THE DOCTOR IS IN

THE UNSYMPATHETIC PROTAGONIST

Our family was eating dinner a few weeks ago when the room erupted in frenzied, menacing choral shouting that stopped as suddenly as it has started. My son was the only one who didn’t jump. “What the hell was that?” I asked him.

He reached for his cell phone. “I changed my text alert.”

“It sounds…demonic.”

He smiled. “It is, sort of.” He explained that the chorus was taken from Iced Earth’s Something Wicked Saga, which describes the events leading up to Armageddon. The protagonist, Set Abominae, is the Antichrist, whose mission is to destroy humankind through manipulation of leaders’ egotism and greed.

My baby was listening to satanic music? My inner Jerry Falwell was instantly activated. “That’s great,” I said. “What a role model. What a nice guy to have on your phone.”

Ben shot me the look of amused puzzlement I see more and more often on his face these days. “Mom? He’s the Antichrist. He’s not supposed to be a nice guy.”

Oh. Right. When I was able to stop laughing, he told me a bit more about the story. Set Abominae’s ancestors were the original inhabitants of earth, mostly wiped out by human invaders. He has been raised to avenge this holocaust, which he does. Over time, however, he begins to see potential for good in humans, and to question his mission.

I’ve been thinking about this episode, and especially my knee-jerk reaction, lately, because two clients and a friend have reported similar negative responses to their novels. Agents and editors have objected that their main characters aren’t sufficiently likable.

When I edited confession magazines, the likability of the narrator was one of the primary criteria we used to select stories. This made sense, given the target audience. The “typical” reader, according to advertising demographics, was a married 30-year-old mother of three, employed part-time, with no household help. We had to compete with husband, children, household chores, job, and budget worries. She may have been bright and literate, but she was also probably exhausted. Chances are, she read our magazine in snatched moments between loads of laundry or infant feedings. There was no leisure for reflection on nuance, and if a story troubled or depressed her, she would most likely put it down and turn on the TV.

Presumably, consumers of literary novels have more time and energy to grapple with ambiguity. Yet there seems to be continuing insistence that in order for a reader to appreciate a work of art, she or he must “identify with” the main character.

This principle is similar to one I kept hearing during the last three presidential elections. George W. Bush was a popular candidate, according to pundits, because voters “identified with” him more easily than with “eggheads” such as Gore or Kerry. What this seemed to mean was that voters could imagine enjoying a beer with Bush, while they would feel ill-at-ease around candidates who were presumably less outgoing and fun. During the most recent election period, there was concern that despite Obama’s clear strengths, voters might not be able to “identify with” such a clean-cut overachiever. Again, the “average” voter might find it easier to hang out with McCain and Palin.

But is identification synonymous with liking? Hamlet isn’t much of a “nice guy,” and certainly not a desirable role model. Neither are King Lear, Raskolnikov, or Mersault. Yet generations of readers have certainly been able to identify with the lust for power and control, the anger and despair, and the callous self-centeredness that motivate these characters.

“If you have ever killed a cockroach, you have it in you to play Lady Macbeth,” one of my acting teachers insisted. But getting in touch with, and bringing out, the part of ourselves that is murderous, ambitious, and greedy is difficult, often frightening work. It entails acknowledging that in our hearts, we’re no better than anyone else; that we are capable of low thoughts and impulses and therefore of unspeakable acts. We tend to resist exploring, or even acknowledging, our uglier side. Admitting identification with a murderer or blunderer or even with a geeky intellectual who was probably an outcast in high school can threaten our sense of ourselves as decent, kindly, and socially adept winners. Maybe we are more anxious about who we are than our ancestors were, and thus find it harder to tolerate identification with difficult characters. Maybe we don’t want to lift up any more rocks than we have to.

But maybe things are changing. When I told Ben I planned to write about the Set Abominae exchange, he reminded me that three popular TV shows we have gotten hooked on, “House,” “Torchwood,” and “Lie to Me,” also feature unlikable protagonists. And I’ve been listening to more of the Something Wicked music. It is complex, thoughtful and disturbing—exactly what I would hope for in a work of art.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

Comments

[Anne R. Allen]

"Hamlet isn’t much of a “nice guy,” and certainly not a desirable role model. Neither are King Lear, Raskolnikov, or Mersault." YES!! Thank you for this post. As writers, we are warned against the too-perfect "Mary Sue" characters, but as a reader, I keep running into them. Too many editors cut their teeth on "Confessions" mags, do you suppose?

[Stuart Neville]

A week after publication of my debut novel, The Twelve, in the UK (or Ghosts of Belfast, in the USA) I'm getting comments from readers and reviewers about how much they like my protagonist Gerry Fegan, even in spite of themselves. They know he's a cold-blooded killer, but they can't help liking him. These comments make me very happy as a writer, but they also show that readers have more capacity to stretch themselves than perhaps they are given credit for.

[Jack O'Doherty]

I feel I need to step in here and defend Captain Jack from Torchwood (an anagram for Dr Who Too). He's from the future and seen things we can not imagine. He was a con man, but has since reformed and is generally a nice guy- - - and how many SciFi shows have a leading character who isn't a raging heterosexual?

[Jack O'Doherty]

The next thing you'll probably say is that Captain Kirk is a bad roll model too ;-)

[Susan O'Doherty]

Thank you, Anne, and Stuart--fabulous! How heartening.

Jack, your comment illustrates exactly what I'm talking about--Captain Jack is engaging,and his failures are understandable given his history-- but he's not a "nice guy." He is complex, often difficult to like, and sometimes hateful. I have no problem with that. So am I; so are most people.