Expression of characters’ self-concepts

My interest in this section is the analysis how characters’ self-concepts are constructed through the language of the narrative text. I will propose that characters’ use of language reflects the structures and processes of their self-concept as well as the motivations underlying the regulation of their mental and behavioural life. I will take into account both the textual features of characters’ language as well as the inferences readers may draw from them to arrive at conclusions about how the reader creates a mental representation of characters’ self-concepts. This analysis will prove to be revealing about aspects of characterisation and characters’ peculiar mind styles.

As it was explained in the introduction to this chapter, the emphasis is on characters’ conceptions of themselves, which influences the characters’ perception processes, both intrapersonal and interpersonal processes (Markus and Wurf 1987), as well as the perception of the world around them (Schlenker 1985). Here, my aim is to analyse characters’ self-concepts as revealed through the narrative parts of the texts. This implies that characters’ conversations will not be dealt with in this chapter because the self-concept expressed in them may either reveal their actual self-concept, or it may answer to self- presentational motives, for example, creating a particular impression on another character for the achievement of a goal. Thus, in this chapter I will analyse characters’ self­

conceptions as expressed exclusively in narrations, while chapters 9 and 10 will analyse the issues of the self-concept and self-presentation.

6.3.1 Types of narrators

Before providing my analysis of self-conceptions, I find it necessary to explain the different types of narrators who can tell a story, as it will affect the expression of a character’s self- concept. Short (1996) suggests that there are two types of narrators: third-person narrators and first-person narrators. A third-person narrator is not a character in the story, and s/he refers to all the characters using third person pronouns: ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’ or ‘they’. Third person narrators are usually omniscient, as they know everything in the fictional world. On the other hand, a first-person narrator, also called I-narrator or narrator-character, is a character in the fictional world, and s/he usually tells a story after the events have occurred. Short proposes that narrator-characters are ‘limited’, as they do not know all the facts in the story because they tell it as if it was happening for the first time, or ‘unreliable’, as they may withhold information or tell untruths, for example, in mystery or murder stories.

The issue of narrators being reliable or unreliable, which applies exclusively to first- person narrators, is an important one in my analysis of characters. According to Rimmon- Kenan (1983: 100) a reliable narrator is supposed to give an authoritative account of the fictional truth, whereas an unreliable narrator’s account of a story or commentary on it is more doubtful. A much utilised example of an unreliable narrator is Chief Bromden in One

Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Kesey 1962), who is an inmate in an asylum. Short (1996)

claims that he is an unreliable narrator because he is cognitively impaired: ‘We are constantly reminded that he is the inmate of an asylum and so he is not entirely to be trusted

in his views’ (1996: 257). One of the problems of unreliable narrators, Rimmon-Kenan (1983: 103) suggests, is for the reader to decide if the narrator is reliable or unreliable, and to what extent the reader may trust him.

A different approach to the problem of the narrator’s unreliability is offered by Ryan (1991) in her account of possible world theory, which will be explained in detail in the next two chapters. Ryan proposes a distinction between our actual world (AW) and the world that texts project, the textual actual world (TAW). When a story is told by an omniscient narrator, his or her discourse is to be taken as the textual actual world. But when a narrator- character tells a story, the reader ‘does not perceive the narrative actual world directly, but apprehends it through its reflection in a subjective world’ (1991: 113), so that the reader has to decide which of the narrator’s assertions are objective facts and which reflect the narrator-character’s subjective world. Again, she offers an explanation of the unreliable narrator Chief Bromden:

When, for instance the narrator of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest declares that the orderlies of the mental hospital where he is a patient have sensitive equipment to detect his fear, we regard this belief as hallucination. But we accept as fact the statement that there are orderlies mopping the floor in the hallway. The existence of unreliable narrators in fiction demonstrates a possible gap between the world projected by the narrator’s declarations (what could be called narratorial actual world, or NAW) and the facts o f TAW. (Ryan 1991: 113)

Facts in the narratorial actual world are indeed subjective, but they represent the character’s perception of himself, others, and the world around him. Thus, in Bromden’s world the orderlies do have sensitive equipment to detect fear. But the reader is able, through textual cues, to detect these facts as belonging to his NAW, and interpret them, in this particular case, as proving the narrator’s cognitive impairment. In fact, as Chief Bromden sets out to explain his story, he addresses the reader commenting about his act of narration:

I been silent so long now it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it ’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.(One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, p. 8, my emphasis)

Bromden does acknowledge he is about to tell his truth, his own version of events, the facts in his narratorial actual world, even if these facts did not happen in the text actual world.

In terms of characters’ self-concepts, the notion of unreliable narrators becomes extremely relevant. Throughout a text, narrator-characters may offer us descriptions of their self-concept, from their subjective position as unreliable narrators. My claim is that characters’ subjective self-descriptions are part of their NAW, and so they are ‘true’ for the characters in question. This is precisely the issue with the self-concept: the self-concept is people’s subjective impression of their own attributes, not an objective and external account of them. Thus, the self-concept expressed by narrator-characters, reliable1 or unreliable, is always true in their NAW.

For example, the protagonist of Fight Club is an unreliable narrator-character because, as he recognises, he suffers from schizophrenia. Thus, at the beginning of the novel, he presents the reader with a self-concept which is true in his NAW, though later in the text he realises it was not accurate, as he was unaware of his split personality. However, the character’s unawareness of his cognitive impairment is not an obstacle for him in constructing a self-concept which is his true self-concept at a given point in time, in his NAW. Hussey (1982), dealing with Shakespearean soliloquies, which are comparable to narrator-characters providing self-descriptions in the narrative text, claims that what characters say in a soliloquy is sincere ‘within the limits of his own self-knowledge’ (1982:

182), so that characters’ self-concepts may not be necessarily correct, in terms of TAW, due to a limitation in self-awareness. In conclusion, a narrator-character’s self-concept is always ‘true’ in NAW, although it may not be ‘correct’ in TAW. Moreover, the reader will only be aware of this ‘incorrectness’ if s/he is granted access to TAW or is able to draw the appropriate inferences from textual information. In the analysis of Fight Club (chapter 3), readers are able to infer the protagonist has an inaccurate self-concept from his conversations with Marla, before the character himself realises that he suffers from a split personality disorder.

Socio-cognitive research on the working self-concept suggests that there is no correlation between being schematic on a trait and it being true of oneself (see section 6.2.2.1). Thus, not having an accurate perception of one’s self-concept does not imply that the self-concept is wrong, because it will still guide both perception processes and self- regulation. This notion from cognitive psychology supports my claim that characters’ self- concepts are true in their NAW, so that the narrator’s unreliability is not an obstacle for the reader’s construction of a narrator-character’s self-concept. In conclusion, the problem of unreliable narrators does not impede the analysis of characters’ self-concepts.

Moreover, as we saw in the literature review, in spite of the stability of the self- concept, throughout the years, there may be changes in one’s self-conception, especially changes in social roles, such as becoming a father, or suffering a life-threatening event (see 6.2.2.2). Thus, another relevant factor when dealing with character’s personalities is that they are dynamic entities, capable of change. As the action in narratives progresses, the personalities of characters may be developed and thus, the reader’s mental representation of

1 My claim is that reliable characters offer their subjective self-concepts as well because, by definition, self-