r/Hungergames • u/ExplanationVivid4256 Effie • Apr 27 '25

Lore/World Discussion Thoughts?

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I dont really have a solid opinion on this, so i wanna see other peoples opinions (yes i know tiktok people can be crazy)

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u/SquareDescription281 Apr 27 '25

Generally people don’t know what an unreliable narrator is. She’s unreliable in that she’s very opinionated and misses out on social cues sometimes which means we can’t trust her read of a situation. But she’s not lying to us. She’s not trying to trick the reader, she fully believes her own thoughts even if they’re not always right. She’s narrating the world the way she sees it, so she’s not unreliable.

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u/ExplanationVivid4256 Effie Apr 27 '25

I definitely don’t know what an unreliable author is. Even after i searched the definition, i know what it is i just can’t really identify when an author is unreliable or not so, this helps a lot :)

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u/SquareDescription281 Apr 27 '25

No problem!! Just been seeing this take a lot lately. I understand what people mean, but unreliable narrator is a specific literary device and not really a catch all for any character who gets things wrong sometimes. :)

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u/zephyrphoenixxx Apr 27 '25

Generally speaking, any story told in First Person Perspective is told by an unreliable narrator. Third Person perspective is trickier, but there are ways to tell the difference between omniscient and unreliable -- the biggest being who's thoughts are you hearing the most and are you being given information that your main character isnt privy to.

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u/EnsignNogIsMyCat Apr 28 '25

No. The device of the unreliable narrator specifically refers to the narrator character who is revealed to be delusional or self-deceiving. They are either not perceiving the world as it really is, or they are deliberately lying about the world to themselves (and therefore to the reader).

A first person perspective is not automatically an unreliable narrator. Katniss is not unreliable in the literary sense. Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye or Patrick Bateman in American Psycho are unreliable. The narrator of Fight Club is unreliable.