The Great Gatsby Unreliable

When one reads a story, there are two things that affect how one interprets the story. There is the tone of the story and how the story is written. The tone of the story is set by the person who narrates the story. Thus, the narrator oversees how the reader interprets the story and how the reader is given the story. When the narrator is a reliable source of information, the reader gets the full story without bias and the narrator is impartial. However, when the narrator is unreliable due to several factors in the story, it gives the reader a sense of being cheated. A reliable the narrator does not discredit themselves and they tell the story to the best of their knowledge. They also do not let their emotions cloud their judgment. An unreliable …show more content…
The first factor is that he has discredited himself through the things that he said. This discredits him because it shows that he is hiding something from the reader. The second thing that discredits him is when says that he presents the truth in the guise of illusion. This is discrediting because he is telling the audience he is giving us truth, but it is an illusion. The second factor is that he does not present us with the story to the best of his knowledge. At the time that he is telling us the story he is aware of all the details of the story, but he does not give the reader all of the information. This forces the reader to form an opinion based on what Tom has presented to the reader. The third factor is that he allows his emotions to color the way that he presents his mother. He presents his mother based off how she treated him in the past. This shows that he is also unable to be impartial because he is letting his relationship with his mother affect how he presents her to the readers. Together there are four traits of an unreliable reader present in Tom: he discredits himself, he does not tell the story to the best of his knowledge, he allows his emotions to cloud his judgment and he cannot be impartial. Tom is an unreliable narrator because he displays four traits of an unreliable reader. This affects how the reader can view the story. In the case of The Glass Menagerie, the reader is left wondering if Tom was being truthful about what happened and how it happened or if Tom just wanted the reader to think that way so that he did not have to feel