Oviya Ravi Week 8; Unreliable Narrators
A few weeks ago, as I’m sure many of you remember, we watched a video of Professor McRae analyzing certain aspects of the novel The Great Gatsby. One of the things he talked about that really stuck with me was the idea of Nick Carraway as an unreliable narrator. McRae discussed how the ambiguity of Gatsby’s wealth and the true events of the story are caused by the fact that our narrator has biases. His own reputation influences what he chooses to disclose to the audience.
The idea of an unreliable narrator has always confused me to an extent. How can a reader know what is true if their only source of information is conveying skewed content? This idea gets even scarier when we stop talking about fiction. The history of America has been skewed to make ourselves look like the “good guy.” We are the unreliable narrators of our own history.
We have been taught from a young age about the endless opportunity and freedom that our country has offered to people from all backgrounds. However, the counter argument is almost always conveniently forgotten. Our country, to this day, is trying to limit the amount of information available that, in any way, tarnishes the reputation of America.
Six states have signed into law policies that restrict the concept of race being taught in schools.
Twenty-three states have either banned or are in the process of banning teaching the critical race theory in schools.
Over thirty-seven states have passed laws restricting slavery being taught in schools.
Political groups have made efforts to modify historical facts to present a more “whitewashed” view on the nation’s past.
This list is nowhere close to exhaustive, especially considering that it is only regarding the modern day. The more I learn about how much our governmental systems have tried to hide or modify events of our past, the less trusting I am of the content I learn in school. If we keep progressing on the track we are on, there is endless opportunity for events to get completely erased from our history books. Future generations could be learning history in schools that is as accurate as a fiction novel.
We should be embracing the mistakes we have made as a nation—using them to prove how far we have come, how much we have changed. No one entity should have the power to change the narrative of who we are as a nation. As the generation that is carrying our history forward, we need to be making an effort to learn about the true, unfiltered history of our country, beyond what we learn in schools. We have the power to be the reliable narrators of the novel of America’s history.
Source: https://www.usresistnews.org/2023/02/10/states-continue-efforts-to-remove-facts-from-history/
Oviya, your post addresses something I’ve always scorned schools for! The notion of states banning schools from teaching the vital points of American history as always gotten me upset. The fact that in the big 2025, there are still successful attempts at whitewashing our history is insane. America is practically built on the backs of African Americans as well—who have every right to have their oppressed past taught to the current generations of Americans. To connect to The Great Gatsby, set in the Jazz Age, jazz itself is music derived from the styles of African music and became popular through New Orlean’s red light district—African Americans pioneered this music in bars. Then one band came along and watered it down. The Original Dixieland Band was the first jazz band to sell albums and make jazz a hit genre. They were all white men. Jazz is basically America’s classical music: it is the one of the only completely American things in this country, and is beloved worldwide now. So much of American culture is derived from African Americans, most especially today’s music, lingo, and pop culture. While Nick being an unreliable narrator works great through Fitzgerald’s writing, this certainly cannot go on with our nonfiction history.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing to note is how Native Americans are barely talked about—definitely not enough for all that they suffered under America. Once started on this topic, I never shut up. But to keep this brief, thank you for sharing this sentiment! I absolutely agree that we should be doing everything we can to get down to our unfiltered history.
Oviya, when I read “future generations could be learning history in schools that is as accurate as a fiction novel,” it truly gagged me. It brought me back to the socratic seminars we had about The Great Gatsby, and how I was like, “Wow it’s really cool to see so many interpretations of this one story.” If there’s so much worth discussing, so much worth questioning, and so much worth dissecting about Nick and how interpretations change our trust…the hypothetical you presented would result in pure chaos! Not saying that the seminars were chaotic or combative (as far as I experienced, it was really fun), but ideally history constitutes the truth, which we all know Nick is iffy on. In English last year, Mr. Howard taught us a literary theory called Reader Response theory, which is one of my favorites because it examines the relationship between the reader and the text. It required us to think about what the reader brought to the text, could they even understand the text with their background? One of my favorite concepts within it is the resistant reader, which is simplified as a reader that struggles to understand/interpret the text due to it being against their “beliefs,” for the lack of a better term. An example of this might be how we could potentially be resistant readers (or viewers in this case) to The Birth of a Nation because it glorifies something that we disagree with: racism. And in connection to the figures you presented, I have found myself with these concepts (in addition to thinking about the spreader) in mind whenever I’m reading about history or current events (especially). I also had the opportunity to learn a little bit of critical race theory last year, and I remember it being prefaced as something that he may not be able to teach in the coming years. I wasn’t too worried at the time, because California, but a lot can happen in a few years. Thank you for bringing this to our attention!
ReplyDeleteUnreliable narration was a concept I never quite understood until I reached this book as well. While reading this novel, I was baffled at every turn on what was going on, so your confusion on the topic is one I have experienced firsthand. I think the idea of the unreliable narrator in fiction is meant to teach the reader about perspective and how situations can be drastically different depending on what kind of person is seeing it, and it also teaches about the importance of being informed.
ReplyDeleteThe line you have about being the “unreliable narrators of our own history” reminded me about the line of how “history is written by the winners”, because we learn about events from the winning sides mainly. Perspective from the losing side are rarely found, and those that are found are often overlooked in favor of looking at the events coming from the winners. This rings especially true when it comes to America, due to the plethora of wars waged by America.
The statistics you added about exactly how many states have passed laws that restrict the availability of information really help your argument by providing hard proof about the issues America has with censoring history they do not agree with, and the additional statement you made about how this isn’t even an exhaustive list supports your argument spectacularly!