Reading the Classics

[flyingskull]

Sorry for the absence. Part of it was work, part of it was a bit of sex, but most of it was that I was thinking and trying to understand a thing that's been irritating me: why is it so hard to use decent reading comprehension when faced with the classics?

Take Romeo and Juliet for example. Everybody and their mother-in-law are dissing it right, left and centre because the protagonists are eejits and there's such a simple solution to their problem and also that's not love, that's hormones talking. Which would be alright if the actual text didn't say something completely different from 'see how tragic this immortal love story is?'.

What the actual text says is that murderous hatred and family feuds are killers; that they blind people to logic, reason and good sense. It says that the adults have lost all sense of responsibility and social values, not that the children are cretins. The children - he's sixteen and she's fourteen - have good social values, the children are open to dialogue, the children fall in and out of love and lust and, if they don't respect their parents so much, they fear them enough and love them enough to be willing victims to the adults' whims. That's what the tragedy is all about, y'know? The love - lust, hormones... doesn't make a difference - of the young protagonists is just a symbol of the hope for reconciliation, a thing that happens only after their death. The children are the scapegoats and sacrificial lambs.

They are also real human teens and so they are passionate, willful, confused, arrogant and timid. What's wrong with that? Why should we think Shakespeare (henceforth Will) endorses all their actions? He doesn't. He thinks the marriage is imprudent, he thinks Romeo's a butterfly, he thinks Mercutio's too hot-tempered for his own good, he thinks Juliet is a blancmange... He also clearly thinks that, if the families hadn't been so fucking blind, the whole thing wouldn't have been a problem at all. Romeo is a very good parti for Juliet, surname apart, after all.

Got sidetracked. I had another very good rant on Hamlet, but it can be summarised thus: Hamlet does most emphatically NOT want to kill anyone. He especially doesn't want to go "I am Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." for a father he didn't even like all that much and who always put him down. He does NOT want to be in Denmark and reign, he wants to be in Wittenberg and stude and frolic with Horatio. He does NOT want to marry Ophelia. Yet he's supposed to do all those things and he balks. A LOT. But external forces (as for Romeo and Juliet) force him to a bloody end. Which is all very well, but is utterly not to the point.

What I meant to say is: the protagonist is just the cardea, the hinge around which all actions turn. The author doesn't have to endorse the protagonist's character or actions, one can write about a person one despises, but if s/he is pivotal for all actions and events, then s/he is the protagonist of the novel, drama, whatever. I think it's the same problem I was trying to analyse in singing the praise of the Bastard Hero. There's a cultural trend today I rather hate. If someone is the protagonist, then s/he must be our paragon of virtues. Readers often mistake 'protagonist' for 'hero/ine'. Back to Will, look at Macbeth. Is he a hero? Nah. Is he a protagonist? Hell yes. Did Will endorse Macbeth's actions? 'Course not. BUT he was an interesting person to write about, an interesting person to analyse and condemn, not praise. Will wanted the audience to understand villains and what makes them tick. Because, y'know? he was an author, not a propagandist.

To jump a few centuries, look a Heatcliff. I mean, just look at what he does. He's the protagonist, no doubt, but a Hero? The man's a sociopath! I mean, he has reasons, but they are just reasons why he is what he is, they are not authorial endorsement of his actions. Emily was clearly fascinated by the character - mostly because it was based on her brother whom she loved far too much - but she never once endorses his actions, even if she endorses his passions and his love.

Why should the protagonist be a role model for readers? What has given birth to this monstrous attitude? I grant you it's easier to write this way than to risk readers' bad reactions if you try and tell the story of a villain protagonist; but why doesn't anyone try anymore? Well, no, I tell a lie. I know that authors who have a host of protagonists write some of them 'good', others 'bad' and others 'grey', but that's because the story doesn't have one protagonist. An epic fresco where several characters are all pivotal to a swirl or action. That's lovely and also quite satisfying to read, but that's always been true of epics. I was more focused on the single-protagonist story because I think it's there that the confusion between protagonist and hero happens most frequently for contemporary readers.

Made a hash of things as usual, haven't I? Sorry all. Shouldn't blather when at work, too many telephone calls and things.

ETA - I decided to let it stand, warts and all. Heh...

Comments

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Hey. :) I've been meaning to email you, actually - I could use your educated opinion on a few things, but I wasn't sure if you were up for debate again. I see that you are, though, so I'll get to it. =]

As for your three distractions, uhm... that's always a hassle, I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, and that's a very good question, respectively... ;)

The whole Romeo and Juliet thing is something I keep finding myself debating, actually. I'm with you on that one - my take on it is that of course they were morons, but that's not the point. =]

Their feelings were foolish and would probably not have lasted, but they were genuine feelings - and the pain they felt at being parted, that was genuine too. People seem to think that they're expected to agree with R & J's view on things, but as far as I can tell, they're really not - they're expected to understand, and they're expected to sympathise, and that's all. Shakespeare wasn't in the habit of writing Mary Sues, after all. =]

I think that part of the problem, though, was that Shakespeare's stories had to work on two different levels. He had integrity as a writer and wanted to write the best possible stories - but he also wanted to eat, and that meant he had to please the crowd, and the crowd wanted the heroes to be heroic, the villains to be villainous, and generally to have all their sentimental notions (about True Love, in this case) reinforced.

So if you watch Romeo and Juliet the way you'd watch a daytime soap, what you get is a sappy story about True Love and people dying for romantic but extremely stupid reasons. That's because for the audience at the time, this was the equivalent of a daytime soap - that's what it was sold as and that was what it had to work as. But because Shakespeare was clever, you can look a little more carefully - and what you get is story of human foolishness and how the stupidity of adults in combination with the (more excusable, one feels) stupidity of hormonal teenagers led to tragedy, just as you said.

Didn't you say sometime back that a good author can make the real message of a story be the complete opposite to the stated message? I suspect that kind of thing goes on a lot in Shakespeare's plays - though to be sure, I've still only read four of them. I really need to rectify that, these things are online and everything and I really have no excuse. ^_^;

You know, it's kind of sad that I can't exactly remember when was the last time I read a story where the protagonist was not a hero (in the liberal sense of the word whereby we're supposed the character does the right thing, or at least a right thing at every turn) and stayed not a hero through the end... They all become better people before the end, darn it.

Actually, I tell a lie - there is one book in my collection that has a protagonist that's sympathetic despite being a thouroughly nasty piece of work, and who does not reform, not one bit. I don't think it's been translated, it's called Den Stora Fredens Krig (which translates into something like "The War of the Great Peace"). The protagonist lies to and betrays his allies to death (and in one case, to eternal damnation), and his foremost goal is always his own survival and the continuation of his own power. But you still like him all the way, because he's in such a horrible situation with all the odds against him yet never gives up... and because he's such a smart bastard. =]

But aside from one fairly obscure Swedish writer, the pickings are kind of slim in the modern literature I've read...

[elena-takami.livejournal.com]

I don't much like Romeo and Juliet. I think it does actually have something to do with the supposedly great tragic romance aspect, because it does seem a very silly way of doing things to me. I do quite like MacBeth, though.

Anyway, to go with your point and ignore my personal distaste; I find that a moral is easier to swallow if you make some attempt to make the characters sympathetic, somehow. I'd feel a lot more distressed by the family feuds and socio-political commentary if there was one character caught up in them (other than Mercutio, because the whole point -is- that he's neither Montague or Capulet and dies for it anyway.) I actually felt any kind of pity for.

I don't want flawless heroes, mind, because I agree with you that those -are- boring. I guess I'm just lazy; I find it much easier to understand a character if I can can just find one facet of their character that I can sympathise with or see the logic behind, rather than having to work to get anywhere at all in the character's head. I don't get either Romeo or Juliet at all, and so I can't read them, because their actions don't seem logical to me at all. I couldn't write them in character, no matter how hard I tried, whereas I can make a pretty good guess at MacBeth.

*cough* I can't even tell if I'm making sense. Bed time for me, I think =P

On the topic of power as temptation, well, there's partially projection and partially writers holding far too tightly to the "power corrupts" maxim, I think.

[ingriam.livejournal.com]

I think you'd like Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist. All of the characters in the anime - I never really got into the manga - are human with varying degrees of quirks. And Roy Mustang is a Bastard Hero of the highest caliber. ;)