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LaPlante's chapter, How Reliable Is This Narrator?: How Point of View Affects Our Understanding was a pretty interesting chapter on whether we should believe a narrator as reliable and true or unreliable and how it affects point of view/story. After reading this, I now have to consider whether the narrator in my story is reliable or not. One thing that struck me was on page 236 in the bottom middle paragraph that begins with, “And now, a convention alert”. LaPlante is basically saying the showing is always reliable even if the narrator is unreliable and the telling is not or potentially isn’t. While I do understand where this coming from, I’m not sure if I agree with her. Not everyone is truthful as we all often exaggerate stories when talking to others. However, I don’t necessarily think that what she says is true because the showing is sometimes not truthful especially if we or a character wants to bloat about things. For example, in the epic Beowulf, Beowulf talks about these great achievements that may have never happened, especially when he is talking about the swimming race he lost. He makes it dramatic and says that he fought sea monsters and stuff and who knows if that is true? Sure, that’s the telling, but the way he describes the environment could also be false. Sort of like when we say, “It was a dark and stormy night” when in fact it was just a windy night or not even night. Márquez’s A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings I think is a good example of when a narrator is a not reliable. I highly doubt that an angel fell out of the sky and is injured there. Especially an old one. I am not very religious but I don’t think that Angels age. Pelayo and his wife Elisenda have a very sick child and I feel like it is a tall tale of their trials and tribulations of taking care of their child. At the very end of the story the Angel gets up and slowly flies away and in the beginning someone says that the Angel was there for their child. I assume that the illness was long gone now so it was almost a symbolic defeat of death that the family overcame. The last sentence of the story on page 256”… because he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea”. Is the narrator really speaking about the Angel or the disease that plagued the child?
ReplyDelete-Marco Garza
Chapter Seven of LaPlante’s text covered something that I’ve mentioned in the feedback that I’ve given to several people in the past, the reliability of the narrator. It’s something that I’ve always found really important and have tried to play around with in the past. However, I was surprised to find out that LaPlante states that a third person narrator is, by definition, always reliable. I never saw it this way, though I have to agree that a first person narrator is to some extent inherently questionable, a third person narrator as someone removed from the story and unknown to the reader is something I always perceived to be just as questionable. As we saw in the previous chapter covering point of view, a third person narrator can engage in commentary, have values, and express certain thoughts towards the narrative. If that’s the case, then isn’t it flawed to say that by definition the third person narrator is always reliable. According to LaPlante, the only time when that reliability comes into question is when we are told something that doesn’t make sense, such as the character’s transformation in “The Metamorphosis”. However, I think that’s too absolute of an approach towards fiction writing.
ReplyDelete-Joaquin Castillo Jr
LaPlante chapter 7 “How Reliable Is This Narrator?: How Point of View Affects Our Understanding” was pretty interesting to read. She talks about First person and Third Person Point of view and of how reliable the narrator is something that I had not given much of a thought of before reading this chapter. In this chapter LaPlante gives out plenty of limitations that each point of view has when it comes to questioning the narrator’s reliability on presenting the story. For example like in the third person point of view the narrator should always be reliable. The short story “The man with the enormous wings” by Marqez was interesting to read. I was not to fond of the story though. I hated the way the family had treated the Angel when they found him. Keeping him locked up in a chicken coop and charging people to see him was just cruel. The fact that they profited so much from him and still kept him in such horrible living conditions is what angered me the most. The angel did not deserve that kind of treatment. This story seemed like it could happen in real life, that would be the same reaction people would have if they were able to see an angel in real life.
ReplyDelete-Leslie Perez
LaPlante’s chapter 7 “How Reliable Is This Narrator?” addresses the fact that writing in a different point of view will change the narrator’s reliability. Just as a reader, subconsciously we decide on what we decide is the reliable information. First person point of view will always have its limits. LaPlante lists them as they will apply no matter what the case is. She also makes it a key point that we can trust dialogue and that the emotional truth revealed from the narration is also real. As a writer, an unreliable narrator can be used to your advantage if done properly. We might be given false information, but the truth we are getting is about the narrator which is deeper that anything they could have said. Although the difference between using it properly and not is that you must show the reader that you are aware of the narrator’s limitations and therefore are knowingly shaping the piece this way. Third person will always be reliable since they are an outsider from the story. There are different options listed in the chapter to interpret a third person piece and to understand the reliability of it. Third person does not have limitations in the same way first person does because it is not a character built with its flaws.
ReplyDelete-Gabriela Urbano
I enjoyed this week’s LaPlante chapter because the idea of the unreliable narrator is something that I enjoy to see explored in stories, it is something that is entertaining because it can throw the reader off, surprise them, and sometimes shock them. This uneasiness or instability that comes from an unreliable narrator is exciting, it has so much potential, and some of my favorite stories have been like this such as American Psycho where we see everything through Patrick Bateman`s eyes, his life is filled with so much, and by the end so much has gone on that readers can’t exactly tell what was real and what wasn’t. One of the things I like about the unreliable narrator is that it isn’t lying to me it’s not trying to sell me some idea on purpose, it’s an accident, maybe some things that the narrator witnesses or tells us about do happen, just maybe in a different order or maybe some facts might be wrong. All these flaws in the story in the character’s thoughts are what makes first person unreliability so appealing to me, it is something I would like to experiment more with in my future writings and one I hope to see more of.
ReplyDelete-Eduardo Castellanos
I really like the little section in LaPlante’s Chapter 7 “First Person Point of View and Reliability.” She states that first person point of view would have limitations, unless it was science fiction, or some other nonrealistic story, and it’s true. At first I was thinking why the 7 points she makes wouldn’t apply, to something like science fiction, but it really is simple. You can have your story set on a different planet, in a future time period, in another dimension, in another galaxy, etc. If this is what she meant then I totally get it. IF you are going for something realistic, then you are tied to Earth and its physics. While you can set your story a different time period, you can’t really have the character be in two different time periods without crossing over some science fiction barrier (unless you do some trickery like having the character live when the 20th century ends and the 21st century starts, but that isn’t really the way LaPlante means).
ReplyDeleteI also really liked the story, I felt like I have read it before, but I honestly don’t remember where. I actually felt really bad for the angel. He was alone, very badly treated, and it just gave me chills when I pictured him locked up in the chicken coop. Honestly, in my opinion, I think this is the saddest story we have read in the class. It just showed how cruel humans can be.
Now, to drastically switch here, this is a great example of the “reliableness” of an author. Throughout the story, the narrator would talk about different things around the characters that really weren’t necessary. It reminded me of the stories I would write for the TAKS test.
-Alexis Perez
In Alice LaPlante’s chapter seven, she connects to chapter six about point of view further going into detail about the reliability of the narrator/characters in the story. She illustrates the first and third person point of views’ and their reliability on whether to trust what is true or honest and how some narrator/characters have distorted views on reality. She points out how third person with its distance can be more reliable, but still also how limited third person point of view can contain flaws. While I learned about these two first/third person point of views, LaPlante doesn’t go over second person. This might be because the reader is put into the shoes of the character and experiences the events and because second person is shorter pieces, but I still feel it is possible to have unreliability in this view especially if you are put in the shoes of a character who has shaky views on reality.
ReplyDeleteAs for Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, the view is third person allowing for a shift between different characters such as Pelayo then Father Gonzaga as well as Elisenda’s views. You can see how different people react to seeing this old man with wings; some worshiped him, and others make him a circus show, mocking him. I feel the third person point of view works well with this story compared to first person where if it had been told in only one character’s view, like Father Gonzaga’s view, the story would have revolved not on Pelayo and Elisenda and the child as much.
Sylvia Lopez
Chapter Seven of LaPlante's Method and Madness dives into the narrator and the reliability they and the characters share in a story. She then gives examples as to what point of view and is more reliable than another and why. Somehow, I disagree with this. She basically states that a third person perspective will always be more reliable than a first person and I found that hard to believe. If there's a matter of unreliability when there is only one person whose mind we focus on, then there can be more uncertainty when it comes to a point of view that reflects more than one character. I also noticed that she points out how the reason third person is more reliable is the message shared in the images but I think that maybe sometimes, some things can get lost in translation so I still don't believe that images or third person perspective would be more reliable than another perspective.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s story, I couldn't help but be reminded of Ursula Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" because of the way in which it was written. There was uncanny parallels in the way Pelayo and Elisenda both ignore what must really be pain and suffering from the angel simply because they're gaining something from it. In a way, it's exactly like Omelas - a place in which a child must suffer for everyone to be happy and everyone just seems to readily accept that except for a few who end up walking away and are not heard from again. I found the correlation between these two stories to be fascinating.
- Angélica De La Cruz
Chapter 7 is all about trust between narrator, author and the reader. The trust is a contract between reader and author. According to LaPlante that has deal with POV’s wether your in first, or third person which is supposed to always be reliable. As for first person in the example we are given on page 237-238 it is important to note to trust dialogue when the narrator is unreliable. For example as LaPlante mentions about Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, that due to the lack of knowledge of the equipment in the medical bag the narrator is unreliable but some of the things he observers such as the men mopping could actually be true. She mentions that emotional truth is important as well. Also in first person POV it is very important to think about limitations of your narrator such as Geographic, temporal, physical, intellectual, experiential, moral, and emotion. Out of all of those what I found to be the most interesting was experiential and Geographic. No one ever thinks that narrator can only be in one place at a time or that the can only have so much knowledge of the world, other wise your giving too much away as a writer. I feel as if writers, especially me make this mistake way to often. This chapter really gave me some insight to not over look even the smallest of detail because then your story just gets lost. LaPlante further goes on to say that your story with be distorted without these limitations. I believe LaPlante gives pretty easy examples to follow to understand this unreliability between narrators such as the passages by Carl Czyzewski. As for the story A very Old Man with wings it is in 3rd person therefore we are supposed to trust the narrator. Yet, somethings seem odd is he an angel? I mean it is fiction and yeah the last line is to unreal: “…but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.”
ReplyDelete-Allison Gonzalez
In Chapter 7, “How Reliable Is This Narrator?”, it was surprising for me to learn that third person narrators are generally considered to always be reliable. The “four options to consider when we’re told something that doesn’t make sense” was helpful, but seems to contradict that third person is always reliable, especially when the distance has collapsed between the narrator (who is supposed to be “not a human character but a disembodied intelligence”) and the mind of an unreliable character (238-9). When it comes to this “very close” third person point of view, where the lines are blurred between the narrator and the character, wouldn’t it then make sense to just use a first person point of view?
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this fantastical story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Since Garcia Marquez is known to write a lot of magical realism, I tend to read his stories with a “willing suspension of disbelief” and accept that the implausible elements in his stories are possible (239). One of the ways that Garcia Marquez achieves this is through his showing. In the story, the use of dialogue among all the other characters, and the narrative descriptions of the physical action, help the reader to accept the narrator as reliable.
-Dorie Garza
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ReplyDeleteChapter Seven introduces the concept of reliability with the narrative. In this case, the concept concentrates on using and defining how the narrator dictates the style and the limitations shown by the writer. Each point of view grants a certain perspective that changes given the application of these limitations from the information given. First person seems better with unreliable narrators as it adds a level of depth that makes readers take a second to understand whether the writer intended for the narrator to be unreliable or truthful. An emphasis on the truth becomes important when the narrator seems to believe in his own words; the way dialogue and narration is written can define the success of how believable the narrator could be despite seeming unreliable at times.
ReplyDeleteAs for “A Very Old Man with Broken Wings,” the third person perspective seems to highlight the idea of reliability with the narrator in relation to the magical realism happening throughout the short story. Though, the story feels more of a dream than actual reality based on the winged old man and how everyone reacts to his appearance. In that case, the narrative might come from the narrator’s perspective of reality as he presents the possibility of a world where these types of characters exist. One can say that the narrator is making up this description to highlight how the old man might seem, but I guess it’s up to interpretation.
- Joseph Gonzalez
Going through the reading of chapter seven of LaPlante's book on "How Reliable Is This Narrator," I found myself disagreeing with her completely. To state that third person will always be reliable is something that I do not believe in whatsoever. The narrator can manipulate the reader and even hide something from them. All points of view show us what is necessary at that moment, whether it be positive or negative. At the same time, I can see how the third person can be seen as reliable since it's from an outsider's perspective.
ReplyDeleteThe reading on "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings," connects with the chapter as the world around the character, makes him reliable. That is done through dialogue for the most part, as he is never challenged, giving off the impression that he is trustworthy. Having an unreliable narrator adds a layer to a story that makes the reader question the events that have transpired before them. It works for multiple readings if done to an exceptional point.
- Eloy T Sepulveda