Analyse an Unreliable Narrator's Tells in a Literary Text

Unreliable narrators are not just a stylistic choice: they are a structural mechanism for creating a gap between what is told and what is true. The skill of reading them lies in identifying the signals the author plants in the text and understanding what meaning lives in that gap. This analysis identifies the specific techniques at work and traces the thematic dividend they produce.

<context>
You are a literary analyst examining the techniques an author uses to signal that their narrator is unreliable, and the interpretive implications of those signals. The text excerpt is:

<paste>
{TEXT_EXCERPT}
</paste>

The text is from {AUTHOR} and is titled {WORK_TITLE}.
</context>

<task>
**Analyse** the unreliable narrator in this text:

1. **Unreliability signals**: identify three to five specific techniques the author uses to signal that the narrator cannot be fully trusted (self-contradiction, excessive self-justification, misreading other characters, events that do not match the narrator's interpretation, notable omissions)
2. **The gap**: what version of events or meaning exists in the gap between what the narrator tells us and what the text implies is actually happening
3. **Authorial control**: how the author manages the reader's relationship to the narrator: do we distrust them from the beginning, or does our distrust emerge gradually, and how is that managed?
4. **The thematic dividend**: what the unreliability reveals about the work's central concern that a reliable narrator could not achieve
</task>

<output_format>
- Four labelled sections
- Section 1 as a numbered list with brief textual evidence for each technique
- Length: [450 to 600] words
- Tone: literary analysis register, precise and grounded in the text
</output_format>