I was talking about The Great Gatsby with a friend and she said the author, Scott Fitzgerald, is so naive. I said why? She replied that he is so in love with Gatsby that he can’t see Gatsby’s flaws.
I realized that she believed Nick Carraway, the narrator, was the voice of Fitzgerald. Of course, this is not really wrong. He likely is, in some ways, such as when philosophizing about the American dream. And there was a real person, Max Gerlach, who is the real life version of Gatsby. But Gatsby is not Gerlach and Fitzgerald is not Nick. Or, rather, we just don’t know how much these real life characters are in the story. It is fun to speculate. But for me it confuses things more than explain them, in terms of understanding the book. Yet it has made me think. Perhaps Nick is more like Scott when he was younger or had just met Gerlach….Who knows?
There are other examples, of course, which are much more controversial. Like when a person writes so well and sympathetically about the feelings of someone who behaves in socially or morally unacceptable ways (e.g., a pedophile, thief, murderer). Does that mean they approve of these things or people? Or want the readers to do so?
So that is my question to you: Do you ever struggle with separating the person of the writer from the voice in the book or particular characters? Do you ever feel differently about the writer after reading a book that has some unconventional ideas or characters you find very unlikable or behaviors that shock you?
by moonvolcano
5 Comments
This is going to sound mean but I think not being able to separate narrator from author is a sign that your reading is still at around middle school or early high school level.
Naturally all novels are a thesis by their author, but oftentimes the thesis is “whatever my narrator is saying, do the absolute opposite.” It’s your job as a reader to read between the lines and interpret subtext, not to just take the statements of fictional characters at face value.
NO!!!! The idea that a fictional character is always going to be a mouthpiece for the author’s personal views is a sign of a bad reader.
I will die on this hill.
This is the kind of reader who probably thinks that Vladimir Nabokov himself approved of pedophilia because the main character in *Lolita* liked young girls.
If a writer cannot write about unpleasant, immoral, deranged, criminal (etc. etc.) characters without some readers clutching their pearls and thinking that the writer personally espouses these characters’ views, then those readers need to learn to separate the creator from the creation.
What the author is saying and what the narrator is saying are often different. Read more books and read more analysis of those books to start to develop an understanding . Sure, sometimes they are linked (in a lot of YA the protagonist is the author perspective, though not all) but you still need to think it through. What the author, characters, and narrator are saying are not the same. It’s worth considering and thinking about, but they are not the same at all.
The ultimate test of this Lolita.
Nabokov wrote a book from POV of a monster. But that’s clealry not Nabokov’s voice.
As an aspiring author, this view drives me insane. I’ve read so many book reviews where people accuse authors of absurd things because of the book they wrote.
So no, I never struggle to separate author from narrator or any other character. It’s a book.