BOOTCAMP RC4 - R6

Question: 56
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the
most appropriate answer to each question.
The house of fiction has many windows, but only two or three doors. I
can tell a story in the third person or in the first person, and
perhaps
in the second person singular, or in the first person plural, though
successful examples of these latter two are rare indeed.
In reality, we are stuck with third- and first-person narration. The
common idea is that there is a contrast between reliable narration
(thirdperson
omniscience) and unreliable narration (the unreliable first-person
narrator, who knows less about himself than the reader
eventually does). On one side, Tolstoy, say; and on the other,
Nabokov's narrator Humbert Humbert or Italo Svevo's Zeno Cosini, or
Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster.
Authorial omniscience, people assume, has had its day. W. G. Sebald
once said, 'I think that fiction writing which does not acknowledge
the uncertainty of the narrator himself is a form of imposture which I
find very, very difficult to take. In Jane Austen's world there were
set
standards of propriety which were accepted by everyone. I think it is
legitimate, within that context, to be a narrator who knows what the
rules are and who knows the answers to certain questions. But I think
these certainties have been taken from us by the course of history,
and that we have to acknowledge our own sense of ignorance and
insufficiency in these matters and therefore try and write
accordingly.'
For Sebald, and for many writers like him, standard third-person
omniscient narration is a kind of antique cheat. But both sides of
this
division have been caricatured.
Actually, first-person narration is generally more reliable than
unreliable; and third-person 'omniscient' narration is generally more
partial
than omniscient. The first-person narrator is often highly reliable;
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, a highly reliable first-person
narrator, for
instance, tells us her story from a position of belated enlightenment.
Even the apparently unreliable narrator is more often than not
reliably
unreliable. Think of Kazuo Ishiguro's butler in The Remains of the
Day, or of Bertie Wooster, or even of Humbert Humbert. We know that
the narrator is being unreliable because the author is alerting us,
through reliable manipulation, to that narrator's unreliability. A
process of
authorial flagging is going on; the novel teaches us how to read its narrator.
Unreliably unreliable narration is very rare, actually – about as rare
as a genuinely mysterious, truly bottomless character. The nameless
narrator of Knut Hamsun's Hunger is highly unreliable, and finally
unknowable (it helps that he is insane); Dostoevsky's narrator in
Notes
from Underground is the model for Hamsun. Italo Svevo's Zeno Cosini
may be the best example of truly unreliable narration. He imagines
that by telling us his life story he is psychoanalysing himself (he
has promised his analyst to do this). But his self-comprehension,
waved
confidently before our eyes, is as comically perforated as a bullet-holed flag.


What is the author's opinion of third-person omniscient narration?

1) He thinks that it is not necessarily omniscient, and that the view
about it among certain writers is exaggerated.
2) He considers it acceptable only if one is deliberately trying to
imitate older writers such as Jane Austen.
3) He thinks it is only acceptable in a world with a greater degree of
certainty about the rules than in the present time.
4) He does not offer his own opinion of it; he merely mentions certain
writers who dislike it.

Based on the definition in this passage, which of the following
hypothetical first-person narrators could be considered an unreliable
narrator?
i] At the beginning of the story, the narrator promises to explain a
particular mystery in the course of the story; but the mystery remains
unexplained till the end.
ii] The narrator tells the readers about certain past events at the
beginning of the story; but as the story progresses, it becomes clear
that
these events never actually occurred.

iii]The narrator presents herself as smart and knowledgeable; but as
the story progresses, it becomes clear to the reader that the narrator
doesn't know or understand what is going on around her.
iv] Throughout the story, the narrator deliberately fails to mention
the fact that he is blind; the revelation of this (through another
character)
near the end sheds a completely different light on the narrator's
personality and actions.



1) Only [iii]
2) [i] and [ii]
3) [iii] and [iv]
4) [i], [ii], [iii] and [iv]

If this passage were to continue, what would it most likely go on to discuss?

1) Examples of 'reliably unreliable' narrators
2) The many 'windows' of the house of fiction
3) So-called omniscient narrators who are not necessarily omniscient
4) Books that are written in the second person singular or in the
first person plural

Choose the option in which the author and his/her character
respectively are correctly paired

1) Tolstoy – Humbert Humbert
2) Zeno Cosini – Italo Svevo
3) Dostoevsky – Knut Hamsun
4) Kazuo Ishiguro – butler