The unreliability of Dr. Sheppard and Humbert Humbert : A study of the unreliable narrators in Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Nabokov’s Lolita

Abstract:

The concept of the unreliable narrator has been studied in academic circles for the last fifty years. When an author decides to create unreliable narration, there is a reason for it. This essay compares the unreliability in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, using theories formulated by Tamar Yacobi, Bruno Zerweck, Therese Heyd, James Phelan and Amit Marcus. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the technique of other-deceptive narration is used by Christie. In Lolita the unreliability is complex. Using both other-deception and self-deception to create discrepancies between descriptions of the same event and phenomenon, Nabokov succeeds in creating an intricate unreliability. The effects of the unreliability in both novels, however, create an emotional bond between the reader and the narrator. The reader can be emotionally cathected to the narrator, even if the narrator is clearly a criminal.