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March 01, 2006
Sympathy for the Devil
Roberts, Ch. 5 -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"The second factor is the speaker's emotional and intellectual position. How might the speaker gain or lose from what takes place in the story? Are the speaker's observations and words colored by these interests? Does he or she have any persuasive purpose beyond a straightforward recorder or observer? What values does the speaker impose upon the action?"
It is through coming to understand this particular nuance of point of view that we come to love chanracters that first instinct tells we ought to hate, or to hate characters that first instinct tells us we ought to love.
I'll draw from my favorite book, Gone With the Wind, which was made into a tolerably good movie. Through my seven long years as a GWTW fanatic, I've found in general that people who see the movie hate Scarlett and people who actually read the book love Scarlett. This is all about point of view. Those who see the movie can't quite get into Scarlett's head to see her emotional and intellectual state, so when she stomps around Georgia acting like Satan Incarnate, they see her as "bad" character. Of course, in the book she also stomps around Georgia acting pretty much like Satan, but in the book we a re privy to her private thoughts and emotions. In the book, we see the sheer desperation and misery that drive her to lie, cheat, and swindle, so we can't quite condemn her. If we read the book, we see that she may do bad things, but that she may have good intentions. It's through examining what a character's point of view is that we learn that their lives are not all black-and-white good-and-evil struggles.
Posted by MeganRitter at March 1, 2006 03:52 PM