From a Certain Point of View: Unreliable Narrators

In this week’s episode of Star Wars English Class, Julia teaches Fern about unreliable narrators! But to learn about unreliable narrators, we must first learn about story, plot, and narration (spoiler alert: that’s not the only list of three things in this week’s episode). How can the same story be told in different ways by different narrators? What are the different kinds of unreliable narrators? How does the language of film convey unreliability? And how can we determine the “facts” of a story? This week, we’ll discuss Kanan Jarrus, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, and Kylo Ren as we endeavor to uncover the truth about unreliable narrators in Star Wars.

On the Syllabus Today:

• "Aftermath," The Bad Batch: S01EP01 (2021)
• Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)
• Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
• H. Porter Abbot, "Story, Plot, and Narration" (2007)
• Abbott, H. Porter. “Story, Plot, and Narration.” The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, edited by David Herman, 1st ed., Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 39–51.
• Anderson, Emily R. “Telling Stories: Unreliable Discourse, Fight Club, and the Cinematic Narrator.” Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 40, no. 1, 2010, pp. 80–107.
• Shen, Dan. “The Living Handbook of Narratology.” Unreliability | the Living Handbook of Narratology, University of Hamburg, 31 Dec. 2013, www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/node/66.html.
• "Who Can You Trust? Unreliable Narrators (Feat. Lindsay Ellis)." YouTube, uploaded by PBS Voices, 17 December 2018. https://youtu.be/AM7pALSwH_I
• Zerweck, Bruno. “Historicizing Unreliable Narration: Unreliability and Cultural Discourse in Narrative Fiction.” Style, vol. 35, no. 1, 2001, pp. 151–76.

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Fern is on TikTok @alwaysfern

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