The Narrator

Narrator's Bias

To be credible, a narrator, like any person, must have a 'cultural background '. This cultural baggage filters and shapes the character's perception and, therefore, their 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 narrative point of view often portrays intimate first-person discourse.

Unreliable Narrator

A narrator tells the story from their personal point of view. The reader must determine the narrator’s motivation and psychology to judge the narrative’s veracity. Why is this narrator telling the story in this way? Can we trust his narrative? Some narrators withhold or distort a story to serve their personal interests. Character flaws and inconsistencies can reduce credibility. Unreliable narrators display traits that make them 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.