What is the effect of an unreliable narrator? What are the characteristics of an unreliable narrator, and how does this add interest to a story? Your answer should be 250 words.

An unreliable narrator generates an effect of mistrust, unbelief in the facts, because everything he tells is contradictory or insane, which causes this infidelity in the reader's confidence.

Whatever the definition of unreliability that follows, there are a number of signs that constitute or at least indicate the unreliability of the narrator. Nünning suggested dividing these signals into three broad categories:

Intratextual signs such as the narrator contradicting oneself, having gaps in memory, or lying to the other characters Extratextual signals as contradicting the general knowledge of the reader's world, or impossibilities (within the parameters of logic). The literary competence of the reader. This includes the reader's knowledge of literary types (eg stock characters that reappear over centuries), knowledge about literary genres and their conventions or stylistic devices.