“The choice of
the point of view from which the story is told is arguably the most
important single decision that the novelist has to make, for it
fundamentally affects the way readers will respond, emotionally and
morally, to the fictional characters and their actions” (David Lodge,
The Art of Fiction, 26).
If you asked me who are the four greatest
characters in literature, I would say Plato’s Socrates, the Jesus
of the Gospels, Boswell’s Johnson, and Don Quixote. The first three all
conform to a particular literary type. Let us call it the Revered
Friend type. The characteristics of the Revered Friend are as follows:
- he has some particular genius that sets him apart from the common stock;
- he has a circle of admiring friends who enjoy his genius;
- he is depicted in third-person narrative by one of these admiring friends;
- his character is conveyed mostly through dialogue, i.e., through his own speech and his interactions with other speakers.
The
distancing effect of third-person narration is absolutely critical to
this character type. The reader is drawn into the character’s inner
circle and quickly achieves a friendly rapport with the character. That
is the effect of a third-person friendly narrator. But because the
narrator also reveres the character, the reader is never allowed to get
too close. In most of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates’ own opinions remain
elusive; we hear him questioning others, but we never quite find
out what he thinks about it all. In the Gospels, we are drawn into Jesus’ inner
circle but we are also kept at a reverential distance. We are reminded
that his identity is enigmatic, that his teaching is hard to understand,
that he is liable to be misunderstood by the world and betrayed or
abandoned by his inner circle.
Again, the reader of the life of
Dr Johnson shares Boswell’s friendly point of view, yet the reader also
shares Boswell’s awe. We are not allowed to get too close. The
third-person narration helps to keep us at the correct distance from the
character. In one famous scene, Boswell reminds us that there are parts
of Johnson’s character that must remain forever hidden from our view. Johnson’s friends at the dining club have often observed his habit of
squeezing oranges into his drink and then stuffing the orange peels into
his jacket pockets. In Johnson’s room one day, Boswell sees a pile of
orange peels from the night before, all scraped clean and arranged on the
table. He plucks up the courage to ask Johnson about it:
Johnson: “I have a great love for them.”
Boswell: “And pray, Sir, what do you do with them? You scrape them, it seems, very neatly, and what next?”
Johnson: “I let them dry, Sir.”
Boswell: “And what next?”
Johnson: “Nay, Sir, you shall know their fate no further.”
Boswell: “Then the world must be left in the dark.”
In
a scene like this the reader is drawn into an extraordinary friendly
intimacy with the great man: we are in his room; we are observing the
subtlest eccentricities of his character; we are hearing him talk about
the things he loves (in this case, orange peels). But at the same time
we are kept at a reverential distance. The narrator leads us to the brink of revelation, only to conceal the
very thing we long to know (in this case, the meaning of the orange
peels).
It is the same technique, a hundred times over, in Plato and
the Gospels. We are constantly oscillating between the beautiful and the sublime (to use Edmund Burke’s categories), between intimate friendship and
astonished awe.
This technique is possible only in third-person
narration. Would Socrates have been the greatest philosopher in the
world if he had written books? If, instead of the memoirs of the
evangelists, we had received a first-person
Memoir of the Messiah, would
anybody ever have become a Christian? You might love and admire an
autobiographer, but you will never end by putting down the book and
confessing him Lord. Only a third-person narrative can induce a response
of that magnitude. Only a third-person narrator can depict both the
beauty and the sublimity of a great personality, so that the reader
becomes simultaneously friend and worshipper.
I have mentioned that
I think Don Quixote is the only other character who can be set
alongside Socrates and Jesus and Dr Johnson. Though Don Quixote does not
conform so neatly to the type of the Revered Friend, Cervantes uses some
of the same techniques in a comical and ironic way. The narrator is
portrayed as a historian and a researcher, rather than as a personal friend
of his subject: on the first page he admits that he doesn’t even know
Don Quixote’s real name. Yet through the process of telling the story of
this delusional knight, the narrator increasingly comes to adopt the
perspective of an admiring friend. He loves Don Quixote and regards him
as a kind of moral genius, even while regularly reminding the reader
that the character is quite mad.
Sancho Panza, the faithful friend
and squire of Don Quixote, provides another point of view on the main
character. He supplies much of the book’s comedy by the way he adopts
the role of an admiring friend in spite of his amply justified
scepticism about Don Quixote’s claims.
“What’s the gentleman’s name?” asked the maid.
“Don
Quixote de la Mancha,” replied Sancho Panza. “He’s a knight errant. One
of the best and bravest the world has seen for a very long time.”
“What’s a knight errant?” asked the maid.
“Are
you so green that you don’t know that?” replied Sancho. “Then I’ll tell
you, my girl, that a knight errant – to cut a long story short – is
beaten up one day and made Emperor the next. Today he’s the most
unfortunate and poverty-stricken creature in the world; tomorrow he’ll
have two or three kingdoms to give to his squire.”
Modern fiction has
also blessed us with some very memorable examples of the Revered
Friend. Why does Sherlock Holmes have such a lasting power over our
imagination? It is because we see him from Watson’s point of view. We
are part of Holmes’ inner circle, and we observe his genius from an
astonished distance.
The greatest fictional comedies of the past
century, P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories, use exactly the same
technique. Jeeves is an omniscient butler who finds brilliant and unlikely ways to
extricate his employer, Bertie Wooster, from various social crises.
“Good Lord, Jeeves! Is there anything you don't know?”
“I couldn't say, sir.”
The
effect of Jeeves’ character depends entirely on the point
of view of the narrative. We see Jeeves through Bertie Wooster’s eyes. We seldom know
exactly what he is thinking. Even when it comes to matters closest to
Jeeves’ heart – the colour of a tie, the selection of a pair of trousers
– we are left to infer his opinions from what he does not say. Jeeves
is the central actor in every plot, yet we rarely see him doing anything
directly. He is a shimmering, mysterious presence, a kind of puppeteer
who orchestrates events behind the scenes. His effect on the reader would
be impossible if the stories were narrated from Jeeves’ point of view,
or if the narrator did not take pains to hold Jeeves at the proper
distance so that we never get too close to him.
Some very fine novelists have
aspired to portray personalities of genius but have failed because of an
imperfect mastery of the Revered Friend technique. One of the few criticisms that I could make of the
Harry Potter novels is that
they fail to convince the reader of the story's main premise, namely that Harry
is a magical genius. All the characters, and especially the villains, keep assuring us
of Harry’s genius; every plot hinges on this fact; but the reader is
too close to Harry, and too closely shares his point of view, to feel
that he is an exceptional person. To keep the story moving along, we are
quite willing to
believe in Harry’s genius – but we never come to
feel
it the way we feel that Sherlock Holmes is a genius of observation and inductive
reasoning. It might have been quite different, and Harry Potter might
have been a great character, if only the narrator had shared Ron’s or
Hermione’s point of view instead of Harry’s. Indeed it is no coincidence
that one comes away from the novels with the impression that Ron and
Hermione and Dumbledore are the richest personalities. They are more
interesting characters simply because we see them from Harry’s point of
view. They are more lifelike because we see them from the proper
distance.
I may be wrong, but I can’t help wondering whether
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels might also have been better if the author
had made better use of the Revered Friend technique. Each of the two women, Elena (the narrator) and Lila, regards the other as a “brilliant friend.” But again I found myself having to
believe this since the novels never quite manage to
show it. The
problem, as I see it, is that the narrator is too self-absorbed to depict Lila objectively. Lila is
meant to be a deep and intriguing personality, but for the most part she
comes across as a function of Elena’s ego. Elena’s life is defined by her obsession with her friend. She
gazes relentlessly at Lila, but somehow her gaze is so intensely
self-interested that we never get enough objectivity, enough distance,
to see Lila properly and so to appreciate what it is that Elena finds so impressive about her.
Perhaps that is no criticism at all, given
that Elena’s obsession with Lila is what the novels are all about. But, in fiction,
obsession can be depicted in ways that render the object of
obsession large and magnificent. Just think of
Moby-Dick, and of how the
reader comes to share in Ishmael’s enormous fascination
with whales and whaling. Ishmael is one of the largest egos in
literature, yet we learn far more about whales than we do about him –
precisely because his ego is defined by its obsession with whales.
As much as I enjoyed the Neapolitan Novels, my complaint is that the narrator is too much like
Ahab and not
enough like Ishmael. Ahab's is a narrow and suffocating egotism that leaves no room for anything else, while Ishmael's is an expansive egotism that makes room for everything
else, though always on its own terms and within its own peculiar frame of reference.
Or to return to an earlier example, I would have liked the Neapolitan Novels better if Lila had kept orange peels in her pockets and Elena had never quite understood why. But, as it stands, the Elena of the Neapolitan Novels would never even have wondered about the orange peels. She would merely have turned it into a contest by accumulating her own (even bigger) collection of orange peels. Our interest in Lila is deflected; we are left staring into the pockets of Elena.
But, without a doubt, the most interesting of these new projects is Katherine Sonderegger’s new systematics that launched last year with her volume on the doctrine of God. (I wrote briefly about it before its release here). Sonderegger’s theology is perplexing, edifying, mildly inexact, and undeniably true all at once. One afternoon in Atlanta, a friend (Chris Green) summarised perfectly the uniqueness of Sonderegger’s work: more than Sarah Coakley, she succeeds at talking about God rather than talking about talking about God.
Coakley, of course, is the other great creative systematic theologian of today. Which is why the latest issue of IJST should be of interest. Sonderegger has written a review essay of God, Sexuality, and the Self. The review is almost purple with admiration and appreciation for Coakley’s work, but Sonderegger also gently asks some interesting methodological questions of théologie totale. Is there room in Coakley’s work for the creature to be a creature, Sonderegger wonders. “The method outlined here coordinates the infinite with the finite closely and essentially, such that the logical subject of all finite being could be just the infinite” (p. 96). Sonderegger wants to know precisely how Coakley moves so seamlessly from experience to divinity. Has a collapse occurred? Reading Coakley, one would suspect not, but I think the question remains: can théologie totale accomodate the questioning of whether experience should inform the doctrine of God, or is this very questioning discounted by the method itself? If we cannot ask these questions, can we speak of God as a se? Sonderegger is hoping for more clues in the next volume.
