Nate Cameron, M1, Class of 2023
“and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another…”
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
The first time I discovered books could lie to me was the summer before seventh grade, laboring through Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s novel opens in an almost confessional tone, explaining to me— the dedicated reader— that another novel couldn’t be trusted to fully tell the truth. In this way, I stumbled upon what literary people call “unreliable narrators.” The experience was one of my first storytelling revelations— characters possessed the capacity to withhold, modify, or even forget information in the stories I was reading. Huck Finn planted seeds of awareness, if not distrust, for future narrators I would encounter.
Continue reading “Lessons From Huck Finn: Reliable Narration in Medicine”
