Narratives – unreliable narrators

Fiction readers are well familiar with unreliable narrators. Wikipedia summarizes like this:

In literature, film, and other such arts, an unreliable narrator is a narrator who cannot be trusted, one whose credibility is compromised. They can be found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters. While unreliable narrators are almost by definition first-person narrators, arguments have been made for the existence of unreliable second- and third-person narrators, especially within the context of film and television, but sometimes also in literature.

Wikipedia

We all yearn to tell our narratives and we all need to tell those narratives to define ourself to others and to ourselves … even cultures, countries and collectives. In a recent river trip down the Moselle, Rhine and Main rivers in Germany, another unreliable narrator device hit me full head-on! A question about our narratives that I cannot yet answer.

Our trip went down the Moselle to the Rhine and then up the Main. On the Moselle, we stopped at Trier and Cochem, and the Main, we visited Wurzburg, Bamberg and Nuremberg(with a bus ride). While on excursions with local guides through those towns along the rivers, the omissions of the narrative we all know were striking. We were told over and over … the Allies’ bombing destroyed this, that and the other thing, and through great community and government actions restoration provided you with your tourist beauty. Even non-German guides avoided pre-war Germany events, and only in Nuremberg where it was unavoidable did we hear the narrative of the 1930s and Nazi actions.

I think that I semi-understand the pain in pre-war narrative episodes, and the embarrassment… but why skip over the learning and the lessons for the rest of us, for themselves? Has the cathartic relief expired?

This prompted me to think about my own self narratives … do I too hide the painful and embarrassing episodes to enhance my narrative to others or do I omit those to myself as well? The follow on question then seems: what is the purpose of our self narratives?

• Building our ego for others
• Learning from our past to create a better future
• Maintaining a sane self image

I have no answer yet, but surely purposeful omissions are akin to falsehoods, no?

The featured image is from Prague. These plaques are in the sidewalks over town and each tells a story of a Jewish family or person taken from Prague in the late 1930s and where they went.