Nerdworms

"Readers often comprehend a story by assuming the perspective of a character...and mentally represent his or her emotions" (697)

I totally dug into this idea presented by Mar and friends because I think there was an assumption with "a" character. What happens when we have a novel like Persuasion that uses FID that gives us an insight into multiple characters minds? The FID blurs the line between narrator and character which creates this odd sense that we may be in the characters minds, but at the same times gives us a very powerful sense of the presence of some kind of thought process.

For instance, after being totally rained on by "Heartache and Head Injury," I awaited the final reunion of Anne and Captain Wentworth. And let me tell you, I was getting highly irritated by the end. JUST KISS ALREADY. They kissed in my head though not narrated explicitly, manners of the time be damned. And when they finally admitted they still loved each other, the narrative gets interesting. We hear Wentworth's description of his feelings through  the Anne/Narrative hybrid FID present throughout the novel. "jealousy of Mr. Elliot had been the retarding weight, the doubt, the torment." (226) In this, the reader cannot be sure who is speaking, but we clearly understand the sentiment that makes us empathize with the object, Wentworth. In this case, it doesn't particularly matter who is speaking, but rather that direct entrance into the content of the speech which either removes bias of characters/narrators or overloads bias to a point where the reader has to make a decision themselves. I argue for the last point, that we as readers are forced in points like this, that remove the obvious speaker, to use the meaning repairing center of our brain in conjunction with our social skills as humans to make an inference. The inference being that Wentworth was jealous of Elliot and acted really weird at the concert. We have to feel jealousy, that pain of hating so much to the point where we can't do anything but feel awkward and tormented, like we read about just a few chapters ago, and what we probably have experienced in life. FID encourages us to empathize with someone and make social assumptions because the narration isn't allowing us direct access to a speaker, thus assigning an interpretation based on the book. There has to be a melding of abilities. And yet, this happens incredibly quickly and really without us knowing. I think we don't process immediately that there is a lack of speaker because we have raw information that is matched up with previous information from the novel.

Later in the paragraph we get "he" and "his" which reject direct access to Wentworth, but we still don't know if Anne is narrating or the narrator is doing their job.

In this ambiguity, I found myself empathetic with Anne, Mrs. Smith and Wentworth. I completely understood the pain of Wentworth's rejection by Anne because of FID, as well as Anne's desire to be with Wentworth. Poor Mrs. Smith! Her life just sucked something awful; the worst luck a fiction book can make, Candide aside. I think Austen did a great job using FID to create empathy for multiple characters, which ultimately supplies the reader with many social experiences that could manifest themselves in everyday life.


Another question I has was can a "naturally empathetic" person be found? The authors raise the question that such a person may be able to comprehend story telling better and be more inclined to read. As we have discussed in the previous week, this "natural" is called into question because we cannot isolate that which is nature and that which is educated. The article suggests tracking children who are more inclined to engaged in "imaginative play" and see if they later on become a bookworm, which would then make them a more socio-capable individual. However, these children may reject reading for it is a solitary action, one that may mirror society, it does not exactly replace the relationships and interactions of real life.

I also began to question how children and students are taught to read literature. For instance, the study of poetry often involves the evaluation of formal features, that is things like rhyme scheme, structure, vocabulary and other tonal features. I have found that this type of lens can push the reader away from the emotionality, that is the "message" of the piece. This would therefore inhibit the social interaction aspect that one would gather from the reading of the fiction. I may be stretching the theory by applying it to poetry, but the same is true with books. If one makes plot maps, character webs, factual worksheets and academic essays, one may be distracted from the society within the novel because one is looking for something else. The fault in this argument is that we cannot say if we pick up the empathy unconsciously or consciously. As a teacher, I would have to draw attention to the sentences that point to instances that call for socio-interpretation like the example of Wendy and her trembling drawer. I would like to see a study done on the difference in education of literature. I get emotionally attached to characters, but I also can distance myself when I'm specifically searching for formal features. I wonder if a school system systematically rejects the emotionality and empathetic nature of fiction, would that render a bookworm an "unfeeling" nerd?