[PUBLIC POST] Sympathy for the narrator and story morality

[ljwrites]

Today I revisited this post that discussed why movies like Fight Club and A Clockwork Orange don't really work as stories advocating the author's intended morality while Mad Max: Fury Road does. (Fight Club spoilers and Fury Road plot points at the link.) To cut a long story short, though I think the whole thing is worth a read, the poster who discussed Fury Road had this to say:

The thing is that the narrator is always sympathetic. Intimacy and familiarity breed sympathy. The audience is primed to feel sympathy for the narrator simply because they are speaking more than any other individual character.

No matter how unreliable, or morally dubious you make the narrator, they are still the hero or the story. Every villain is the hero of their own story. And when the villain is the narrator, the audience is hearing the version of the story in which the villain is the hero, and the audience is moved by that perspective.

Do you agree with this? Have you experienced it? The thing is, I'm struggling with this to an extent with my own work in progress. Though the bulk of my story is told from the viewpoint of morally sympathetic characters, I do have major morally gray or evil characters whom the story follows for a while and who have reasons of their own for the atrocities they commit. I'm actually hoping the reasons will be sympathetic, not to justify their actions but to show that it's everyday human beings, not incomprehensible monsters, who commit terrible acts. I'm pretty sure it'll still read as justification to a fair portion of the audience, though. Heck, even Immortan Joe from Fury Road has his defenders, so obviously even effectively written morality won't get through to 100% of the audience.

One way I think (hope) the narrative sympathy effect might be overcome is by showing the full impact of the immoral in-story actions and to give victims more narrative time and weight than the villains, making them and not the villains the protagonists. One way I think that morality in stories fail is when the story agrees implicitly with the villains' logic that their victims are objects to be used and discarded rather than people in their own right, by reducing victims to objects to be ogled rather than agents in their own stories. Maybe the problem with story morality is not that villains get to tell their stories but that the victims don't.

I'm not entirely sure about any of this, these are just hypotheses I'm turning over in my mind and the proof will be in the writing--and more importantly, in the reception. I'd welcome any thoughts on this.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

I am debating whether the antagonist of my current novel in progress (not that I have much progress yet) gets to be a narrator. I already intend that the four protagonists all get to narrate parts. I'm not even sure why it seems like a good idea that the antagonist gets to be a narrator. *contemplate*

[ljwrites]

That's a really good point to ponder, I think. (Icon: Me when I ponder story points.) In my case I give the antagonist/villain screentime because I want readers to think about why someone who does awful things would feel justified--without being justified, IMO--in those actions. I hope the viewpoints of the protagonist, who eventually splits with him due to these actions, and the suffering of his victims, would balance things out and show why his actions are not justified no matter how right he thought himself in the moment.

If you want to share (remembering this is a public post), what's your rationale for making the antagonist a narrator or not? Have you made a decision on this?

[alexseanchai]

I haven't decided, but your comments incline me to give him some of the PoV time. Thank you for helping to clarify my thoughts!

[lookingforoctober]

So if you don't want narrative sympathy (or don't want too much narrative sympathy?), what effect are you going for with that narrator? What do you want the reader to be thinking/feeling as they read that POV?

My guess is that if you are trying for an effect that is a mixture of two or more things, then yeah, you will probably get some people getting only one, some people getting only the other, and everything in between...

[ljwrites]

what effect are you going for with that narrator? What do you want the reader to be thinking/feeling as they read that POV?

I want the readers to think about what might drive them to commit crimes against humanity, to be really uncomfortable and question how firm their morals really are.

I agree the effect won't be uniform--as I said, even the totalitarian dictator from Mad Max who spent most of the movie tracking down his escaped sex slaves has his defenders/admirers--and many will resolve their cognitive dissonance by either defending the antagonist or utterly distancing themselves from him. It's the ones in between, who will sympathize with his reasons while condemning his actions, and who at the same time realize that they are capable of the same things, that really interest me. To the extent I can with my craft I want to maximize the number of people who think in this nuanced way, who become uncomfortable with themselves as a result of reading and don't shy away from that discomfort.