The Story-Author-Reader Relationship - Essay Example

Profesor The Story Reader Relationship The question of identifying which among the three (story, reader) is the mostimportant gives surprising and unique answers, depending on which one is being highlighted on. For some, the story is the most important one because it is the anchor that sets the author’s visions and pulls the reader’s interests. For others, the author is important over the story and the readers because it is through his or her hands that the story becomes woven, which then reels the readers in. Other opinions state that the readers’ interests, views, and level of understanding can affect how a story is interpreted and marketed to others, which can in turn make or break the author’s credibility and standing. This therefore implies that readers are much more important than the author or the story. While this debate continues, there is another perspective in tackling the issue, and that is to realize that these three factors come and work together, in the sense that one cannot live without the other, and in effect the outcome of any one can be influenced by one or both of the other two. Thus, it can be said that while the idea that only the story, the reader, or the author exerts influence over the others remains to be a subjective case, it is easier to say that instead of being separate entities, the story, the reader, and the author are actually interrelated, forming a relationship with a push-pull quality. This can further explain how each one can influence the other two, essentially putting all three on equal grounds through a less subjective viewpoint, unlike the linear relationship shown in a game of rock-paper-scissors with the story being the rock, the author being the paper, and the readers being the scissors. In order to explain the idea that Story-Author-Reader is actually a relationship, three stories shall be discussed and evaluated using the story, author, and reader perspective and how each situation relates to the Story-Author-Reader relationship. First is Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979), which is considered to be more of an exposition on how the Story-Author-Reader relationship works. For this story, the author has greater importance over the story and the reader, simply because the author wrote it into the kind of story that is hard to see as linear due to the various plot changes as a result of the author using an unorthodox structure in writing the novel. Second is Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605), considered to be a bridge between romantic and modern literature. For this novel, the story has greater prominence over the author or the reader, simply because it shows the various perspectives of its myriad of characters, as well as character development in the main protagonists. Lastly is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866), which is seen as a visionary novel that inspired other great writers (Garnett ix). In his work, the reader gains much more prominence over the author and the story because aside from the idea that the content may remain the same, but through social context the meaning of the work for each individual who reads it can change. This is one of the strong reasons why there was a strong patronage of the story’s readers during the novel’s serialization, and if it were not for them the story might not have been published progressively and become an appraised book. The Author’s Importance Emphasized If on a winter’s night a traveler is not what many can consider to be average, as it takes a while before the reader realizes that apart from the author’s intent of not following a linear storyline, it is also an exposition of the author in using various styles of writing that can pull in different kinds of readers despite the seemingly incoherent and confusing structure of the story. These can be attributed to the first chapters inserted in the even-numbered pages and have no connection to the actual plot itself. This kind of zigzag structure, the use of a story-within-a-story-within a story, as well as the odd-numbered chapters written in the second-person gives the idea that the author dictates everything that the reader experiences as well as how the story goes. By starting the story with what seems to be a set of instructions the reader becomes in a way trapped and steered by the author, as implied by the first few lines: “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax, Concentrate. Dispel every other thought” (Calvino 3). In addition, because the author has a greater say on how the novel is to be read and how it goes, there is lesser power for the reader and can only become frustrated and confused, and may be the author’s intent from the beginning. In using the Story-Author-Reader relationship it can be seen here that the author, in this case Calvino exerts a stronger importance over the story and in turn over the reader as well because he decides not to come up with the expectations of most readers, and that is a reliable and linear plot or storyline. Instead of using the third person in what can be considered to be the novel’s actual content (the odd-numbered pages and the last chapter), the author tries to incorporate the reader into the novel by using pronouns in the second-person, which in a way can be interpreted as the author having control over the readers, how they may interpret the story, and what they will experience while reading the work. What more is that by adding a factor of incoherence through the interweaving of a storyline inserted into the main storyline, this affects readers that can range from suspense to impatience, from engagement to disentanglement, and from understanding the plot fully to getting more questions than answers, and this shows how the author becomes much more important over the story or the readers. Thus this can be explained in a hierarchy of power wherein the author is placed up in the top, the story goes in the middle, and the readers end up at the bottom tier. The Story’s Importance Emphasized Don Quixote has long been lauded as a forerunner in its right, especially since aside from it being the product of the collection of Cervantes’ experiences in war, it also embedded the idea that the world as it is to one person may not be what other may see, which is in a way unique even during the time it was published. Cervantes brings up this idea in his introduction, wherein he mentions that he cannot improve upon Don Quixote’s situation and allows other “better” writers to improve the old knight’s image because of his “incompetence and lack of learning” (Cervantes 5). This implies that whereas other authors may successfully understand how their characters think and explain why they act as such, Cervantes’ shows that despite his understanding of Don Quixote’s situation he cannot fully comprehend why he acted as such, and therefore this motion allows the readers to put much more focus on Don Quixote’s adventures rather than what Cervantes wanted to tell readers personally in his novel. It also shows how Don Quixote becomes detached from Cervantes, which brings him to life and come to exist as a separate entity from the author. Going back to the Story-Author-Reader relationship, it can be noticed that despite the author having a greater control over what may happen in the plot, Cervantes placed greater importance on the character and the character’s life. This was accomplished by putting many details about the people in the story, ranging from age to clothing, and even on their eating habits (Cervantes 19). This leaves only a little room for the imagination of the reader and as such allows the story and character development to show itself fully, which in effect makes the characters seem much more alive and real like in biographies. In effect this somewhat diminishes the role of the author, and that the readers become fully-engaged with the characters as they seem them grow and develop within the story’s flow, nearly like raising pets, children, or sowing plants. If a hierarchy is used to explain this relationship, the story is placed in the upper tier, the reader gets ranked in the middle tier, while the author is ranked the lowest, but depending on the situation the middle or lower rank can exchange places in accordance to how the author would want to give emphasis on how the story goes or how the characters will change in the course of the plot. The Reader’s Importance Emphasized When the reader is deemed to have a greater importance over the story or the author, this implies that the author may be strongly-dependent on how the readers would want the story to be written. While it is not exactly what Dostoevsky initially intended for Crime and Punishment, he eventually ended up writing the book and changing the contents in accordance to his changing viewpoints and how the readers received his serialized work (Garnett vii). Because he already has less power over how the book was to be published, this implies that he is under the mercy of whoever chooses to publish his work, especially when the readers’ acceptance is at stake. But Dostoevsky was able to do this successfully by creating scenarios where people can recognize situations and gain familiarity over the settings of his story, which is in this case is the St. Petersburg that he was experiencing during that time (Dostoevsky 3). It is possible that if he chose an unknown location or a fictional place people may not connect with what he was saying in his novel, and that people may dismiss is as something that is not true and is not happening in current society, which may also cause them to feel less attached to the story and to his ideas. However by fully-describing what most people might be experiencing this allows Dostoevsky to pull readers in and intrigue them, since the familiarity of some aspects of the story might resemble something that they have encountered or actually know of. This is a formula that draws in readers of plotlines or stories that have a modern twist, as this allows the readers to be in the same situation as those of the people that they read about as a result of familiarity and empathy. With regards to the Story-Author-Reader relationship, in this case the readers had more power over the author as in a way they dictate what they want to happen in the story. If interpreted in a three-chain link, the readers are at the beginning of the chain, in which they are linked to the author via the story that they read, and in essence the readers pull the author along by either giving a positive or negative response to the author’s output. While still relevant even up to this day, had Dostoevsky gained the go-signal to publish his work straight away in 1865 he may not be able to gain as much since there is a greater possibility that what he may have written at that time will not resonate with the needs and understandings of his potential readers since not all of them may have experienced a prisoners’ camp, and that the story’s relevance to society might come at a much later date when there has been a higher degree of modernization and Westernization in Russia. As such, for this case the author is placed at the bottom tier of the hierarchy, with the story serving as a middle rank while the readers are situated at the top. The Story-Author-Reader Relationship: Conclusions To answer the question of choosing which among the choices of reader, story, or author have greater importance, it is still a relatively subjective matter since it will depend on whose perspective will be used to analyze it, whether the author’s experiences will be used as basis, if the story’s content will be used, or if the readers’ reception will be taken into account. However, it is still possible to use the Story-Author-Reader relationship in explaining which among the three has a greater influence over the other two by using a tier to describe the relative position of each one from the other two. This is because how one ends up on the top or bottom of the tier depends on how two elements combine or interact with the other. In the case of Calvino’s story, because of how he engages with the reader and how he dictates the story and the novel’s structure, he as an author has greater influence over his readers and how they will read and experience his story. For Cervantes, because he essentially breathed life into his characters by describing them fully, this allowed him to be overshadowed by the characters he created, and at the same time the readers gain the feeling of watching the characters, seeing their experiences, feeling their pain, and observing how they will personally change in the course of the story. This puts Cervantes as the author in line with the readers or a degree below them while the story gains a greater importance over everything else. Lastly in the case of Dostoevsky’s story because he was not able to have his novel published fully due to constraints, he ended up having the novel serialized, leading to him and the publisher gauging how the readers will respond first before publishing the succeeding chapters, and having to change some of the original content to appease the greater percentage of the reading public. This automatically removes Dostoevsky’s control over the story, and allows the readers to take charge, which in turn puts the author at the lowest rank of the hierarchy, with the readers occupying the top tier and the story being under their control, a rank above the author. While the rock-paper-scissors analogy may only seem significant in terms of showing the linear relationship of how readers can affect authors and how authors compare the stories, by showing that the Story-Author-Reader relationship is much more of a chain link that can be rearranged this the complexities that arise in the process of establishing which among the three have influence or has greater importance over the other two. In a way, the influence of one factor is able to affect the outcome or the actions of either of the two, which works much more like a push-pull relationship. As such, depending on which entity has control over the other, it is more likely that the story, the author, and the readers all have equal chances of gaining influence and must be seen much more as three related elements functioning on equal terms rather than as individual entities separate from one another. Works Cited Calvino, Italo. If on a winter's night a traveler. Trans. William Weaver. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1979. Print. De Cervantes, Miguel. Don Quixote. Trans. Edith Grossman. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1605. Print. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: William Heinemann, 1866. Print. Garnett, Constance. Note. Crime and Punishment. By Fyodor Dostoevsky. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: William Heinemann. 1866. i-ix. Print. Read More