Narrative Ethics, Narrative Aesthetics: Functions, Characters, and Effects
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Narrative Ethics, Narrative Aesthetics: Functions, Characters, and Effects Dana Ryan Lande Supervisor: Professor Jakob Lothe A Thesis Presented to The Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages The University of Oslo In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Master of Arts Degree Spring Semester 2011 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My sincerest thanks to Jonathan Franzen who met me, a very nervous student, and patiently answered my extremely theoretical questions in the midst of, what can only be called, the most intense media campaign ever launched for an author visiting Norway. Mr. Franzen has my eternal gratitude for his kindness, as well as my eternal thanks for the character of Patty. Thanks are also due to James Phelan, who took time in the midst of a conference to sit down, eat lunch, and answer all of my questions. Not only is Phelan my theoretical „guru,‟ I now see him as a truly helpful and kind professor with whom I hope to discuss theory again in the future. This thesis would not have come together in any cohesive fashion without the consistent and immensely helpful guidance of Jakob Lothe, my advisor. Professor Lothe not only introduced me to narratology in his course “Fiction and Film,” but also encouraged my attendance at the International Program in Narratology in Århus, Denmark in the summer of 2010. Without such a fantastic beginning in such a fascinating field, I am unsure if I would have been able to explore the concepts in this thesis properly. Last but not least, Halvor, thank you. 3 CONTENTS Chapter One: Introduction………………………………………………...…5 Chapter Two: Two Stories, Two Approaches to Narrative Ethics How We Are Hungry, by Dave Eggers…………………………...…24 Chapter Three: The Ethics of the Telling Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann……………………...45 Chapter Four: The Ethics of the Told Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen……………………………………..71 Chapter Five: Conclusion……………………………………………….......95 Bibliography…………………………………………………………….…105 4 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Over a number of years I have attempted to conceal a growing collection of books. This is not to say that a large home library is an embarrassment, or that it should be a necessary thing to hide from friends and colleagues. What has become rather apparent is this; the more books one has, the more questions about books and reading one must answer. Interestingly enough, when visitors see the shelves there are two types of responses. The first and most common, likely due to the abundance of graduate students in my circle of friends, is one of joy and a desire to use me as a sort of librarian. The second response, which gives me not a small amount of concern, as well as the motivation for concealing at least half of my library, is the vague questioning of those who don‟t read for either pleasure or work. (Some sort of variant of “What could you possibly need these books for?”) Apparently, for people who never got into the reading habit, it is confusing to understand the nature of the relationship between oneself and a good story, the bond per se. Even more apparent is my inability over the last few years to give these inquiries a decent answer. When asked why I have held on to so many books, I begin to explain the stories and the characters, and while doing so, the emotions and memories from the story flood back to me. So there I stand, teary-eyed, clutching Jane Eyre, exclaiming, “But his wife was in the attic the whole time,” while an oblivious inquirer is left wondering how such an intelligent woman can have such a vibrant relationship with something composed of paper. This rather embarrassing confession, while establishing a bit of insight regarding my motivations for writing this thesis, hopefully highlights the importance of the relationship that a reader enters into when reading a book. What is it that draws a reader into a story, keeps them there for hours at a time, and then releases them with a feeling of satisfaction? What is it that compels a reader to revisit and discuss these stories with friends? Frankly, I needed a better answer to give my non-literary acquaintances. Thanks to my course of study at the University of Oslo, I was introduced to James Phelan‟s rhetorical theory of narrative. Through his work on the relationship between authors, readers, and texts, I was able to see an approach to literary criticism that could not only divulge the thematic insights that I‟ve always enjoyed analyzing, but also uncover the rhetoric behind them. Phelan clearly maps out techniques and approaches that help identify the different relationships that occur when reading a book, or any fictional narrative for that 5 matter. In this thesis I have analyzed three works of fiction using Phelan‟s rhetorical theory of narrative. Each text has been enlightening and enjoyable, offering not only confirmation of some of Phelan‟s theories but also, sometimes, suggesting extensions of them. In this way, I hope that the analysis that follows will contribute something new to ongoing discussions within narrative theory, and perhaps even offer an answer or two for my non-literary guests. While I am applying a relatively small branch of the rhetorical theory of narrative to my texts, it is still helpful to break my main focus, or problem statement, into three levels. These insights stem from the textual analysis in the following chapters and, later, will be discussed at length in relation to their textual origins. However, it may be beneficial for my reader to get a glimpse of where this discussion is headed, and what kinds of questions that will be approached. Please be aware that the terminology that now appears will be explained shortly, and that each level follows and interacts with the others, as they, like all things rhetorical, have a recursive relationship. Part one of my problem statement is that characters have a role within narrative as tools for ethical rhetoric, and that is something that is both implicit in the mimetic, thematic and synthetic roles they play, yet this role also transcends these categories to become an overt quality in itself. It is this aesthetic role that provokes judgments while also working as a telling function: in essence it is the bridge between the ethical and narratological. Remember the character of Cinderella; she is mimetic in her representation of a possible girl, thematic in her goodness and fairytale-like manner, synthetic in her place inside a work of fiction. This leaves out a key ingredient that begs to be identified; Cinderella‟s aesthetic role as a tool for the ethical rhetoric in the story. She is also a character conveying an ethical position of humble servitude, utilizing her ethical position to increase the reader/viewer‟s hopes for her future, and using disclosure functions to comment on the very foul nature of her guardians. Part two of my problem statement is that the ethics of the telling, or the telling functions, work as the aesthetic tools for the implied author to use when guiding the reader into a collaboration with their characters’ ethical positions. More importantly, the effects of the telling functions, namely the parameters of expectation and the actual expectations lead the reader into such a collaboration. In other words, there are elements working in the text that are helping the reader to follow the specific path that the author has created for their reading experience, and that those elements are also giving the reader clues as to where the story is heading. 6 Finally, part three of my problem statement deals with the ethics of the told. The character-character relations and the presentation of ethical positions affects the aesthetics as well as the ethics of a story, provoking readerly judgments, thus relying on the progression of the story for comprehension of the ethics, as well as the telling functions themselves. Or, the way the characters interact and behave throughout a story affects both structure and ethics, and that goes hand in hand with how a reader will digest the story as a whole. Other questions that will follow after such an inquiry include: what adds the most „rhetorical‟ weight to a character? Strong telling functions or a vivid ethical position? Finally, I will consider how this may affect our judgments, as we watch the aesthetics of the text and the ethics of the characters work together. The Texts Before diving into the minefield of theory that was just introduced, a look at the literature I have chosen to focus on is necessary. The books in this thesis have significant similarities while stemming from various branches of the genre of contemporary fiction. Starting with Dave Eggers and his collection of short stories, How We Are Hungry, we have an American author working in a genre that lends itself readily to study with its concise examples of narrative work. Continuing on with Colum McCann‟s Let the Great World Spin; the American element is still present as he is an author residing in New York City while writing about New York City, though originally from Ireland. Rounding off this study is Jonathan Franzen, or Time Magazine‟s “Great American Novelist”1 and his most recent novel, Freedom, which is a social novel portraying an American family, thus solidifying the American link between all of these texts. Each text revealed some key points upon analysis, and therefore earned its position in my discussion based on its theoretical merits. Beginning with short stories which illustrate some of the more detailed points of Phelan‟s theory and then analyzing two different approaches to story-telling in the following two novels enables my research to grow organically with the texts.