Strawberry Spring Is The Most Unreliable Narrator

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The definition of an unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allen Poe, has the caretaker, who murders his charge due to believing the man’s eye is evil. The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, has the wife, who hallucinates that there is a woman trapped in the wallpaper when she is locked in her room by her husband. Strawberry Spring, by Stephen King, has a narrator who does not recognize he is the notorious serial killer Springheel Jack until eight years after the murders. Of the three narrators, Strawberry Spring’s narrator is the most unreliable when it comes to explaining the events of the story due to either inadvertently omitting information or possibly …show more content…

The caretaker hallucinates as well, but only in the two specific instances when he swore he could hear the old man’s heart beating. The narrator of Strawberry Spring is entirely unaware of what he does on the foggy nights when he goes outside, up until the climax, whereas the wife and the caretaker are both fairly conscious of their actions. Eight years after the original murders in Strawberry Spring, strawberry spring comes again, and a girl’s dismembered body is discovered in the morning. The narrator’s wife asks where he was the night before, and he maintains that he cannot remember anything beyond driving home in the fog. The reveal hits when he realizes that he is irrationally afraid to open his car trunk after finding out that the murder victim had pieces of her missing. While all of the narrators genuinely believe they’re either doing the right thing or have done nothing at all, Strawberry Spring’s narrator initially seems to have no involvement in the murders in any way. At the end of the story, he even seems horrified at the implication that he is Springheel Jack, indicating that he is completely oblivious to his actions up until his

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