Ada Alozie

Winter 2018

Problem of Fictional Character

Narrative Affordances of Intertextuality

 

Galen Strawson’s Against Narrativity begins with Strawson outlining two popular claims about the human experience: psychological Narrativity thesis which asserts that human beings naturally experience their life as a narrative, or a collection of stories (428) and the ethical Narrativity thesis which presumes Narrativity to be an important marker of goodness where “a richly Narrative life is essential to a well-lived life, to true or full personhood (428).” Strawson disagrees with both theses and argues that in fact, there are “deeply non-Narrative people and there are good ways to live that are deeply non-Narrative.” (429) He goes onto make two distinctions in how people experience themselves; they are either diachronic or episodic. A diachronic self-experience is someone who “naturally figures oneself, considered as a self, as something that was there in the (further) past and will be there in the (further) future (430).” The diachronic person figures their past, present and future self to be so intricately linked that they can form substantive claims about what parts of the past have made them who they are. They tend to be more narrative since they tend to “[imply] a certain sort of developmental and hence temporal unity or coherence (439)” to explain their selfhood.
However, an episodic self-experience is someone who “does not figure oneself, considered as a self, as something that was there in the (further) past and will be there in the (further) future (430).” The episodic person acknowledges that their physical body experienced past events, but they do not try to create linkages or coherences between the past, present, or future. In the crudest of terms, the episodic person merely lives in the moment and does not feel the need to create a narratively pathological reason for their present situation. “It is the present shaping consequences of the past that matter not the past as such (438).” Since the episodic person isn’t as defined or bounded by a temporal understanding of themself, they are able to “opt out” of a narrative-understanding, or self-imposed Narrativity about their life rather embarking on a life that is more “in the moment.” The episodic person recognizes their human body as having had existed in the past and will exist in the future until their death. They comprehend that events happened to them in the past, but they do not recognize those events as having happened to the self that they are in the present moment. Events in their lives are not experienced as being lived by a continuous and consistent person rather events of their lives are experienced as separate events where they-themselves-were different at the time of each distinct event.             In this way, it can be deduced that Strawson is indicating that Diachronic people when they impose a Narrativity on themselves are- in fact- making themselves a character in their own life. They create a neat, linear and coherent story that coheres their various temporal selves as a singular and continuous self across time. However, because episodic people anchor their selfhoods merely in the present moment, it doesn’t afford the possibility of creating a Narrativity around life that includes connecting the past, present and future.

Strawson’s conception of Narrativity is purely temporal; his argument and his use of diachronic and episodic presume a temporal relation. He is against Narrativity that tries to create large-scale, pattern seeking explanations that seek to track the development of selfhood as if self can be conceived as a singular and consistent character throughout the duration of one’s life which Diachronic living tends to encourage. However, I wonder what (if any) forms of Narrativity can emerge from existing as a self in the present moment? Is it possible to be Episodic yet still exhibit a sense of Narrativity that is not temporal? Is it possible to not figure oneself as something that was there in the (further) past and will be there in the (further) future, not imply a certain sort of developmental and hence temporal unity or coherence applied to one’s life, yet still create and exhibit “some sort of relatively large-scale, coherence-seeking, unity-seeking, pattern-seeking, or most generally form-finding tendency when it comes to one’s apprehension of one’s life or relatively large-scale parts of one’s life?” (441)

It is the self’s turning itself into character that underpins Strawson’s aversion for Narrativity, so I use character as the jumping off point from which I approach the question. I, also, choose to lean in to Strawson’s aversion by picking to explore a text- Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home– that exemplifies a self turning itself into a character. A memoir is the literal artistic expression of a self turning itself into character as the narrating self tracks the life events and moments of the narrated self that served to shape the narrating self to be who she is in the moment of writing. The memoir is inherently diachronic, yet Bechdel uses the styling of the graphic novel to subvert the chronology of her life. The memoir is diachronic in form only as the structure, afforded by the graphic novel style, illustrates a relationship free from the framing of temporality.

For the majority of the text, the panels do not seem to be sequenced in chronological order. Events happen but it’s rarely clear when they take place and in what order. Bechdel jumps from adolescence, childhood, and adulthood while also interjecting moments of her parents in various stages of their adulthood, and she does it in a way that still remains legible and coherent for the reader even though it can seem spliced.

In the illustrations’ non-reliance on chronology and temporal unity, Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home affords the revelation of a type of Narrativity that goes beyond a conception of selfhood defined through temporality. Through a close reading of a series of panels from pages 62-64, I explain how Bechdel reveals a form of Narrativity that relies more on a narrative that articulates the space between two persons rather than a narrative that seeks to place one person into a cohesive timeline. Through the use of intertextuality, the reference of texts within a larger text, Bechdel introduces a conception of Narrativity that relies on space rather than time. In reading Fun Home, I introduce the ideas of character space and character system, concepts advanced by Alex Woloch’s The One vs. The Many, delve deeper into the role intertextuality plays in co-constructing character space thus by default intertextuality’s role in the overall character system.

In fleshing out intertextuality’s proclivity for recognizing and calling attention to the space-in the most general of terms- between various texts and characters, I introduce the trans-historical potential for connection between character, text, and readers that Sara Ahmed touches on in Willful Parts: Problem Characters or the Problem of Character to formally introduce an idea of Spatial Narrativity. Spatial Narrativity is a “large scale, coherence-seeking, unity-seeking, pattern-seeking, or most generally form-finding tendency (441)” that connects and coheres temporally distinctive entities. Whereas Temporal Narrativity presumes the creation of a coherent character of life across a lifespan, Spatial Narrativity presumes a person’s self can exist across all points of time though it is the person’s capability in the present moment to make sense of the expansive nature of their own selfhood which texts outside of the person are able to enable. Spatial Narrativity makes the space legible between the various selves in space by telling a coherent narrative that can describe and explain why and how the connection is even able to take place.

Bechdel’s use of intertextuality presents a portrayal of character that relies more on spatial coherency than temporal. Through this thinking of character spatially, it introduces a possibility of thinking of personhood beyond its temporality. In thinking spatially, it allows for a breaking down of personhood that is more decentralized than centralized where one can exist without existing in a time period that they do not live in as a result of recognizing and articulating the space between the two time periods. In thinking of personhood, in this way, it allows for an episodic person temporally to live their life and but spatially acknowledge that they are a part of a larger trans-historical narration which is evident in Strawson’s essay that relies on citations. Anytime people read a text or use a text in their lives, they are affording themselves the option to plug into a larger narrative.

A memoir is unavoidably a diachronic mode of narration. The narrating self is looking back on the narrated self through the hopes of showing the life events that have shaped and formed the narrating self into who she is in the present moment- or writing moment. However, the styling of the graphic novel allow Bechdel to manipulate the dynamics of linear time where time is deemphasized so space can come to the foreground as a key relational dynamic in understanding and narrating one’s life. Throughout the novel, many of the panel sequences are not placed in chronological order. For example, on page 62, the first panel shows her father, lying on the top bunk in long pants, reading The Far Side of Paradise while a soldier is standing next to the bunk. The second panel is an explanatory text box, an extradiegetic description without an image. In the next panel, her father is lying on the top bunk in boxers. The Far Side of Paradise is lying on the bed in front of his feet while he is writing a letter in a notepad. Within the panel, there is a snapshot of an excerpt from her father’s letter covering the face of a shirtless soldier-only his nipples are showing- standing next to her father’s bed, and the entire background of the soldiers’ dormitory on the majority of the left side of the panel. The only other person in the panel is another soldier in the top bunk next to her father reading a comic, The Haunt of Fear. The fourth panel is a graphically-rendered snapshot of what her father wrote. It is a diegetic production of a text that the father had written himself. Then, the fifth panel is her father, again in boxers and writing in a notepad but now there’s a soldier standing near her father’s bed holding The Far Side of Paradise. In the background, there is a soldier leaning over on the bunk furthest away from her father, and there is a person on the bunk next to her father. The person’s face is out of the frame of the panel leaving only his stomach and arms holding a comic open where the panels are seen but the title of the comic is not.

The extradiegetic textbox in panel 2 primes the reader to discern the setting to which the previous and forthcoming panels pertain yet fails to inform the reader the precise time at which it took place. It gives just enough context and background for the reader to make sense of the panels. The time frame and temporal moment described in the text box is ambiguous and unclear. More than give background information for the panels, the text-in its ambiguity- makes the reader rely more on the illustrations to fill in the incomplete information. The illustrations within the panels become more significant as the visuals must reflect a coherency that can be legible by the reader when the extradiegetic narration is lacking. What would normally be written with text is illustrated instead.  Having the setting- the soldiers’ quarters- consistent across the panels on page 62 makes it easier for the reader to understand the panel sequence and what links each panel because it definitely is not time. In looking at the panels, it is not clear the time of the day or if these four panels even take place on the same day. It isn’t even clear whether or not the other soldiers recur between the panels. The man whose nipples show in panel 3 might be the same man who’s holding the Far Side of Paradise in panel 5, but how can that be known? The man holding the Far Side of Paradise in panel 5 could be the same man in panel 1 whose head is cut out of the panel frame. Bechdel does not illustrate any of the men besides her father in characteristically distinct ways so while in a chronologically and temporally linear narrative, the reader would be able to assume that the nipple guy in panel 3 is the same as the guy holding the book in panel 5, that assumption can not be made since linearity is not the means that links panel to panel. In this panel sequence, Bechdel does not rely on chronology rather she seems to be using space. Having the setting-or space- be consistent across the panels allows the panels to exhibit a sense of legible temporal non-linearity since the chronological sequence of the moments depicted in the panel is unintelligible.

It is no accident that Bechdel, in panel 3, hid the man’s face with the graphic of the excerpt from her father’s letter. Besides teasing her father’s homosexuality, it contributes to the ambiguity of the men that show up in the panels. However, in adding to the ambiguity, it begs to question whether or not it even matters whether or not the men are the same. Or if the same man who’s reading the Haunt of Fear, a horror comic, is the same man, whose face is cut out, reading it in panel 5? Is Haunt of Fear even the opened comic in panel 5 or is it a completely different comic to begin with? What can we know?

In rendering the people in these panels vague or their identities unnecessary, it calls attention to the only “nouns” that are clear and consistent throughout the series of panels, which are The Far Side of Paradise and her father. Bechdel makes sure to highlight that in the bunk next to her father a guy is reading the Haunt of Fear and in panel 5, she excludes the face of a person but leaves his hands reading a comic. The comic is afforded more attention than the man reading it. The soldiers who aren’t her father are brought to the foreground of a panel when they are inquiring or physically touching a work of text. It doesn’t matter who these men are or whether or not it is the same men throughout the panel, the most salient observation is that texts, or works of literature, are patently consistent objects within the setting. It is in the salience of the text through its clear graphic visibility within the panels that Bechdel is calling overt attention to the presence of these texts- in calling attention to the texts bringing attention to the space they take up.

In Alex Woloch’s The One vs. The Many, he “seeks to redefine literary characterization in terms of [a] distributional matrix: how the discrete representation of any specific individual is intertwined with the narrative’s continual apportioning of attention to different characters who jostle for limited space within the same fictive universe (13).” He introduces the terms character space, “the particular and charged encounter between an individual human personality and a determined space and position within a narrative as a whole (14),” and the character space, “the arrangement of multiple and differentiated character spaces- differentiated configurations and manipulations of the human figure- into a united narrative structure (14).[1]” Woloch’s focusing on the fluidity of attention given to various characters allows for a more thorough analysis of character beyond minor and major, flat and round. Monitoring and navigating the shifts in narrative attention reveals how characters within the novel come to be constructed and re-constructed through the individual’s personality, the individual’s navigation of various scenarios, and of other human personalities within the space where the lens of attention is cast. The dynamicity of attention given to various characters-from minor to major- throughout a literary work show how the larger narrative becomes a collaboration between the various characters rather than a production of the singular main character. In this way, character emerges through an individual’s distinct configuration and positionality “within the novel as a whole (33)” which encompasses more than just individual personality, but also, the social, cultural and historical bearings mark the milieu of the narrative. Focusing on narrative attention serves to decenter character analysis from the personality of the specific individual and instead unpacks the encounter between personality and sociality that simultaneously function to reveal, reflect and reconstitute the individual and by default, the system.

Since narrative attention plays such an important role in understanding character, when thinking about Fun Home, it spurs one to think about what then must it mean the profound amount of narrative attention that Bechdel places on text. If we are to track the attention given to the texts throughout the panel sequence on page 62, The Far Side of Paradise is always being touched-sometimes actively being read- either by the father or the fellow soldiers, and the title-or book cover- is clearly visible in each panel where it appears. The Haunt of Fear appears in the hands of the soldier in panel 3 with bold and dramatic lettering. In panel 6, the comic that appears is made clear through the notable dialogue bubbles. It may not be clear what comic it is, but it is obvious that the text is a comic since there are panels with illustration and dialogue bubbles within them.

More attention-and detail- is placed on the texts shown within the panels rather than the personality of the soldiers sharing the room with her father. The attention in the narrative is oriented more toward the two texts and how people relate and interact with them rather than attention being given to the individuals in the room. The soldiers are secondary to The Far Side of Paradise and The Haunt of Fear; the only form of conversation that takes place within these panels pertains to literature. In her attention to texts, Bechdel acknowledges and emphasizes their ability to affect space and even influence the orientation of those individuals that exist in the panel thus allowing the texts in her novel with character-like qualities. In panel 3, nipple guy seems drawn to the book lying on the father’s bed. He becomes relevant to us because he’s touching the book. The most distinguishing part of the soldier in the bunk bed next to her father is the fact that he is reading the Haunt of Fear. It is the diegetic reference to texts- or intertextuality- that brings these mundane soldiers into the foreground, yet even when they are in the foreground they are eclipsed by the visibility of the texts.

In its visual clarity, Bechdel seems to show how it can be texts rather than individuals that can operate as “distinctly configured and positioned (33)” within the novel. The father has The Far Side of Paradise open in panel 1. The soldier has the Far Side of Paradise open in panel 5. However, whereas the father is intently reading the novel, the soldier expresses confusion about what it even is. The two people treat the same text differently, and it is in the difference in how each one interacts with the book that the difference in the text’s significance to each person can be teased out between them. If character space is to be a dramatic interaction between an implied person and his or her delimited position within the narrative[2] and The Far Side of Paradise helped to distinguish the father from the soldier- differentiating the named character from the anonymous character- then text can play a role in influencing and determining the positionality of how and with what a character interacts. It could even determine whether one can afford to interact with the position at all, in the example of the soldier in panel 5 commenting on the book rather than actively reading it. In text’s ability to influence and expose character, it shows how text is apart of the narrative space of character. It is not merely a static object that exists within the narrative, but it is dynamic in the sense that it works to inform character action and reveal character background. Texts are intertwined with the creation and construction of character as it becomes embedded in the character space of individuals.

Thinking of text as being embedded into the character space thus makes texts embedded into the fabric of the character system, or the larger narrative. But more than being embedded in character space, Bechdel, by leaning into text’s ability to affect and bound positionality, shows how texts does more than exist in the narrative space, but actually has the potential to take up space in the narrative, and in its ability to occupy space, can become space and essentially character.

On page 63, the first panel shows a soldier reading a novel and commenting on its contents to Bechdel’s father, Bruce. It is the novel being read in the panel that connects the father with the soldier as the face of the soldier is mostly cropped out by the panel. The large picture of Fitzgerald drawn in the panel once again calls more attention to the text than the individual holding it. The second panel shows a graphically rendered copy of one of Bruce’s letters he sent to her mother, Helen, and the third panel shows various letters that he had written to Helen.  Panels 2 and 3 are panels of her father’s letters, diegetic self-productions of text. All three panels rely on extradiegetic narration- either outside or within the panels- which functions to facilitate the reader’s comprehension of the panel sequence, helping to give context and show the importance of the illustrations. References to texts-both extradiegetic and diegetic- and her father are central to the sequence of the panels. It is not important when each panel takes place or when the texts were written. Instead, the textual relationship between Bruce, his letters, the narrating self, and Scott Fitzgerald/his work is pertinent to connecting the sequence and comprehending the significance of the three panels on the page just as The Far Side of Paradise and Bruce helped to connect and comprehend the panels on the previous page.

Particularly in panel three, the combination of extradiegetic and diegetic text within this panel enables a narrative moment where the texts in the panel do more than just act as a medium between two interlocutors but actually works to call attention to the narrative space that Bechdel is creating with texts in this sequence and throughout the memoir. The lack of individuals don’t matter in panels two and three since the texts function in the same capacity as a character space in its ability to still exhibit the qualities of a distinct and contingent positionality. The father is not physically present in the text, yet the letter stands in for the character space of the father, to the extent, that we don’t need the father to show up in the panel to even understand that the panel deals with her father as a character. Having text stand in for Bruce allows Bechdel to show how text can not only become intertwined with the character system via character space, but it can, also, work to inhabit and become one with the space depending on whether or not interlocutors exist to mediate the text. The extradiegetic narration and the diegetic text rub together to give more information and depth to Bruce’s character.

The letter serves a larger narrative importance even if the father is not there since the text works to link the implied personhood of her father with the overall narrative form. In this narrative moment, text is working as character space and is exhibiting character-like qualities in its ability to stand in for character. Standing in for character implies, then, that text is able to embody space as more than just a solid object with matter taking up space but also as an object with a potential valence to function as a character space that can interact with others to contribute to the character system. Bruce isn’t physically in the panel, but he is there in the letter. If text is able to stand-in for character, then it must be able to exist as character because by standing in for Bruce, the letter isn’t a copy of him but is a textual representation of him. In the panel, Bruce’s self can be considered identical with the letter text. However, it is not a deference of selfhood to the letter but rather another expression of selfhood that goes beyond the presence of Bruce’s physical body. Bruce exists to us as both the letter and Bruce, the character. It is in the presence and interaction of both extradiegetic narration and diegetic texts that this emergence of disparate-the letter and Bruce- but identical selves is able to become legible to the reader.

At this point, I have made several claims that I hope to have presented well the process by which I arrived to them. Through analyzing the intertextuality evident on pages 62 and 63 of the memoir, I believe that Bechdel has enabled the texts referred to and illustrated in the panels to function as unique character spaces thus exhibiting character-like capabilities even though they are not individual human beings. However, a text can stand in for a human being and in that ability the text is able be considered and be treated as character since the person it’s standing in for is character. This ability creates a blurred delineation between self and text to which Sara Ahmed in Willful Parts: Problem Characters or the Problem of Character refers. But the blurring doesn’t have to be a cause for a moral or existential panic, but can rather be a place for empowerment, solidarity, and trans-historical camaraderie.

In the article, Ahmed tracks a literary history of willfulness of young girls in realist novels and claims that “the recognition of willfulness can become part of a shared feminist inheritance that is between texts and between characters, as well as a point of connection between fictional feminists and feminists who read fiction. The fictional character can thus reach out of fiction, almost like a hand that comes up out of the grave.” (249) Though Ahmed focuses on recognizing willfulness, a key idea that comes through this excerpt is the ability that text has in making an impression on the reader. The act of reading affords the reader the possibility of empowerment or self-revelation through the reader’s ability to relate and identify with what is being read or whom they are reading. The reader forms a personal connection and attachment with what is read, for it is seeing one’s self or being able to recognize a similarity or identify with a personal dilemma that an intimate relationship is established between reader and text. Though the text may have been written in a drastically different time period and a foreign country, the texts and reader still have the ability to relate and connect.

The blurring of self with text lends to an experience of empathy and familiarity that allows for the development of a trans-historical, atemporal bond. It is in understanding and articulating the bond that lends one to create a narrative as to why that bond must have been felt by them. When Simone de Beauvoir cries at Maggie’s death (249), even though she had not been living in the 19th century, in identifying with the character she allowed a part of herself to exist with the character and vice-versa. When Maggie died it was as though a part -familiar and recognizable- within de Beauvoir had also; however, Maggie still lived on in de Beauvoir’s imagination. De Beauvoir can never unread The Mill on the Floss, thus making sure de Beauvoir and Maggie will always exist in that bond of camaraderie and solidarity. As long as de Beauvoir can think back to Maggie, Maggie continues to exist and live within de Beauvoir’s memory.

A long-arching narrative of feminism and patriarchal subjugation of young girls bonds de Beauvoir with the text, and I’m sure many other texts. Therefore, what is this type of Narrativity called that exists between texts and reader that allows for historically-expansive, coherence-making? That is large-scale and pattern-enabling? And that enables a telling of one’s life? In cohering the existence of two physically distinct and temporally disparate entities, time has become so in flux to become mute. Temporal Narrativity no longer works as a form of narration- as we can see in the lack of its existence in Fun Home. So then must a form of narration emerge that narrates better what is happening when people read texts where the Narrativity becomes about articulating the space between texts and interlocutors? Leaning on space rather than time also, precipitates the breakdown of the temporal being that can exist in the past, present and future. It allows for the possibilities and proliferance of a decentralized self that does not have to be anchored to the present moment.

Maggie seemed just as present to de Beauvoir as a character that could have been written in her own time period. Therefore, it’s not about time rather than it’s the ability to map Beauvoir and Maggie on a same plane, and create a “large-scale, coherence-seeking, unity-seeking, pattern-seeking (441)” mode of linking them together. To get them on the same plane, to be able to take them out of their temporality where de Beauvoir is a 20th century French philosopher and Maggie is not a 19th century English girl, they must be read. It is de Beauvoir reading the Mill on the Floss that puts them in an atemporal, equalizing plane where there the bond is established. It is as though reading creates a sterile and atemporal plane where texts exist for the reader. It is in the reader’s possible connection with the text that a form of Narrativity can arise between it and the reader. There is a form of narration that emerges from when people read texts and that Narrativity becomes about articulating the space between texts and interlocutors. It is the feminism that bridges the gap between Beauvoir and Maggie and it is the telling and narration of the bridging, or the metaphorical distance between Beauvoir and Maggie that can be referred to as a sort of spatial Narrativity. In the case of de Beauvoir and Maggie, it is the Narrativity of patriarchal policing and the history of gender discrimination. If reading creates an infinite plane where various texts that the reader has read exists then what links certain texts with others or the infinite permutations of connections that the texts can make with the reader exhibit a sense of spatial Narrativity which can be understood only by the reader since it’s there textual plane.

Therefore, what the heavy intertextuality reveals to us in Fun Home and what the extradiegetic hints at during the reading of the memoir is that we are reading Bechdel’s textual plane. The relevant texts that she has made connections with and that inform her relationships with her father and her sexuality are pointed out and illustrated for us within the panels. This type of Narrativity comes to us because we are reading Bechdel’s reading of her life. Normally, one’s reading of texts that shape them and contribute coherence to their lives are difficult to externalize since the internalizing of what is read is deeply personal. When reading Bechdel’s reading of her own life, we are seeing the textual mapping of her life thus the Narrativity that emerges is one that is spatial in the sense that it coherently and expansively relates the various texts, the people in her life, and Bechdel that exist on her textual plane into a singular, cohesive and unifying narrative. Spatial Narrativity isn’t about cohering a singular object across past, present and future but rather about cohering an array of texts, characters on a plane that makes sense to the reader. It is a form of Narrativity that coheres and unites disparate forms through relating them to each other by their commonalities rather than their differences. A type of Narrativity that doesn’t seek to define the forms but rather be able to articulate the space between them by relying on the significance of the bond.

On page 62, The Far Side of Paradise and Bruce are in the same room together. They stay in the same room together throughout panel sequence. It is significant that Bruce is reading the Far Side of Paradise and owns a copy of it because it pertains to Scott Fitzgerald, and we know the connection to Fitzgerald is important because the extradiegetic narrator makes note of it. In fact, the relationship between the Far Side of Paradise and Bruce becomes significant to us only because the extradiegetic narrator has told us about the father’s “reverence for Scott Fitzgerald (62).” It is because of the narrator’s narration of Bruce’s affinity for Scott Fitzgerald that Bruce and the book don’t merely just exist in the same room together, but actually, each exist within a meaningfully charged space whose valences touch and influence each other and the people in the room. The narrator seems to endow the relationship between Bruce and the book as packed with meaning, so because the narrator does, it influences how the relationship between the two is seen and understood by the reader.

When I use spatial Narrativity, I don’t mean any old space. Yes. Both the Far Side of Paradise and Bruce physically exist in the same room, but beyond that, they exist in a more abstract network of understanding and knowing that becomes known and lived primarily by the extradiegetic narrator. This is a Narrativity that is read and thus in being read it becomes unique to the reader-self. Through reading, the reader can come to “some sort of relatively large-scale, coherence-seeking, unity-seeking, pattern-seeking, or most generally form-finding tendency (441)”, or form of Narrativity that connects various characters and even texts. And it is being able to do a reading of a reading that enables us to come to the existence of this form of Narrativity seeing as though it is this form of Narrativity that makes the panel sequences intelligible and coherent since it is the Narrativity that Bechdel uses since it is the type of Narrativity that exists in the textual plane of reading.

This type of Narrativity makes itself clear on page 64. The first panel shows her father giving Roy, the babysitter, a copy of the Great Gatsby. The second panel shows her and her family watching the movie version of the Great Gatsby. The third panel shows a side-by-side comparison of the similarities between her father and the actor who had played Gatsby-Robert Redford. The fourth panel, then, is a picture of Zelda Fitzgerald. Again, the temporal sequence from panel to panel is unclear since it is not possible to know the sequence of when each took place. The coherency stems from the narrative relationship the narrator has already established between Bruce Bechdel, Scott Fitzgerald, the Great Gatsby; it’s just that we’re the ones reading it now. Zelda Fitzgerald, showing up in the 4th panel, seems odd and out-of-place but then enter Bechdel, the extra-diegetic narrator, to hint that Zelda might actually be a stand-in to mean her mother, clueing us into how her mother might figure into her textual plane. Panels are coherent to the reader only when we have extradiegetic narration to help us and only when we understand the textual references and that texts are being used and called attention to in the narrative. The textual relationship she sets up between her father, the Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald, her mother and she ground the coherency of the panel sequences and is relevant to all the illustrations and settings within the panels. Without the relationship, there is no narrative sense.

Think of the four panels as spliced pieces of string-meaningless and unconnected. The texts work as the glue, so once the string is glued together to make a quadrilateral of sorts, once the glue establishes, supports and maintains a relationship/connection between the spliced pieces of string a Narrativity is legible. The Narrativity is the story within the strings that link the various corners-or texts- together. The Narrativity explains why the gluing is even able to take place.

Extradiegetically, Scott Fitzgerald’s life shows up as the narrator’s way she makes sense of her father while diegetically, the Great Gatsby-both the book and the film- work to show how Scott Fitzgerald was a part of the character’s lives just as much as it has become a part of the extradiegetic narrator’s retelling of her life. The diegetic use of text works as it did in the previous pages in its ability to embody a space of its own in which character’s interactions with text seem to mediate the relationship that these individual’s have with her father, concluding with her father no longer physically being in the scenes yet still being referred to as a result of texts that stand in in his place. However, it is the extradiegetic narration that allows for the capability of the diegetic text to even stand in as its own character space. The extradiegetic narration clues us in that the glue is present- that the text is playing an integral role in holding the coherency of the panels together. It lets us know that the text is doing something, but it is the diegetic text that shows us what type of work. That the texts used are enabling a form of meaning-construction, form-finding, and unity-seeking that is in no way linked to temporality. Whether or not the father gave Roy The Great Gatsby novel before or after Bechdel and her family saw the movie in theater is irrelevant. What matters is that the textual relationship between her father, Scott Fitzgerald, the Great Gatsby, her mother, and the narrator inform how the narrator recollects and perceives the events and behaviors of significant memories of her life. And it is through various texts that exhibit character-space like qualities coupled with the texts’, her fathers, and Bechdel’s character space that Bechdel is able to fully build the character system of her novel.

Space is operating on two levels here as there is the space being realized and interacted with in the diegetic narrative and then there is the space that the extradiegetic narration is pointing to the reader to recognize which in Bechdel tend to be texts and cultural references. The extradiegetic narration is meant to underline and point us to her reading of her own life. It is in the direction of narrative attention toward the character-space of diegetic text that Bechdel acknowledges that the space exists and leads the reader to understand what is taking up the space that Bechdel has pointed us, too. Bechdel hints that there is glue, and it is up to the reader to figure out that it is the text playing the role of linking the fragments- or panels- together rather than an apparent chronology. Bechdel doesn’t trust us to navigate her textual map without her guidance. We need the reader to understand their textual plane-or reading.

It is through Bechdel’s use of intertextuality- through using non-chronological illustrations that rely on text or the reference to text in order to cohere them- that Bechdel presumes the atemporality of text where yes, it was written in a certain time; however, it is distinctly and contingently specific in how it is engaged with and it is the act of engaging with a text in its historical and cultural specificity that it is able to qualify as character space and embody a space of its own. It is reading the atemporal text that gives it its historical and cultural specificity. The intertextuality presented in pages 62-64 reveals a form of spatial Narrativity that creates a coherent narrative-or a legible textual character system-that relies on relating various texts together rather than explicitly defining them. It’s more about the recognition and articulation of space between two “nouns” rather than the object permanence of said noun in the present moment.

A temporal narrative would constrict the reading of page 64 as after Bechdel’s father gave Ron the Great Gatsby novel, the family went to see the movie. Afterward, Allison looked up a picture of her father and noticed he looked similar to Robert Redford, the actor who played Gatsby in the film. She, later, looked up a picture of Zelda Fitzgerald. Without knowing about the textual relationship between Bruce, the Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald, her mother, and the narrator, the narrative would read like a family saw a movie the father really likes, and Allison liked it so much she did some research afterward.

However, an example of the spatial narrative on page 64 could say that that Gatsby is more than just a character in a Fitzgerald novel but rather the extradiegetic narrator is saying that her father is Gatsby. Allison’s noticing of the physical resemblance between Robert Redford and her father makes the panel where the family is watching Redford on screen akin to Bechdel watching her own father on screen. She is sitting next to her father while simultaneously watching him on screen. Zelda Fitzgerald functions as a stand-in for Bechdel’s actual mother just as in her thinking of her father like Scott Fitzgerald she excludes the romantic part of his life and focuses on others so does she add an afterthought photo of Zelda as acknowledgment but not of true importance.

In the textual plane, time goes flat. Each text and person exists as little nodes on a map and there are infinite points of connection and relation. Scott Fitzgerald, his works, Bechdel’s father, and she can exist together and coherently as long as they can be made legible. This space can be socially, cultural and historical dense, but it exists as an empowering, empathetic, and descriptive possibility from reading. Spatial Narrativity is more about the lines being drawn between specific points and what story it’s telling about those involved rather than a neat narrative of beginning to end because in a spatial narrative it’s not about a beginning or end. It is about the textual relationships being created and co-constructed and re-inscribed. It is about removing the person as the central point of reference but rather producing a narrative that allows the person to be potentially augmented, moved, and change where texts become indistinguishable with the self and the self becomes indistinguishable with the text.

We can learn about personhood from character. Even though Strawson seemed averse to what he saw as Diachronic people turning themselves into characters, through analyzing character we can come to an idea of personhood that is decentralized rather than centralized. A personhood that doesn’t only exist temporally but spatially. It reveals the possibility of a person who can see himself as only existing in the present moment- as an episodic person does- yet still recognizing their connection to larger narrative that could be historical, cultural, social, etc. that exists beyond their lifespan.  If the episodic person reads or engages with text, they are opening themselves to a textual plane that has the power to link them across time and cultures.

Take for example, Strawson, a self-proclaimed Episodic. Throughout his article, Against Narrativity, he cites a slew of scholars, writers, and thinkers who support the idea of narrativity and against which he creates his argument.  Through citing, he is telling us who he’s read and whose ideas he has built his own idea in conjunction and/or in opposition. We are reading his textual plane and how his orientation with these various arguments and thinkers has helped to become clearer on his own ideas of how he conceives of the idea for himself. In the moment at which he was writing, all of the texts he had read, pertaining to this topic, were used and cohered together to make sense to him. This text-or idea- can’t stand alone rather it has to exist in this larger narrative of scholarship for it to have any purpose or make any sense. His argument really only makes sense because we have his citations that give us the context and background for his claims. He, himself, exhibits this ability to present this type of Spatial Narrativity even though he is against (temporal) narrativity.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. “Willful Parts: Problem Characters or the Problem of Character.” New Literary History, vol. 42, no. 2, 2011, pp. 231–253., doi:10.1353/nlh.2011.0019.

 

Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: a Family Tragicomic. Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

 

Strawson, Galen. “Against Narrativity.” Ratio, vol. 17, no. 4, 2004, pp. 428–452., doi:10.1111/j.1467-9329.2004.00264.x.

 

Woloch, Alex. “Characterization and Distribution.” One vs. the Many, Princeton University Press, 2003, pp. 12–42.

 

[1] Since Strawson writes philosophy and Woloch writes literary criticism, for consistency’s sake, I have to clarify that Strawson’s and Woloch’s use of the word “narrative” is identical. They both use it to indicate a style of story-telling that presumes development and tends to show a sense of coherency and temporal unity, so there isn’t a conflict in meaning.

[2] See Woloch 18, 40.