The Daily Omnivore

An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theater, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in ‘The Rhetoric of Fiction.’ This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually to deceive the reader or audience.

Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators, but third-person narrators can also be unreliable. The nature of the narrator is sometimes immediately clear. For instance, a story may open with the narrator making a plainly false or delusional claim or admitting to being severely mentally ill, or the story itself may have a frame in which the narrator appears as a character, with clues to his unreliability.

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The tricky slave is a stock character. He is a clever, lower-class person who brings about the happy ending of a comedy for the lovers. He is more clever than the upper-class people about him, both the lovers and the characters who block their love, and typically also looking out for his own interests; in the New Comedy, the tricky slave or ‘dolosus servus’ aimed to get his freedom by assisting his young master in love. Besides the actual slaves of classical theater, he also appears as the scheming valet in Renaissance comedy, called the ‘gracioso’ in Spanish. The ‘zanni’ of Commedia dell’arte are often tricky slaves, as are Puss-in-Boots in Perrault’s fairy tale, Jeeves in P. G. Wodehouse’s work, and Figaro. In fairy tales, the same function is often fulfilled by fairy godmothers, talking animals, and like creatures.

A female version of the tricky slave would be Morgiana, a clever slave girl from ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’ in the ‘One Thousand and One Nights.’ She is initially in Cassim’s household but on his death she joins his brother Ali Baba and through her quick wittedness she saves Ali’s life many times and eventually kills his worst enemy, the leader of the Forty Thieves. As reward, Ali frees her and Morgiana marries Cassim’s son. In contrast to these positive depictions, the tricky slave is portrayed as the antagonist in another Arabian Nights tale, ‘The Three Apples,’ an early example of a murder mystery. After the murderer reveals himself near the middle of a story, he narrates the events leading up to the murder in a flashback. Within this flashback, a slave convinces him of his wife’s infidelity, thus leading to her murder.

John Carter is a fictional character, created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who appears in the ‘Barsoom’ novels. Although he is actually a Virginian from Earth and only a visitor to Mars, he is sometimes known as ‘John Carter of Mars,’ in reference to the setting in which his major deeds are recorded, in the tradition of other real-world heroes such as Lawrence of Arabia and Scipio Africanus. His character is enduring, having appeared in various media since his 1912 debut in a magazine serial.

John Carter first appeared in ‘A Princess of Mars,’ the first Burroughs novel set on a fictionalized version of Mars known as ‘Barsoom.’ His character and courtesy exemplify the ideals of the antebellum South. A Virginian, he served as a captain in the American Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. While hiding from Apaches in a cave, he appears to die; leaving his inanimate body behind, he is mysteriously transported by a form of astral projection to the planet Mars, where he finds himself re-embodied in a form identical to his earthly one. Accustomed to the greater gravity of Earth, he is much stronger and more agile than the natives of Mars due to its gravity.