We’re All Mad Here

by Mansie Hough

Whether it takes form in a classic piece of literary fiction, a creatively creepy poem, or a pop-culture beach read, I love a good mystery story. It seems the genre, in all its broadness, will never run out of innovative ways to look at human nature, psychology, and the concept of trust. Mystery, when done well, is tricky and engaging for both the reader and the author. The active reader must think critically, suspiciously, and frequently when reading a good mystery story. If that reader is me, she must also resist the temptation to quickly search the ending on Wikipedia or stay up until 5 am on a school night to find out what happens. More crucially, though, for an author, great difficulty lies in some crucial decisions: which information to withhold, when to schedule big (or small) reveals, how to set a tone that puts people on edge, and suspect characterization. Not surprisingly, a lot of these issues can either be solved or exacerbated by the mystery’s narrator. We all learned about this in school when our English teachers taught us about the unreliable narrator.

Poe

Perhaps the greatest and most well-known example of the impact of an unreliable first-person narrator came from the notoriously unnerving Edgar Allan Poe. In classic works like “Annabel Lee,” ““The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Bells,” the mentally unstable narrators speak in either fast-paced, jumpy styles or a voice that drones on and on about petty surface details of the plot. Additionally, Poe’s narrators rarely, if ever, stop to question the possibility of their own insanity. It’s always the world’s fault rather than their own, and that’s if the narrator can even come around and acknowledge they are in an unusual situation. The narrator in “Annabel Lee” has romanticized his love interest so much that he regresses to a childlike, obsessive state, and this distorts the way the story is told. Similarly, in “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor sees no other reasonable reaction to being insulted other than to brutally murder the culprit, which results in an inappropriately casual mention of the incident. And, finally, “The Bells” shows us that depending on the point of view of the story’s narrator, symbols of beauty, hope, and joy can quickly turn into something much more dark and sinister. Poe’s innovative use of perspective in these stories puts the reader into a position of uncertainty and uneasiness from start to finish, and the deeper subplot comes from the narrator’s twisted rendition of the surface plot.

By no means did Poe invent the unreliable narrator—the trend can be identified in certain Ancient Greek works and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. But by focusing on the narrator’s delusions, Poe popularized a strategy that has been applied to a diverse array of literary works. Ralph Ellison used the tactic in his 1952 novel Invisible Man. In Invisible Man, the plot develops independently as we witness the anonymous main character begin to psychologically break down. Kate Chopin employs the unreliable narrator in her work of short fiction The Awakening—not exactly a mystery, but the strategy works well for her. In the end, we are left as an audience to decide if the main character Edna’s self-destructive actions are a result of an oppressive society or her own selfish mania. Edna is not the same unreliable narrator as one that Poe would dream up or as Ellison’s unnamed protagonist. Montresor is a vicious, narcissistic madman; Edna is a conflicted liar; The Invisible Man is an anxious, paranoid victim. One could even say Huck Finn and Holden Caufield are unreliable narrators as they cannot see past their lack of experience to tell a truly accurate story. It’s hard to draw the line at where unreliability ends and distinct narrative voice starts, because every first-person narrator will tell a story hindered by personal biases to an extent. But that’s why the Poe-esque exaggerated unreliability is so interesting and lends itself well to diversity in voices and tones.

So what has become of the unreliable narrator in pop culture mysteries today? Our old pal is thriving, in the form of a literarily controversial condition: amnesia. S.J. Watson’s wildly popular 2011 novel Before I Go to Sleep features a first-person narrator who suffers from short term memory loss, and must slowly piece together secrets around who she has become in the time that she lost. Similarly, Paula Hawkins’ 2015 novel Girl on the Train uses the main character’s alcoholism to (literally) black out important clues and scenes pertaining to an ongoing investigation. Ruth Ware’s 2015 novel In a Dark, Dark Wood uses violence-induced amnesia to muddy its mystery’s waters as well.

50first

Amnesia and memory loss can be a tough point in mystery thrillers. It is quite difficult to pull this method off without making the story feel contrived, convenient, and implausible. If critics do not deem your use of memory loss successful, be prepared for a barrage of sarcastic jokes about the Adam Sandler film 50 First Dates. But, when done right, this tool paces the story in a unique way that makes the reader feel helpless as he or she struggles along with the frustrated, mentally exhausted narrator. This approach also throws a wrench into the “likely suspects” trope of the genre. When the narrator’s mental facilities and memory are totally intact, it’s easy to rank all tangential characters from “definitely a psychopath” to “not a chance.” However, amnesia yanks this rug from underneath us and forces us to be more in the present moment with the narrator, and this makes us vulnerable. All of these enjoyable results of an unreliable narrator are reasons why I love mystery stories, and I am excited to see what the trend will twist into next.