I do believe that a single day is all you need to understand where a person is coming from. And although I have recently found out that I don’t like books that use this method to tell a story, it was definitely an interesting way to get into the characters head.
Using only one day, writers can only focus on the character, and how they carry out the tasks of their day. How they wake up, how they get themselves ready, if they go to work or not. You can tell a lot from a person just by what they do every day as a routine, or what they get from a store. Allowing a reader to follow a character throughout a normal day gives you more insight that you may not get in a normal book that takes place over the course of a few days or so. How characters carry out their days, the little things they do, is completely different from what another person may do. I may wake up and eat breakfast right away, because I’m hungry when I get up while someone else may not eat breakfast at all.
It also shows you a side of a character you may never get to see. Many mainstream books rarely focus for long on how a character may react. There’s problems to be solved, plots to continue, battles to be won! We can’t sit around and learn how the main character takes his coffee when the villain of the story is raging terror. If you have the book set in the course of a day, there is more time to sit down, and explain how the character reacts to things, why they do what they do. It just doesn’t show that she’s going to the flower shop just to buy flowers for the party. It shows that she doesn’t go there too often, because the conversation she has with the clerk it’s as friends but as consumer to clerk.
Giving characters a reason on why they do, and giving the reader a closer look on how they react to things can make the reader feel more connected. How we react externally is completely different from how we act in our own heads. We don’t say everything that’s on our mind. By following a character, and seeing both reactions to a situation, we can really grasp what the character is all about, and start to see them as a real person. Some thoughts the characters may have, some experiences they may go through can relate to us, and there for show the character as a true person we can visualize.
I truly believe that the phrase ‘A day in my shoes’ comes into play with these types of books. Because the reader isn’t just a bystander, watching as the hero goes off to defeat the dragon. They’re actually following in the hero’s normal life, understand who he is and why he does what he does. We may only get a glimpse of that from another book. But with a book that only shows you one day? That’s where we see most of the psychology of the character, And that’s when we can really feel like we know who they are.
I can completely agree with your statement: "How we react externally is completely different from how we act in our own heads." This is so true with not just certain people but everyone. Everyone has this one certain attitude about themselves but when asked by others there may be some differences that make them uncomfortable. And I like your mentioning of that saying "A day in the life of..." it makes sense because it is so true that you just pick a day in their life and its certainly not the same as any other day but sometimes it feels that way. There are even television shows like that for celebrities where you see their whole day go by and you can see what they see through their eyes. It involves much more than you might originally think and your thinking about that person becomes changed because you realize that they are not just one dimensional. They have different aspects that are apart of their lives that make them who they are and how they react to situations is based on their attitudes and behaviors. It is just something that's mind boggling to realize after being under the impression that someone has things so easy or is happy with their life. That relates to Mrs. Brown in the story because even to her neighbor probably she seemed like she was happy with her life and her husband etc. when in reality she was always thinking about just leaving it all behind or ignoring her responsibilities.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy your post I agree with you that in most novels we do not explore the inner workings of our character. This novel’s objective is usually to illustrate how the protagonist and antagonist interact with each other on an external level. “We can’t sit around and learn how the main character takes his coffee when the villain of the story is raging terror.” That is exactly what happens in many novels, we spend so much time watching our characters interact with the fictional universe that even as readers we at times over look seeing our protagonist as anything but entertainment. We keep on reading along and pushing forward to see what the next pivotal moment in the story will be however sometimes we do not stop to get a deeper look at our characters. What makes them tick and why? What else is below the surface that we are not seeing? With Jane Eyre we were in her head for around five hundred pages, learning about her psyche and understanding her on a deeper level than simply a woman in the 19th century England. In order for us to look below the surface of our characters authors would have to give us access into a character’s inner thoughts. As you said, what we see on the outside may not be what is going on the inside.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the method the novel, “The Hours,” used was definitely an interesting way of sharing what is inside the heads of the main characters. This novel was totally different from any novel I had ever read and strangely enough in just one day so much was disclosed to the reader about what the main characters were thinking and how they felt about people, themselves and places as they were doing simple tasks throughout the course of their day. I was bewildered by the entire book; fortunately after being enlighten, I think I might be willing to venture out of my reading box and try reading a novel that has similar style of writing and try to interpret the meaning of the character/s life and why they feel the way they do. If a book was written about me, and what my thought and feeling are as I go along the course of my day, the readers would probably have sympathy for me. I now can say I enjoyed the novel and out of the three characters in the novel I can relate best with Mrs. Brown, and Clarissa. I can absolutely see a correlation between “The Hours” and the phrase you mentioned “A day in my shoes.”
ReplyDelete