The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter: Unreliable Narrator 1 key example

The Custom House
Explanation and Analysis—Authentic Fantasy:

The frame story in "The Custom House" makes clear that the narrator of the novel is unreliable:

I must not be understood as affirming, that, in the dressing up of the tale, and imagining the motives and modes of passion that influenced the characters who figure in it, I have invariably confined myself within the limits of the old Surveyor's half a dozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary, I have allowed myself, as to such points, nearly or altogether as much license as if the facts had been entirely of my own invention. What I contend for is the authenticity of the outline.