Reader as hero

[malsperanza]

Dishes done; laundry running now; chandelier not dusted, but I did add some more vintage 1950s green glass leaves to it and several clusters of glass grapes; did not put the damn books away; did not go to the gym; but did put the DVDs away; fed the neighbor's cat; the crown rack of lamb came out quite well and three of us ate the whole thing last night along with 3 bottles of a nice 2000 greco del tufo and a bottle of grappa al ginepro that I brought back from Bassano del Grappa last fall. Impressively, was not hungover this morning. Called mum. Taxes not done, but filed for extension. Number of objects repaired that needed repairing: 4.

Weekend useful : useless ratio: 6 : 4.

Not too bad, so I will permit myself half a post.


Some of this is repeated from a comment I made in sistermagpie's LJ, in discussing why we writeand read LJs and what the expectations are.

We all tell stories in which we are the hero. ("They were going to let the budget get approved, but I noticed in time that if we shifted one line item to fiscal 2005, we could save 10%...") In other words, we all perform our lives. LJ gives us a chance to control the performance. Frex, I bet you didn't know that I am a dead-ringer for Uma Thurman, speak 6 languages, and was one of the principle negotiaters of the Oslo Peace Accords.

It would be foolish to assume that what we read or write in LJs is an unvarnished self-portrait--either in our own blogs or when commenting (inserting ourselves) in the blogs of others--especially in a community with so many writers, all busily practicing their art ("practicing" in both senses of the word).

At the same time, one of the things we do also like to do is to insert ourselves into other people's stories. And this leads me to the topic of today's lecture, class.

We do this to some extent whenever we read, and then we have to decide if we are going to take the hero's role or not.

Usually, of course, we do choose the hero's part, both because we want to be heroes (a major reason for reading heroic fiction), and because we are often explicitly invited to take that role by the author. The author may use a number of techniques for "inviting" us: One is pov, of course, but at a more profound level the invitation comes by way of the appeal of the character. Is he or she especially sympathetic, humane, decent? Is he or she not, OTOH, so superb as to be unattainable by us even in the privacy of our own minds? (Some readers speak this way of Aragorn, or Lymond, or Hector, or Hamlet: Wonderful and desirable as they are, we cannot insert ourselves into them because they are too far beyond us. So the author kindly provides alternative characters for us to inhabit, nearby.)

This ties in with another piece of the Great All-Encompassing Reader/Author/Book theory: Just as we are invited by the author to associate ourselves with the pov or personality of a chosen character, so too the author may also identify him- or herself with one particular character in a book (Emma Bovary c'est moi, as Flaubert said; or Nick Carroway in Gatsby). But it's not necessarily the hero or protagonist. This is a fun game to play with Shakespeare. For example, in The Tempest, Shakespeare's surrogate is almost certainly Prospero, the magician of the Book, the mastermind who creates and drives the plot. In other plays, though, the Shakespeare-voice may be a less central character. For example, I think I can make a case that in Hamlet, Shakespeare speaks through Horatio--the grounded, rational, decent, loyal friend, the observer from the sidelines, the survivor. In As You Like It, he's probably Jacques.

Meanwhile, though, I love the idea that sometimes we choose to insert ourselves into a cameo or walk-on role instead of the big central one. As sistermagpie implied, Henry James seems to prefer to invite his readers to become those small, wallflower characters with which all his stories are so liberally supplied. Often they are sharp observers, a little detached, shrewd or stupid as the case might be. But we may also choose to mate ourselves with a character not of the author's choosing--we may defy the author's preferences (assuming we know what they are), if we wish. And that can lead to some very peculiar readings.

T.S. Eliot thought of this idea, when he had Prufrock declare: "No, I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be, / Am an attendant lord, / one that will do / To swell a progress, start a scene or two..."

What is the purpose of seeing oneself in the role of a character? Especially if it's the hero?

Stay tuned.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I am on the edge of my seat for the purpose! I especially like the fact that putting yourself in the pov of an odd character, or "not the one we're supposed to" can read to such odd readings. I wonder if fantasy almost makes this more possible through a heavy use of archetypes and a possible plot-driven story? Like in LOTR it's often fun to ask "who's your favorite character?" This is also done in HP. Because these are both universes where people very often have different favorite characters, whereas in Hamlet one could ask the same question, but I don't think people often do. It's just seen more as Hamlet's story with supporting characters. Even if you like the supporting character, it's more like you like them, rather than you are them when you watch the play. Does that make sense?

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

DA Miller points out that "Emma" is "Am me" backwards. :)

One of Shakespeare's sons had a name very similar to "Hamlet."

You know Freud's little essay, "Creative Writers and Daydreaming", right?

Your dinner sounds wonderful. All that yummy wine! & lamb. Wonderful.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Perhaps any book with a lot of characters lends itself to that especially well. Who's your favorite character in The Odyssey? Or the Bible? (Though in some sense both of those books fall neatly into the "fantasy" category.)

Oh, but we do it in Jane Austen novels too, don't we? In P&P, there are 5 sisters to choose from, but who among us does not choose to be Elizabeth, even though her older sister Jane is the kinder and happier person, and her youngest sister Lydia has by far the most fun.

I think we become the hero more often than not. Well, not if it's Oedipus, perhaps, but often enough. And it's a process that crosses genders and ages without a blink, which is interesting too.



Odd readings: Well, here's one. Profrock provides an odd reading of Hamlet because he sees himself as Osric. The connections between Hamlet's tragedy (torn by indecisiveness, and then dying young when he does finally make his decision to act) and Prufrock's tragedy (never dared do anything, and is dead-in-life in comfortable old age). Curiously, Eliot was 21 when he wrote Prufrock--and so it offers a vision of Hamlet as both tragic and enviable, as seen from the pov of a poet terrified that if he doesn't get his act together soon, he live an Osric-life instead of a Hamlet-life.

And then there's Stoppard's odd-angle reading of Hamlet from the pov of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Hard to like anyone in the play except Hamlet because he so overshadows everyone else. From the moment he first speaks out to us ("What a piece of work is a man...") we are his slaves. But despite our access to his soliloquies, we never really do have enough access to his mind and heart to assume his role. We don't know if he's mad or sane, if he loved Ophelia or not, if he meant to kill Polonius or not, etc. So the one moment when we can choose to step into his heroic role is in the moment when he chooses to take action, and chooses to die. (If it be not now, yet it will come etc.) If we, in that moment, say Yes! Go for it! It is the right choice! Then we are heroicizing our own sense of justice, and we are for one instant Hamlet.

So I agree: most of the time, we may love and admire Hamlet, but we are not him. Perhaps we are Horatio, who gets the last word (more or less) and who also seems to have the author's sympathies.

The Mary Sue concept is, of course, part of this process--and a very interesting form, too. So the question is: Do readers create Mary Sues as well? I'm sure we do.

As for the purpose ... well, I have to think about it some more, but here's one hint: It is closely related to the reason(s) why we read and write LJs and comment in other people's blogs.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

I don't know that Freud essay, no--will look for it. I detest Freud as a theorist (not to mention practitioner), but he's a damn good literary critic.

It was lamb and wine and nothing else because I had neglected to buy bread or cheese or salad or vegetables or fruit or sweets, or indeed anything but lamb. I seem to keep only wine, coffee, liquor, and catfood in my house. And there are about 8 lbs of dried porcini mushrooms in the freezer, for some reason.

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

Hey all, popping in for no other reason than am indelibly bored... well, not anymore, due entirely to this unbelievably interesting essay. (Wha? Empty the butter tub? ME?)

Perhaps I am impressively arrogant (yes, that seems quite likely), but I have yet to find a "mighty hero" that I cannot identify with/substitute myself for, on some level. One of the first epics I read was Lord of the Rings, at the age of seven, and I always identified with Aragorn far more than with, say, Frodo or Sam (toil? hope? loyalty? Wha?). Actually, he was also my first crush (eight years and still going strong; it began the fine tradition of falling madly in love with literary characters... I suppose one day I'll meet a boy so cliche no one else wants him and live happily ever after. But I digress.)

In the way of identifying with minor characters, an excellent example of this would be, for me, Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" (a book I strongly recommend, in high and flowery terms, possibly even with the use of words like "unrivalled"). While we are clearly meant to identify with the main character, Richard, a confused, lost, well-intentioned young man who is as utterly unfamiliar with the world of London Below that he finds himself in as we are, I admit it was very hard for me to attach myself to him. Instead, from the moment I "met" him, I latched on to a much more inconsequential character named the Marquis de Carabas: a mysterious presence and a trickster, an information broker, sly and generous in equal measure, cynical and curious in perfect proportion. ("A little bit dodgy the same way rats are a little bit covered in fur"...) Later, after repeated readings, I realized how that attachment had skewed my entire perspective of the book. I was looking at the events with a critical, Marquis-like eye, rather than wide-open wonder and fear as would have been the case with Richard.

I've since gone back and tried to substitute myself for each one of the characters. Each offers a slightly different take, but it's interesting to note that there is such a thing as too bumbling a character to latch on to: Richard, for reasons that I still don't completely understand, remains the hardest for me to comprehend, partially because of his naivety and learning curve, and even more because of his lack of self-confidence (something I have in overabundance, in some cases.) If some characters are too tall for us to see eye-to-eye with, some so short they are below our line of sight.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Aragorn was my first crush too, and also at the age of about 7. He's been the benchmark for me ever since, and I'm always startled that many readers find him dull or too distant. But some readers want to attach themselves to a more accessible character--Sam, frex. And LOTR is one of those books that does not self-identify one particular character as belonging to the reader, or acting as the reader's surrogate. As you point out re Neverwhere, this makes the book particularly amenable to rereads, and each rereading offers a "new" book, if one's choice of pov character changes.

Very nice comments. Will respond further in my LJ.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

I've never been able to make it through Neverwhere, but you have convinced me to try again. I do love trickster characters!

BTW, I expect you know that the Marquis of Carabas is the fake name the Puss gives to his master the miller's son in Puss in Boots. The name was reused by Rafael Sabatini in one of his swashbuckler novels in the 1940s. It's a good name for a trickster, because it conjures up the Puss, who is one of the best tricksters of all, and the name itself has unknown origins.

::squees::

[widget-alley.livejournal.com]

LOL. Yes, how can you not love a character with a Puss in Boots connotation? Besides... just... Marquis de Carabas. Just saying it is seductive and ticklish, and the name sounds like secrets. Whoops, gotta watch myself. Slipping into ye olde metaphor again. ;)

Aragorn has been my standard to holding other heroes up to for years now, and he remains my "benchmark" as you put it so eloquently. He's one of the few heroes I don't jump up and down and scream "LIKE THIS STUPID" about, either, which is always nice. (There are more of the types that make me yell at the book than I like to admit.. ::looks around furtively::) But of course that's made up for by the fact there are plenty I worship as well. ;) Obsession? Why, yes please, thank you.

Also, just realized, on a more Machiavellian note, Aragorn = power. Powerpowerpowerpower. Well... and... Knowledge. Which equals power. And then there's just power. Not that I'm attracted to it or anything. ::looks shifty:: The sword and the horse and the singing and the smarts and the language are all pluses too. And the... Okay, shutting up.