Example of Metafiction in Literature (Essay Sample)

Metafiction is one of the hallmarks of postmodernism and gives the reader an interesting insight into the text and into the genre as a whole. Very similar to breaking the fourth wall in theater, metafiction takes the reader out of the story as a whole and makes them reflect on what they’re actually experiencing. While it began as an element of the postmodernist movement, it has evolved into its own sub-genre. Readers are no longer watching a story unfold, they are participating in it.

The Stanley Parable

The Stanley Parable Launch Trailer

The Stanley Parable was the first video game that’s premise was playing a video game. The opening lines of “This is the story of a man named Stanley” tell you immediately that it's going to be an experience very different from most games. The games gives you an illusion of choice. The narrator repeatedly tells you what the correct thing to do in a situation is. Should you choose to ignore it and go run off into the wrong room, the narrator will begin to yell at you and complain. It always seems as if the narrator is a step ahead, even if you deviate from the script. It creates a surreal atmosphere where you begin to question what you can and can’t do. In most video games, if you mess around, you might get respawned or nothing will happen at all. In The Stanley Parable, every situation is accounted for. 

It’s a very procedure based game, but it doesn’t feel like you’re just going through the motions. There’s a creative and very humorous spin on it. At its very core, it's a game about a man going to work. It’s an incredibly dull idea that has been transformed into a game where the player really feels like a part of it. You aren’t playing as Stanley, you are Stanley.

Fight Club

Fightclub Tyler's End

Fight Club is chock full of intertextuality and metafiction. Similar to The Stanley Parable, Fight Club has a central narrator, but this one is schizophrenic and wild. Many of the characters reference the first person nature of the film. There’s an interesting element where the main character switches back and forth from himself and being the narrator. it creates a surreal feeling when he references himself as the narrator. The main plot of the story is driven by the fact that Tyler Durden is a fictional character. It’s not obvious at the time, but is made known by the end of the story.  By the end of the film, the main character has the ultimate moment of metafiction where he ends up fighting the narrator, himself, and there’s no winner. 

There is also a repeated use of second person narration. The narrator is interacting with the audience now instead of just describing the story. “You drill the holes wrong and the gun will blow off your hand… You take a 98-percent concentration of fuming nitric acid and add the acid to three times that amount of sulfuric acid.” It emphasizes the fact that the narrator and main character are the same person, and makes the watcher feel like they are included in the story.

City of Glass

City of Glass is the epitome of postmodern texts and has many metafictional elements to it. One thing that stands out immediately is that Paul Auster puts himself into the novel as a detective. It mixes reality and fiction and makes the reader begin to question the story as a whole. 

With the amount of characters that are introduced and how everyone seems to go by multiple aliases, it starts to make us wonder if anything is really happening or if it’s all happening in Quinn’s mind. We know that Quinn had lost his wife and child, so him descending into madness is not far out of the realm of possibility. One of his coping mechanisms was to write detective novels under the name William Wilson. His first novel was called Suicide Squeeze, which bares a similar resemblance to one of Auster’s (the real person) novels, Squeeze Play. Auster (the story character) asks Quinn at one point if Quinn was a poet because he recognized the name. Auster creates this metafictional feeling as he was a poet as well, and it seems as if Quinn is just Auster, but inside his own novel. All while there’s another character in the novel named Paul Auster. It’s a lot to wrap your head around.

Bojack Horseman

BoJack Horseman: Season 5 | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

A show that has a main character that’s a mentally ill horse is going to be a surreal experience no matter what. Bojack was a popular actor and we get to see this commentary on the Hollywood scene throughout the show. We also see how important the correct “image” is and how everyone is following trends to be the most popular. There is a slight metafictional aspect of watching a show about a washed up actor. It’s a weird juxtaposition where, even though it’s animated, an actor is working as someone who doesn’t have work. The show allows the audience to get an inside view on the acting industry from within a show itself.  This metafictional commentary is prevalent throughout the series.

The biggest metafictional element of Bojack Horseman occurs in the fifth season. While Bojack plays the lead role in “Philbert”, we get to watch this show inside of the show we’re already watching. The character Bojack plays, an old school detective who turns into a drug addict who’s very paranoid, is very similar to himself, and we get to see him go on this journey of realizations about himself.