Hello everyone,
Last night my wife wondered aloud whether a well known author may have some prejudices because the characters they write seem to be so fully rounded in their views or if it was simply if they were *that* good of an author.
It reminded me of a post (I think was in this sub) about an author who was discussing whether or not they were a good person/a monster/disturbed because of some of the things they create and wrote about in their characters.
I cannot for the life of me find the thread, if anyone else can that’d be appreciated. Or we can just talk about exactly this.
My contention to my wife was that someone who writes these things is doing their job as an author and they’re getting you to dislike characters that may be racist or homophobic by writing them in that manner. Basically that the creation of a character is not an endorsement of the ideals said character holds and could even be a condemnation of said views.
by colterpierce
3 Comments
The increasing inability of readers to separate the author from the views and statements of created characters is a plague.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people make the jump from simply depicting something in a book as an endorsement of said thing.
A classic example of a writer creating fully realized characters that hold views wholly apart from his own would be Mark Twain. I don’t think anyone believes that *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* necessarily represent the authors personal journey. Rather, it is the author presenting uncomfortable insights to the reader in the form of a story.
It would be like assuming actors are like the characters they portray, or that the journalist recording the horrors of war is the one committing them.