The Narrator

Narrator's Bias

In order to be credible, a narrator, like any person, must have a 'cultural background '. This cultural baggage filters and influences the character's perception and therefore the character's narrative discourse.

Gaze

Gaze is a term that usually refers to the predominantly male gaze of Hollywood cinema in which camera angles and film editing tend to depict women as objects perceived by voyeuristic men. Gaze can refer to any biased, filtered, point-of-view such as racist, anarchist, humanist, etc.

Scopophilia

Scopophilia which means 'the love of looking ' refers to a voyeuristic gaze. This is a narrative point-of-view that is often used to portray intimate first-person discourse.

Unreliable Narrator

A narrator tells the story from his or her personal point-of-view. It is important for the reader to determine the motivation and psychology of the character assumed by the narrator in order to decide what is the veracity of the narrative. Why is this narrator telling the story in this way? Can we trust his narrative? Certain narrators withhold or distort a story according to their personal interests. The character flaws and incongruencies can reduce credibility. Unreliable narrators display traits that render themselves untrustworthy and their rendition of events must be taken with a grain of salt.

Unreliable narrators usually speak in the first-person, since this form of narration tends to underline the motives for telling a story. Consequently, the narrators of memoirs and autobiographies should probably be considered unreliable.