After Deckert finds out that Tyrell’s assistant is a replicant, Tyrell says that he programmed memories into her as a sort of “cushion” so her emotions are less raw and it makes them easier to control. Tyrell couldn’t program them to feel less instead he had to work around it by creating memories. Memories were the means to which he could control/manage the emotions of the replicant’s without taking away from the human capacities of their program. They were a design tactic to determine the character of the replicant’s, yet it seems as though his assistant replicant has a character of her own. The memories were programmed yet the way she relates to it feels very much like her own. The weird thing about the replicants is that Tyrell and his engineers programmed them, so you’d think they’d be the one in control, but the replicants are able to use their programming to act in ways in which the programming couldn’t account for. And maybe it is in their acting against the corporation that they are able to assert a character that they have created themselves rather than a character that has been designed for them.

Pecola seems to be the central character, yet Claudia’s narration is the only narration done through the first-person. The novel changes from Claudia’s first person perspective to what seems to be an omniscient third-person. The ways in which the shifts in narration allows for a rendering of Pecola that is both intimate yet impersonal. Meaning that the third-person narratives of Pecola seem to prescribe a systemic disorder to her. Without Pecola’s interiority, the narration’s telling of her ugliness- “it was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had accepted it without question (39)” seems so pervasive. Her ugliness seems to be a root of and consequence for her unstable family and a rotting home. The third-person perspective seems so cynical. And things seem to happen to her and people say things to her, but she’s not a very present force in her life. In fact, she often pretends to disappear (45).

However, the Claudia’s first person perspective feels like a more intimate relationship (or character construction) of Pecola. We find out she loves Shirley Temple, she gets her period, we see Maureen link arms with her while going to the ice cream place. We get instances of people engaging with her as a person instead of as a vessel of ugliness at which people want to prod. Though Claudia’s perspective seems to be tinged with pitiless, it still feels as though Pecola is human. Her moments of belonging seem to be emphasized more through Claudia’s perspective whereas her moments of difference/isolation seem to be highlighted more in the third-person perspective.

After reading the first chapters of Fun Home, I have a new aspect of character I would want added to the list. If a way into character can be a character’s relationship with other characters, then I think it would be fair to add a character’s relationship with fiction, with  art, with creative consumption. How do characters relate, use and re-shape the art they consume and how does it motivate their character?

Invisible Man, the novel, is scattered with jazz, hollywood, and pop culture from the main character. In Crying Lot, Oedipa reflects back to the time with Pierce in Mexico City when they see a surrealist art exhibit, and she can describe one of the paintings with such detail. Insisting that Driblette’s play has meaning, she becomes fueled by her desire to know fully what Tristero is- the mystery that propels the last half of the novel.

Using “text” to refer to all forms of cultural production- from celebrities, films, books, pamphlets, etc…-, texts within these works of literature seem to act as points of departure, description, or even delusion for the characters.

I’m focused on the intertextuality of character as both an understanding of how they understand themselves and also an understanding of how they understand/create other characters and their surroundings. I was captivated by how Bechdel writes her father through the works and life of Scott Fitzgerald (pg 62-67), her mother through the plot of a Henry James novel (70-73). The graphic novel gives us various aspects of her father: the handyman, the mortician, the disciplinarian. However, the protagonist of the novel creates this narrative of her father where she maps Scott Fitzgerald on to it so tightly that even their lifespans were exact-off by only 3 days. She experiences her father, or reads her father, as a text that can only be made clear or familiar to her by using Scott Fitzgerald as the referent. Her reliance on text, particularly literature, to become aware of her self and fill in other characters reveals how a character-though text- can use texts within the fictional world/narrative to stabilize their own existence/purpose in the (graphic) novel/fictional narrative.

Pynchon’s prose is very long-winded and expansive. The novel isn’t written in 1st person, but it definitely privileges and seems to reflect Oedipa’s disposition. Therefore, with the long sentences full of dependent clauses and asides set off by commas rather than hyphens, it feels very much like Oedipa has a very “bouncy,” erratic, and inconsistent personality. The prose doesn’t make her feel unreliable, but it does feel as though you have to have a more critical approach of her observations/actions.

At the beginning of Chapter 2, “she drove into San Narciso on a Sunday, in a rented Impala. Nothing was happening.” (14) Yet, the prose proceeds to describe a very active and sinuous terrain. There is alot of action on the ground just in terms of how the street infrastructure is set up. Nothing is happening, yet it seems that so much is happening. So the contrast between the action and the non-action makes me wonder whether or not it’s supposed to suggest an unreliability in the narrator or if the phrase “nothing was happening” points to a common human proclivity of saying nothing is happening when really something is always happening.  To what extent is the prose reflective of the character vs. the prose just being prose? Am I overthinking the line?

“For they had the power to use a paper doll, first to destroy his integrity and then as an excuse for killing him. All right, so we’ll use his funeral to put his integrity together again…For that’s all he had had or wanted.” (Page 338-my version. Beginning of Chapter 21-For y’all. The memorial preparations scene.)

The internal logic/moral code (consistency) of the Invisible Man falls apart when looking at the stated quote because his perspective is unclear. Who is the we in this statement? Is it the Brotherhood, or is it the black community? Is he organizing this funeral as a Brotherhood member or as a black man? Because Brother Clifton left the organization and ended up selling Samba dolls- a clear affront to Brotherhood values-, there is no way that the Brotherhood would support this funeral, especially considering their stringent beliefs. The Invisible Man’s evoking of the politics to mediate/cope with his own anger and disgust of the situation points to a moment where the Invisible Man is using the politics (the Brotherhood’s approach) as his own personal therapy. He prepares the funeral under the banner of the Brotherhood; however, his actions are not very Brotherhood-like. The difference is important because to use Tod Clifton’s funeral for the Brotherhood would make Clifton’s death merely symbolic, or representational. A metonymy. Whereas if the Invisible Man is using the funeral for his and the community’s healing, Clifton would be seen as more a part of the black community. A synecdoche. The meaning of Clifton’s death unravels itself through the perspective that the Invisible Man has which- as the chapter continues- reflects his relationship with Clifton as both symbolic and material- the material and symbolic mutually co-constructing/deconstructing each other. The meaning of Clifton’s death becomes clearer as the internal logic/moral code becomes closely untangled.