posts. 4. Does the Lost creative team consider UN when creating the show? I say 'yes', because 3 UN books have been shown on the show, and Gregg Nations used the term when answering a question from a fan. 5. An "unreliable narrator" is not a type of plot twist, so it probably shouldn't be merged there. 6. I don't think we should merge with Literary techniques, because of #1. -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 09:33, 6 May 2008 (PDT)
• Not Merge: Mostly agree with Dagg's reasons. The page could use some polishing, but it's only going to get longer as a result. What's wrong with epic discussion? ;-) --Jackdavinci 21:11, 6 May 2008 (PDT)
• Merge with Literary techniques. --Hunter61 21:23, 6 May 2008 (PDT)
• Merge with Literary techniques or delete (for reasons above) -- LOSTonthisdarnisland 00:20, 7 May 2008 (PDT)
• Not Merge: This is different from the MF issue as everyone agrees this a legitimate literary technique. As to its application in Lost (which is the dispute here), it could be argued either way, but there is enough to suggest that it is an influence on the creative team and they have applied elements of it. There is good analysis here.--TechNic|talk|conts 08:17, 7 May 2008 (PDT)
• Merge with Literary techniques. While it's a well-established literary technique, the only substantive connection to Lost is the appearance of two novels in the show that use the device, and a passing comment by Greg Nations. That can all be summed up very briefly. Examples provided of its use in Lost are so tenuous as to properly belong on Theory pages.--Hylas 08:55, 7 May 2008 (PDT)
• Merge: I'd prefer to just delete it to be honest. UN is a valid literary term, but it's not one that applies to this show. The references to books that happen to utilize the technique are inconsequential as the references relate to the themes of the books, it by no means that Lost is using the same literary technique. Analysis is subjective but only up to a point, it can be plain wrong (to describe the show as a light romance or a screwball comedy would plainly be wrong for example). There are no examples of UN in the show (the ones currently there are wrong) and hence to reason for the article to exist.Liquidcow 09:02, 10 May 2008 (PDT)

Right, no consensus unfortunately. Detagging. --Nickb123 (Talk) 07:22, 4 July 2008 (PDT)

Major changes to article

Somebody deleted some big chunks of text from this article and added the edit description as: "rem unsourced nonsense and wikipedia-type information; comment out comment; ". Could we get some clarification as to what that means? Is it a new policy of lostpedia to remove unsourced text? I thought analysis was ok here? -- Dagg talk contribs4 8 13:50, 18 June 2008 (PDT)