Everyone knows the great short story with the name The Outsider. But there is some debate whether the main character is in fact a reliable narrator. Throughout the story, the narrator clearly proclaims that he has lived in the castle for all of his life and does not remember anything else before that. The author even says, “I must have lived years in this place, but I cannot measure the time.” Then shortly after states, “I felt conscience of my youth because I remember so little.” This presents evidence that the narrator is not a reliable one. He is simply too young and unsophisticated to be a fully reliable narrator. The loss of their memory prevents them from fully understanding what is happening around him. This clouds the truth of the story and hides what is actually happening. To back up my point, may I remind you of what happens near the end of the story? The narrator sees all of the people screaming and running from a monster and he thinks he should run too. When the author states, “I recognized, most terrible of all, the unholy abomination that stood leering before me…” he does not realize that the monster everyone is running from is his self. He does not understand that he is looking in a mirror and not a beast standing before him. It is not until the very end that he discovers that he is the monster. He just doesn’t understand what is going on around his through the majority of the story, and for that reason I have to say he is an unreliable narrator.
