According to Encyclopedia Britannica, a narrator is: “one who tells a story.” In a work of fiction, the narrator determines the point of view of the story. If the narrator is the person who determines the point of view of the story, what happens when the narrator is unreliable? Ariell Cacciola explains the following: “Unreliable narrators come and go throughout literature. There are a multitude of reasons for their unreliability. Some are inherently reluctant, while others carry on with their lives while we blindly follow them on their wobbly journeys. And it is not necessarily the strict narrative that may ultimately prove untrustworthy, but the narrative structure itself. Stories can be opaque and messy, with revelations delayed. (Cacciola 8) Wieland and Carwin's Memoirs Charles Brocken Brown's biloquet is narrated by Clara Wieland, a girl who both witnesses and experiences traumatic experiences throughout the work. The reader depends on their understanding and perception of these experiences to understand what happens to the characters in the novel, but Clara repeatedly demonstrates an unreliability in her narration. She shows unnatural changes in emotions, sexual attraction to disgusting characters, distress over events, and she openly admits that the details she shares may be wrong. Clara Wieland is clearly an unreliable narrator. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay One of the first moments where Clara demonstrates faulty storytelling is on page 22, when she explains her mother's death. She said: “The shock that this disastrous event caused my mother was the basis of an illness which led her, within a few months, to the grave. My brother and I were children then and were now reduced to orphans. The possessions our parents left behind were not insignificant. (Brown 22) Clara's nonchalant way of talking about the death of her loved one is quite shocking and disturbing. After telling the reader that she was just a child when her mother died, left an orphan, she explains that the possessions left to her were of good value. Rather than focusing on the pain of losing her mother, Clara focuses on the materialistic gain of her parents' deaths. It provides details and facts rather than human emotions. The reason for this could be explained by P. Aries: “The cause of [denial of death and sorrow] is immediately obvious: the need for happiness – the moral duty and social obligation to contribute to collective happiness by avoiding any cause of happiness. sadness or boredom, always appearing happy, even in the depths of despair. By showing the slightest sign of sadness, we sin against happiness, we threaten it, and society then resists losing its reason for being.” (Aries 94) Aries explains that showing sadness is sinning against happiness: crying is limiting progress. In this situation, Clara's progression lies in the fact that she now owns property, which is very rare for a girl in her time. This idea of ​​the need for constant progression in America is supported by KJ Gergen in The Social Constructionist Movement in Modern Psychology: “These cultural messages about grief arose from several interlocking discursive movements over the past 150 years. The first contextual factor was related to the move towards a modernist society in which the emphasis is on productivity, efficiency, science, logic and, above all, individualism. Clara's demonstrated need for progression demonstratesalso a lack of ability to focus on the emotional side of problems rather than always maintaining efficiency. The lack of emotion regarding the deaths of her mother and father highlights the fact that she has not learned the tools necessary to cope with the events in her life, so there is a feeling of instability in his character. Clara further exposes this instability on page 98 after hearing a strange voice: “I cannot describe the state of my thoughts at that moment. Surprise had dominated my faculties. My body shook and the vital current froze. I was only aware of the vehemence of my sensations. This condition could not last. Like a tide that suddenly rises to an overwhelming height, then gradually subsides, my confusion slowly gave way to order and my tumult to calm. (Brown 98) Clara's emotions rise and fall quickly and for no logical reason: it seems that she has no control over her emotional state. The unnatural lack of emotion felt at his mother's death is contrasted by this passage about a sudden surge of emotional stability. The problem with this reality is that it shows the reader that the events she shares are told through emotion and not logic. The only perspective of the story that readers are privy to is that of an illogical narrator. Clara's sexual attraction to Carwin is another reason for her unreliability as a narrator. This is his reaction when he saw him for the first time: “I saw the face of the stranger. The impression he produced was vivid and deleble. His cheeks were pale and flabby, his eyes sunken, his forehead shadowed by large scattered hairs, his teeth large and irregular” (60). She then ends her description by saying: “Every feature was of great beauty and the outline of his face was reminiscent of an inverted cone. » (61) This description alone makes it clear that Carwin is in no way attractive or appealing. The description creates a feeling of revulsion and disgust towards Carwin, as well as a feeling of distrust towards his character. However, Clara proves her unreliability as a narrator when she allows her own personal feelings to alter readers' view of Carwin. She lets her repressed sexual desire determine how Carwin will be portrayed. She said: “And yet his forehead, as far as his shaggy locks allow to be seen, his eyes of a brilliant black, and possessing, in the midst of the haggardness, a radiance inexpressibly serene and powerful, and something in the rest of his features. Essential elements of the portrait, which it would be vain to describe, but which bore witness to a spirit of the highest level. This, in the effects which immediately followed from it, I count among the most extraordinary incidents of my life. (61) Although she views his face as comparable to an inverted cone, Clara now feels a sense of attachment and attraction to Carwin. How can readers trust a narrator who changes her mind about a character based solely on sexual attraction? Attraction is fleeting and not based in fact, so a character's perception cannot be consistent with the facts. By allowing her emotions and sense of attraction toward the characters to shape her depiction of them, Clara demonstrates that her view of the events around her is inconsistent and unreliable. Clara is an unreliable narrator because she is no longer strictly an observer: she is now focused on her own ghosts. She explains it on page 95: “Thus I was afflicted by opposing conjectures: thus I was tormented by phantoms of my own creation. It was not always this way. I can know the date when my mind wasvictim of this imbecility; perhaps it was contemporary with the outbreak of a fatal passion; a passion which will never class me among the number of his panegyrics; this alone was enough for the extermination of my peace” (95). Clara can no longer provide a thorough explanation of what is happening around her because she is now grappling with her own personal trials. On page 267, she explains her lack of interest in her life: “Surely I had reason to grow weary of existence, to be impatient with every link that held me from the grave. I experienced this impatience to its fullest extent. Not only was I in love with death, but I understood, from the state of my body, that avoiding it was impossible” (267). She does not focus on the activities around her, but rather on the problems she is facing in her head. These issues can also affect her view of events that occur, as she views them with bias. This idea is proven when she talks about the evolution of her beliefs on page 104: “I thought that certain evils could never happen to a being in possession of a healthy mind; that true virtue provides us with an energy that vice can never resist; that it was always in our power to hinder, by one's own death, the designs of an enemy who aims less than our life. How is it that a feeling like despair now invades me, and that I trust to the protection of chance or to the pity of my persecutor? The events that occur in Clara's life change her views and beliefs: this demonstrates that she is not telling the story with an impartial mind. The novel is limited to his personal beliefs and understanding. Clara's understanding of life has limits: her life experience, her interests, and her ability to understand events. In her description of Carwin, she showed his lack of ability to understand situations beyond her limits of understanding: her perception of him was based solely on her attraction to him, not on facts obvious to those around her. This alone creates an unreliability, but the added fact that she is affected by the mystery to the point that she changes her beliefs means that there is no consistency for readers to follow. Clara herself admits that her account will be flawed. On page 167, she explains the following: “My story can be overrun with inaccuracy and confusion; but if I no longer live, I will at least live to finish it. What can we expect, if not ambiguities, abruptness and dark transitions, from the historian who is at the same time a victim of these disasters? (167) First, Clara admits that she may share inaccurate details that have been affected by the confusion: this raises the question of how inaccurate this will be? How credible is this? Next, Clara supports the previous argument made by explaining that her explanations of the events are completely biased because she was a victim of these events. All facts and details come from his memory: some facts are too painful to share, and others are completely subjective and based solely on his understanding and feelings about what happened. There are some facts that she was not even aware of: for example, in a conversation with Wieland, she said the following: "After a silence and a conflict that I could not interpret, he looked up at the sky” (174). Clara can only share her thoughts and the words of others: she cannot share the thoughts of those around her. The words of the other characters that she shares are further filtered by her understanding or interpretation of what they say. Another example of this comes from when Wieland.