Cervantes set that one of blatantly and obviously — his main character appears to have some sort of delusions. But the problem is, does he? There’s a good argument to be made from the text that he knows exactly what he’s doing by living out this fantasy, from the name of his horse to the way he treats others. So when he says “Yo sé quien soy” (“I know who I am”) after being identified by his (real) name by one of his peasants, how seriously can we take him? The answer depends on your reading.

But he also does more than that. The frame story is hwo the narrator found this text — he bought the texts from a Moor (who in the beginning of the 17th century Spain were considered incredibly unreliable and were thought to deliberately lie to Christians) which were then translated by another Moor on the narrator’s expense. In 1606 Iberia, this meant that there wasn’t a single part of that process that could be believed. Top that with the fact that it’s clearly a satire of a genre known, even by then, to be extremely anachronistic — well, *is* there any aspect of it you can trust?

(He takes one more step, too, in the ten years after part 1 was published, some “unauthorized” sequels were published, which Cervantes, his narrator, and the don himself all condemn as false — but most characters still believe them and they’re treated as part of Quijote’s past).

These elements are at the core of the reasons why the Quijote continues to be an enduring classic both in Spanish and in translation more than 400 years later. What do we make of it? what about it is true? if it talks about our human nature, is it just making it up or are there things in there that we can actually use?

Another very dramatic (if you’ll excuse the pun) is Beckett’s _Waiting for Godot_. Everything is seen from the perspective of our two protagonists, who are essentially hobos, and have the worst memories. They can’t even remember where they’ve been in their lives. (A slightly modified English translation approved by Beckett has a bit where one says they’ve been to California’s Napa Valley and the other says he only remembers being to the “Crappa Valley’). They believe liars and cons who come their way, and are hugely impressed by clearly false credentials. In the end… is this Godot person they’re waiting for real? Or are they waiting for nothing? it’s a good example of using character type and point of view to make the narrative murky at best, which gets people to think about it long after the author dies.

http://mbarker.livejournal.com/129751.html

There are guidelines, like the rule of threes if you need to establish a pattern of things happening. I’d also say there’s a rule of oversight: You can drop at least three times as many hints if an object is completely innocuous yet critically important to the plot later. If you talk about a hairpin in five throwaway statements the beginning of the story, it’s totally awesome to find out it was the murder weapon later. Remember, you can always go back and make it more surprising by sharpening up your misdirection. Revision is awesome.

So he’s not unreliable in that he’s trying to hide something–he’s unreliable because he’s young and doesn’t really know what’s going on around him.