Well, my example has much less to do with the comment about party for one and more to do with engagement no longer being in one's control once finished. Another way of giving the adage that the author is dead. Yeah, that book was wildly popular, and given my personal history with the book, the fact that it was wildly popular is disturbing to me. I don't personally have a way to unsee what I saw in that book.
If I remember correctly, this is exactly what the Iliad does. Achilles' male lover, and female spoils of war, are treated as so common, that the reader might not even notice.
Yep. Not only do have no control over engagement, you lose control over the story and interpretations thereof. The whole thing becomes a joint exercise between author and reader, and the readers take from it whatever they take from it. I remember a discussion once about whether it was right for a reader to view a story a certain way if that's not what the author intended. That seemed a strange question. It wasn't an issue of right or wrong. That's just how it is.
@King Arthur I fail to see what the issue is. You're free to write whatever you want, no matter how dark, grisly, or ugly it is. Some are going to be turned off and put your book down, and that's their right. This isn't a black and white situation where all must like your book. If you want your book to be so dark that it makes Game of Thrones look like My Little Pony then have at it. Just know that the people who are going to read your book will be modern day people with 21st century morals and values; not people from the 1300s (they're long gone.) So yes, asking some of them to identify and sympathize with a rapist will make them drop the book and haul ass the opposite direction. Doesn't mean you should stop writing it though, if that's the story you want to tell. As Wreybies said below me, no one is obligated to read your book. If they don't like it, they won't read it. Simple.
Exactly. The Color Purple was mentioned earlier in this thread, and I have a pet theory about that book which absolutely no one is obligated to agree with, least of all Miss Walker herself. I think that, from a different perspective, all the women in that book are Celie. For me, there are two parallel stories happening. The surface story of characters and events, and a deeper story where all of these things are parts of Celie. Nettie, Shug, Miss Sofia, Squeak, and even Miss Millie (who is a young woman in the book, not an older person like in the film). I think that Walker means to show us a person who is fractured and separated into different facets of personality as a way of dealing with, coping, and surviving the tragic train of events that is her life. For me, that's why Nettie is hidden away in Africa for most of the book. Nettie is the beautiful, carefree childhood Celie should have had and did not. That's why, at the end (for me), all the characters are gathered at Celie's home just before Nettie arrives. This is a representation of Celie having found a way to recompose and reassemble herself into a whole person, so that's when Nettie comes back, because Celie has survived and can now take back the thing stollen from her at the beginning, her happiness. But again, no one is obligated to see that.
Well, this never occurred to me, but I now find this so compelling I want to re-read the novel with this in mind. What a great observation. This is why I love literature.
And just to be clear, I don't think Walker is telling us a story about dissociative identity disorder. This other, deeper story that I feel is present is all about symbolism.
Holy Mackerel, I missed some excitement. With today's audiences, I'd do a cut away. Build the scene. Show the fleeing woman, the chasing warriors and end it on an ominous note - We took our spoils of war - or something. I wouldn't go into details. As a reader I can deal with murder easier than rape. Rape is about power, humiliation, control. Which is why even in jail cons don't like rapists or pedophiles. It's a very ugly, intimate crime. Even murder's not that intimate. It would take an enormously skilled writer to create an mc who could rape and yet still keep reader sympathy. Reguardless of what era he came from. That's why most writers stick with the victims pov. It's easier and easier for the reader to relate to.
I guess the question then becomes whether you want to keep the reader's sympathy for the character or not.
What this hss taught me is you can sympathise with a man who killed 16 million people during WW2 (downfall) but not a man who commited rape when it was commonplace. Would you put down a book for making slavery seem commonplace? It was very commonplace in all societies until about a hundred and fifty years ago. And slavery is about power, humiliation and control.
I don't recall feeling sympathy for a mass murderer in what I've seen of Downfall. So that first bit is something of a strawman. I have no problem with a book making it commonplace, but I would have a problem with the book trying to make me root for a master who treated their slaves like crap. A Song of Ice and Fire did this sort of thing well. Rape, war crimes, and all sorts of other horrors are common, but the narrative never says "You have to love this character. They're always on the moral high ground despite being a rapist/sadistic murderer/slave owner who beats their slaves and isn't sorry one bit."
Which I have not said. I literally never said I would break the fourth wall and use 2nd person in my novel. Though at this point I'm not sure you care. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"
No, which is another thing I've not said. I'm irritated of the double standards of most the posters on this thread.
No, I'm irritated that they'll happily sympathize with Adolf Hitler or murderers but then not a rapist. It's a double-standard.
I'm coming in late here (moving house sucks btw) but I really think you're thinking about this in the wrong way. In the past rape was more common but the kind of rape we think of today was never socially acceptable. The majority of rapes in the past were not one man assaulting one woman; they were part of war and that simply wasn't considered to be rape. Even when there hasn't been a strong legal system or much societal respect for women rather older ideas like vigilantism, personal vengeance and good old fashioned clan violence have still sought to punish the offender. And this makes sense. Even if we accept at face value the idea that women in the past were treated literally as chattle (something I have some issues with but let's just say) then surely the men who 'own' those women are going to be pretty pissed off that someone has viciously assaulted their property, doubly so when that 'property' is the mother of his children. There has never been a time when someone could casually rape a woman and wander away whistling because they'd get lynched. Whether explicitly spelled out or not this kind of rape has always been a crime and that's why we really don't want to sympathize with someone who'd do that. Even through the cultural lens of the times a rapist (a singular man who assaulted singular women) was someone that was beneath contempt and would likely be on the receiving end of a stab in the dark. This kind of character is not someone anyone wants to sympathize with. However... During war time rape was a part of the violence. It was accepted and acceptable for an invading army to rape the local populace because it literally forced their race and culture into the country. Whenever a city was 'sacked' that means 'everyone got raped or murdered'. Plundering was felt by the invading army to be the price a city paid for resisting their advance. The city forced them to die in droves (seriously, you try assaulting a castle) even though they knew they'd lose in the end. The city was effectively sticking up two fingers at them and so when the attackers got in they spent their vengeance on the local populace. That doesn't make it a nice thing by any means but it was certainly normalized. Soldiers often accepted that this was part of their reward; booty and (ahem) booty. They weren't doing anything transgressive and no-one would punish them for it. It was simply part of how war was fought, and encouraged by the leaders. Rape cowed the local populace, kept their men in line and injected their culture into a place that would otherwise likely stay ethnically different. The reason why Ghengis Khan is a common ancestor to about a billion people today (seriously, look it up) is because he used rape as a weapon of war and ensuring there would be mongolian children left in his wake made it much harder for later generations to form a cohesive cultural identity. Rape was part of assimilation. That doesn't make rape any less heinous but it does show the power of societal norms. When we believe things to be ok then normal, nice, sympathetic people can happily perpetrate them. This is why we can sympathize with a concentration camp guard but not with a rapist. The guard never really made a choice; there was a whole system in place telling him he was doing the right thing. It's why we can even perhaps sympathize with Hitler (I personally can't but it's possible) because for all his manifold crimes he never personally had his victims blood on his hands. That's the cautionary tale of fascism (and communism and collectivism in general) that if you put ideology above human life then you can convince normal people to carry out horrific things. Normal people just like you and your friends. In that context we can hate the crime but sympathize for the person and the situation they were put in. Your characters might all be rapists in the modern sense but looked at from another angle they're victims of the world they lived in. It's not the people who are evil here, it's the brutal, unenlightened times that told them this was ok. The man who executed Socrates probably wasn't a bad person; he believed he was doing the right thing. That's the real tragedy. And that's how you can make your characters sympathetic. They're doing (or have done) terrible things but they reassure each other that it's ok. They might have nightmares knowing what they've done but they can't talk about it because they think there's something wrong with them for not wanting to do it. And then they come home and have to make sense of a world that's totally different. Could you go back to your wife after raping and murdering people just like her? This is how you get into the character; showing the internal conflict that it'll throw up. Rapists aren't sympathetic because they choose the hurt people. Your characters can be sympathetic because they didn't do it for fun, they didn't even really choose to do it. They were lied to and the second they see the reality of it maybe their feelings start to change. Just like soldiers fighting their first battle and seeing the reality of dead friends and maimed enemies and far from glory and honor they are in a desperate struggle just to survive; men released to rape are going to have strong reactions to it. I'm sure some really do believe it's an ok thing, others might be disgusted, others might see it as a cultural or religious duty. Showing this range of reactions among your characters will give it the appropriate weight and display that your characters are the product of the world they live in; not bad people, just people doing what they were taught was right. I'm not just talking in the abstract here by the way. The central plot point in one of my books is a very complex, very rapey sexual encounter (long story short; she couldn't say no to him and he didn't know he was hurting her) that we see every last second of and is incredibly traumatic for both of them. You can absolutely write this stuff and maintain sympathy but you have to set it up very carefully to ensure you don't cross the line and even just going close to it you need to show that it hurt the character to do it to. You can make it work. But I really wouldn't advise it unless it's either a big deal in the plot itself or you're using it to make a point about the setting and human nature with it. It's fine to talk about towns being sacked and such but I really wouldn't casually dangle the idea all your guys are rapists just for the sake of realism (aside from anything else that's not even close to true). It'll just turn people off and I really think something of this kind of scale really does need to justify itself in the story to be there.
Murder and rape are two different crimes with different motivations and outcomes. Why shouldn't different standards be applied to them?
I think you're misunderstanding a bit how sympathy gets created. It's not a matter of how objectively bad a thing is, it's a matter of whether we can see ourselves acting the same way. Put me in a shield wall in the middle of a battle, and I can imagine myself killing people. (Or, at least, I can imagine the hypothetical me who's actually a competent dark ages warrior doing that.) I can understand the action. Even in the context of society's current morals, I can see it being a thing I might not *like* doing, but still doing. In Downfall, what we see on screen is a man whose life's work is falling apart around him. The man in question is a genocidal dictator, but we don't see the genocide. We see the collapse. So it's possible to sympathise - to a degree - with him, as well. We're never going to come out of the cinema thinking that actually Hitler was an OK bloke, but we can feel that at that particular point, we understood how he thought and felt. That - and a badass script - creates the sympathy. I can't imagine myself raping someone, in any situation, so I can't sympathise with that. It doesn't matter if, had I grown up in those days, I'd think it was fine, maybe even my right. I grew up in these days, and the thought of doing it makes me cringe. Rationally, I can understand why it was considered OK, but emotionally I doubt I ever will. Sympathy isn't essential - I'll read about characters if I find them interesting, even if I think they're complete bastards. But if you want me to sympathise AND you want to show this kind of stuff in the narrative, you've given yourself one hell of a hard job.
And that's how you can make your characters sympathetic. They're doing (or have done) terrible things but they reassure each other that it's ok. They might have nightmares knowing what they've done but they can't talk about it because they think there's something wrong with them for not wanting to do it. And then they come home and have to make sense of a world that's totally different. Could you go back to your wife after raping and murdering people just like her? This is how you get into the character; showing the internal conflict that it'll throw up. But that is exactly what I've found I don't want: putting modern ideas in a story about the past. Very few people would have been haunted by the rape.
You're right, which is why my main parallel was slavery during the Renaissance, which was about the same desires as rape (control, power and humiliation). And Hitler didn't just murder. He controlled, overpowered and humiliated. Under his rule people were deprived of their name, identities, physical appearance, sanitation, often life.
