Characters as Readers: The Reading Experience and Identification in Three Popular Novels of the 21st Century

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Characters As Readers:

The Reading Experience and Identification in Three

Popular Novels of the 21

st

Century

Agnes S. Kes agnes.s.kes@gmail.com

Student no.: 10076867 (UvA)/3268164(UHD) rMA Literary Studies

University of Amsterdam Master's Thesis

Prof. Dr. Vera Nünning (University of Heidelberg) Prof. Dr. Ellen Rutten (University of Amsterdam) 22 June 2015

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Abstract

When a reader states she feels she has "lost a friend" after she has finished a book, it is clear that the book made major impact on her. She has identified with its main character to such an extent, that she feels a certain friendship between herself and the character. Here, we witness an interesting case of identification, where the reader has come to highly empathise with the character. The reader quoted here was talking about Hazel from John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, one of the best-selling books of 2012. This paper explores the identification with Hazel and two other protagonists from popular literary fiction published in the last 15 years: Liesel from Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, and Briony from Ian McEwan's Atonement. All these protagonists share an interesting feature with each other and the readers: they love books and reading. This thesis demonstrates that because the reader and the character have this interest in common, the reader is able to identify with the character more easily.

Identifying with a character, or identification, is incorporated in the so-called 'reading experience', which describes the reading of literary fiction as an interplay between reader and text. The shared character trait of the characters and the readers enhance identification, and the reading experience as a whole.

1. Introduction

John Green's best-selling novel The Fault in Our Stars is about a 16-year-old girl who fills most of her days with reading and quoting from her favourite book. Markus Zusak's number one international bestseller The Book Thief is about a 10-year-old girl who is so "hungry" for books that she starts stealing them. Ian McEwan's runner-up for the Man Booker Prize Atonement is about a 13-year-old girl who wants nothing more than to be a novelist. An interesting feature these three books have in common is, amongst other things, that their protagonists have made novels, both the reading and writing of them, major parts of their lives. In addition, all three books are listed on the Best Books of the 21st Century list of goodreads.com, a major reader-based online social network. This shows how popular these books are amongst actual readers who have made their concern for novels extend past the written page – they are

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rating and discussing them online on a social network. It is interesting, then, that the actual readers and the reader-characters in the aforementioned books have something very clearly in common: they love books. Books and reading is part of their daily lives. One could go so far as to say that reading, and being a reader, is part of their identity. This thesis demonstrates that because these protagonists are first and foremost readers, it is easier for the actual reader to identify with them.

1.1 Gap Theory

Reader-response criticism first originated in the 1970s, with such critics as Norman Holland and Wolfgang Iser, the latter discussed below. While Holland1 mostly takes the reader herself as a starting point, Iser emphasises the writer's ability to offer the reader to interpret the text by leaving gaps in it. The theory that branched off from this idea is subsequently called Gap Theory. Iser claims that no author is "worth his salt [if he] ever attempts to set the whole picture before his reader's eyes" (The Implied Reader 57). Instead, a writer should leave gaps for her readers to fill in. These can arise from dialogue, for example, or from unexplained events, delayed revelations, or concrete images that are left uninterpreted. It is understood that readers are very capable of filling in the gaps, or of supplementing the omissions on their own, without being taken through the process by the author every step of the way. Iser warns that this would only make a text boring:

If the reader were given the whole story, and there was nothing left for him to do, his imagination would never enter the field, the result would be the boredom which inevitably arises when everything is laid out cut and dried before us. A literary text must therefore be conceived in such a way that it will engage the reader's imagination in the task of working things out for himself (ibid. 51).

The reader's imagination, in turn, is sparked by gaps or omissions left by the author. Reading, then, becomes a challenging interplay of reader and text; of a text challenging its readers to actively engage with it, and of a reader willing to interpret it. It is in this way, Iser argues, that the text obtains meaning. Iser goes so far as to say that without the opportunity to engage with a text, it does not

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See, e.g., Poems in Persons: An Introduction to the Psychoanalysis of Literature, first published in 1973. More recently, Holland published Literature and the Brain, which is primarily concerned with the interplay between texts and the human brain.

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have meaning, even though the words appear on the page: "What is said only appears to take on significance as a reference to what is not said; it is the implications and not the statements themselves that give shape and weight to the meaning" (The Act of Reading 168).

Reading a literary text, then, is not just simply a transmission of a message from writer through the medium of text to reader. It is an experience, in which the text is slightly different for every reader, because every reader will bring different (personal) elements to the text. A text, Iser claims, is inherently dynamic, but that characteristic will only be brought about when a reader brings her personal associations to it (The Implied Reader 51). The experience, then, is a creative process, in which the text goes further than it appears to be on the page. It draws the reader into the action, and, furthermore, "lead[s] [the reader] to shade in the many outlines suggested by a given situation, so that they take on a reality of their own" (The Act of Reading 168). The rhetorical effect of gaps, then, is to draw readers into the text. In doing so, the reader can make the text, temporarily, at least, her own. Iser limits the effect of gaps to literary fiction, arguing that the goal of an "expository text", or one which "unfolds an argument or conveys information" is to narrow down the "multiplicity of possible meanings" by "observing the connectability of textual segments" (ibid. 184). Indeed, this creative process is more easily triggered when one reads a fictional text, because the plot, events, and characters in such a text are fictional or fictionalised; they do not exist and the reader, therefore, has to imagine them. The reader has to draw from her own mental world. This is not the case for non-fiction or factual texts, since the elements in these actually exist and the reader is likely to be familiar with them. Fictional texts engage with the reader on a more personal level, because of the personal interpretation she has to do. It is therefore easier for the reader to personalise the text and make it part of her own thoughts.

1.2 Reader identification

More recently, the focus of reader-response criticism has been mostly on the cognitive processes that are at play in the reader's mind when she is reading a text. This is a relatively new field of studies within literary studies, with many things yet to be discovered. It is closely linked to psychological research into

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memory, emotions, and other cognitive functions, on which it is built. This paper takes these functions as its starting point, and first explores the theories already written on reader identification with characters and with novels. It takes into account researches on literature and memory, literature and emotion, transportation into literary texts, and identification with literary characters. As should be clear, when discussing 'literature', 'texts' and the like here, literary fiction is meant: fictional texts written by an author who took her time for it and carefully crafted a narrative or story for a potential or implied reader. Throughout the thesis, whenever the word 'text', 'novel', 'book', or 'story' is used, literary fiction as described above is meant. In addition, 'the reader' refers to the implied reader or readers for whom the author has intended the story. Since the starting point of this thesis consists of three books taken from a list on Goodreads, a digital social network focused on books and reading, the implied reader is also expected to be someone who reads books on a regular basis and concerns herself with them outside of the book too – she wants to rate and discuss them online with other readers. In other words, she perceives herself as an enthusiastic reader who wants to share her reading experiences with other readers. An enthusiastic reader is considered a reader open to the experiences offered by the book: someone who gets "carried away" by a book. Lastly, the term of 'identification' is adopted in this thesis because it is in line with most of the theory discussed. It was also the term that referred to the experience discussed in this thesis during the Ravenstein Seminar 2015, attended in preparation for this thesis.

1.3 Main Argument and Outline

This thesis first explores the so-called reader experience, in which the reader engages to such an extent with a story that she is transported into it and is able to identify with its characters. Afterwards, the techniques that can be incorporated in a text to make identification with its characters easier are explored. It has been argued that the reader's identification with characters is not primarily based on similarities between reader and character (see Nünning, and Tal-Or and Cohen), but I argue that the novels discussed in this thesis beg to differ. Their protagonists are all story lovers, and the effect that has on their personalities on the whole and on the readers is explored. I argue that their

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characterisation as readers enhances identification, and as such, the reading experience as a whole. In addition, the kind of readers these protagonists are made into conveys an image of 'being a reader': I argue that the discussed novels incorporate an image of the unique reader, which reflects on the implied reader. What's more, the paratext of these novels, which extends to the Internet, further draws in the reader into the text. All this enhances reader identification.

The thesis' structure is as follows: first, the framework for the reading experience is constructed in chapter 2, using existing theory. Then, the three novels The Fault in Our Stars, The Book Thief and Atonement are analysed. The analysis methodology is described in chapter 3, and the analyses can be found in chapter 4. The results of the analyses are discussed in chapter 5, and the conclusion can be found in chapter 6.

2. The Reading Experience

In this chapter, I want to propose the process of reading as a reading experience. The reading experience can only be brought about when the writer has left "gaps" in her text (Iser), as is explained above. The process that then comes about in the reader's mind I call the reading experience. The reading experience consists of four components: sense making, emotional engagement, transportation, and identification. These four components do not work in isolation; rather, there is an interplay between them. Sometimes, one might be stronger than the other, and sometimes, one might even trigger the other, but they do not occur in a set scheme in which the one always precedes the other. The description of the reading experience, then, is a dissection of the process of reading, and may not be so obvious all the time – especially not to the reader. Ideally, the reader will be able to feel transported by the text, and have empathic feelings for one or more character(s). It has been argued that the readers and the characters do not need to resemble each other necessarily (see Nünning, Tal-Or and Cohen). Interestingly, in recent years a number of books have been published that have protagonists which remarkably resemble readers by themselves being avid readers. The effect this has on identification and

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the reading experience as a whole is investigated in the following chapters. This chapter first describes the reading experience. The ideas for this concept were first formulated in a term paper for Professor Nünning's class The Persuasive Power of Fiction, and have been adapted for use in this thesis.

2.1 Sense Making: Schemata and Mental Models

Reading literary fiction is a creative process that asks for a reader to actively

engage with the text, and in doing so, personalise it. A text alone does not facilitate this process; a writer has to have carefully crafted the text, leaving gaps and omitting certain elements. In his lecture on "Explicit Memory and Literary Reading", Burke explained that, subsequently, the reader needs to have the desire to be thrilled by the text. Lastly, a process of mental imagery comes into play, in which not only memory, but also other knowledge fills up the gaps left by the author. As such, the text obtains personal meaning for the reader. This knowledge can come from the text itself, or from outside the text. Below, the sources of this knowledge are discussed in the form of Schema Theory and mental models, including the Landscape Model of Reading.

2.1.1 Schema Theory

According to Schema Theory, we use general knowledge to make sense of what we perceive – for instance, a literary text. Here again it is shown that meaning only comes into existence at the moment of interaction between what is perceived or read and what subsequent interpretations are made (see also Burke 6). So in the case of literary texts, they only start to make sense when the reader lets them interact with previous knowledge so as to interpret certain aspects. A central tenet in this Schema Theory is that there is no inherent meaning in a text or words alone – they have to be combined with what the reader already knows. Her knowledge is clustered in units of knowledge, or schemata, from which she retrieves information. Schemata are quite general; they are a generalized description of a particular yet usually rather broad concept. The schema for 'tree', for example, entails general knowledge about a tree: a wooden plant that has a trunk, branches and leaves. But within the schema also lies our knowledge that there are different kinds of trees, and that

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trees may look different from season to season. Everyone has schemata for everything they have ever experienced; schemata become theories about these experiences. When the knowledge stored in a schema is activated during reading, the reader will first start making sense about what she is reading by drawing on previous experiences. In addition, what she is reading will be a new experience that can be added to the already available knowledge in a certain schema. Rumelhart (41) states that "schemata can represent knowledge at all levels – from ideologies and cultural truths to knowledge about the meaning of a particular word, to knowledge about what patterns of excitations are associated with what letters of the alphabet. We have schemata to represent all levels of our experience, at all levels of abstraction." Schemata, then, are knowledge units independent of stories. Story-dependent schemata are called mental models, and are more specific than schemata.

2.1.2 Mental Models

Mental models are "cognitive representations of events and states of affairs constrained in the time and space of the narrative" (Busselle and Bilandzic 258). Busselle and Bilandzic distinguish between three: the situational model, the story-world model, and the character model. The situational model, however, is hard to distinguish from the story-world model. The former is described in the words of Graesser et al. as "the microworld of what the story is about [including] the spatial setting and the chronological sequence of episodes in the plot" (234), which could also be applied to the latter. The difference can be shown with the help of Van den Broek's Landscape Model of Reading, and Burke's rendition and extension of it. That is first done below, after which the story-world model and the character model are discussed.

The reader's first step in story comprehension consists of information assembly. This assembly is in motion as the narrative proceeds; the more the reader knows about the narrative, the more information she is able to assemble. This process is described in Van den Broek's Landscape Model of Reading, even though that initially only applies to one sentence at a time. According to Van den Broek, reading is done in four different stages of reading sentences that make up the reading cycle (64). In the first step, the sentence is simply read. In the second step, which is called the carry-over step, the reader

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activates a concept from the preceding reading cycle. This means that she will connect what she has just read in the previous sentence to the next sentence, so as to make them coherent. The third step is the re-instatement step, in which the reader goes further back into her memory to even earlier reading cycles, activating concepts from those too, and connect them to the read sentence. In the fourth step, background knowledge that does not necessarily come from previous reading cycles is activated too (see ibid.). The three latter steps can all influence the first step, and all come from the reader's memory. They help her understand what she is reading and give meaning to the read sentence (cf. Burke 10). This process is repeated for every sentence, making up a new cycle every time a reader starts a new sentence. Of course, the description of this process is a representation of it in slow motion. In reality, all is done within moments.

In his lecture, Burke showed that this process of reading cycles can be stretched to entire texts as opposed to just sentences. Every text obtains meaning and comprehensibility through previously read texts and (non-textual) experiences. Like Iser argues, from this theory it follows that a text only obtains meaning when it is interpreted, which is exactly what is done according to the Landscape Model of Reading. With the help of previous information, the reader is able to answer (previous) questions within the text and clarify uncertainties. When the new information makes sense for the reader from what she previously learned, the assembly process has been successful. If it does not, the process is not successful. A writer must therefore make sure that the information she gives is fitting with the information she has given before. As such, within the sense making process, in-text information is most important in this first model that comes into play.

The story world model, Busselle and Bilandzic's second model, exceeds the world-on-page, deriving information from the actual world so as to make sense of the so-called story world. A story world is "a conceptual domain that is temporally and spatially coherent" (Segal 71) – in other words, it is the world within the narrative. Even though this world may be different from the real world, in principle the reader will first presume that mechanisms in this world will be similar to those in the real world, because that is what the reader is familiar with. Segal explains that "the first approximation of the story is that it complies with

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temporal and spatial constraints that rule the real world and that the characters behave, think and feel the way real people do. The default condition is verisimilitude" (72). Consequently, the reader does not have to build up a world from scratch, but from the framework that is set by the actual world. As such, she only has to track the differences between the real world and the story world, which is significantly easier than building up an entirely new world (cf. Busselle and Bilandzic 259). Again, here holds true that if those differences make sense within the story world, the model is successful.

Lastly, the reader makes use of the character model to represent the characters in a story. The information she uses for this often originates in the form of stereotypes, which are complemented by information given earlier in the story. Stereotypes are a specific category of schemas that represent people or groups of people. Busselle and Bilandzic show that they can derive from the actual world and from other story worlds, and enable the reader to make preliminary presumptions about characters and people in general (cf. 257). The reader, then, can recognise people she already knows in a character. The development of a model for a certain character, then, starts with stereotyping her, but subsequently giving her the described character traits and identity, so as to come to a representation. Ideally, the reader recognises parts of herself in a certain character, typically the main character. This makes for the ideal conditions for the reader to identify herself with the main character and engage more closely with the story. Broadly speaking, these two processes are called identification and transformation. They are discussed in detail further down, in chapter 2.3 and 2.4, after the discussion about the importance of emotions.

In conclusion, the information assembled through schemata and mental models is a mixture of general knowledge, story specific knowledge, and personal knowledge, or memories. Even though general knowledge and story knowledge personalize a story, personal knowledge in particular enhances the reader to make the story her own. This process can be stimulated when the main character or another prominent character (one that plays a significant role in and to the story) shares traits with the reader herself – for example, when the main character likes to read (like the actual reader, obviously, does too). But recognising similar traits is not enough. As we will see below, when the reader's emotions come into play, she emerges still deeper with the story.

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2.2 Emotional Engagement

Even though the reader can personalise the text through memories and common knowledge, they do not account for "the phenomenological experience of becoming lost in a story" as Bilandzic and Busselle (260) have pointed out. Here, emotions are of great importance. Emotions always appear while reading literary fiction; often people feel they should be "in the mood" for a certain type of novel (Burke 1). This common feeling shows that mood, or emotional state, comes into play as soon as the reader decides to read a book. When the actual reading commences, a number of other emotions come into play as well. These can be story-related, or "fresh" emotions, or reader-related emotions. Reader-related emotions are intrinsic to the reader; they already exist within the reader, and are newly evoked by the story. Story-related emotions, on the other hand, are "fresh": the reader gets them from the story and they are therefore new to the reader. Fresh memories are developed by means of the story; outside of the story the reader would not have them. However, they do have instant influence on the reader (cf. Mar et al. 828). They almost immediately come into play, and they make for the reader to become easier to influence (cf. Green and Dill 456). Mar et al., after Oatley, differentiate five types of emotions that come into play whilst reading. Oatley was the first to formally categorise three of them: relived emotions, sympathy and identification. Mar et al. added two more to that: remembered emotions and empathy. Mar et al. distinguish relived from remembered emotions, and empathy from sympathy and identification. Even though they are similar and easily linked to each other, they are distinguishable through subtle differences. Relived emotions differ from remembered emotions in the sense that the former are buried further under the surface than the latter. That is to say, relived emotions are more unconscious than remembered emotions, and therefore do not always come out as expected or at all. Empathy is different from sympathy and identification in the sense that our feelings towards the character are stronger and closer to theirs (in comparison to sympathy), or strong, but not the same as the character's (in comparison to identification). Surprisingly, both Oatley and Mar et al. recognise identification as an emotion. Other scholars, however, have placed identification in a category of its own. I, too, regard identification as something else than an

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emotion like sympathy or empathy, since identification applies to a very special focus on a particular character. But to be complete, I will briefly discuss it here within Oatley and Mar et al.'s taxonomy, alongside the other four emotions mentioned.

Sympathy has got to do with understanding the character and, more importantly, the disposition she is in. The reader is able to recognise the disposition through particular patterns, which have happened before either by herself, others, or by (other) characters in (other) books. For example, the character meets a new friend, or loses someone, and the reader feels for her. As such, the reader recognises the pattern, sees how it affects the character, and feels sympathetic towards her. However, the reader does not feel as if she were in the character's shoes; the reader does not feel as if she meets a new friend or loses someone. This is because sympathy is a so-called "witness emotions" (Mar et al. 823), which causes the reader to understand the character's situation, but at the same time the reader realises it is not her own situation.

Although closely related to sympathy, empathy is not the same. Where the reader feels emotions of sympathy when she understands the predicament the character is in, she feels the same as or similar to the character when she experiences emotions of empathy. The emotion the character has, then, is being taken over by the reader. Emotion through empathy, therefore, "is elicited by observation or imagination of the other's emotions, [which] involves knowing that the other is the source of one's own emotion" (Mar et al. 824). So even though the reader might feel the same as the character, she is aware that what she is feeling is not inherent to herself; it is a story-related as opposed to reader-related emotion. Since empathy is not just an observation of another's emotion, but also entails the imagination of it, it can easily be applied to fictional characters created through our imagination in interaction with a narrative (cf. Mar et al. 824). Empathy, then, is a very common emotion felt while performing literary reading.

As mentioned, Mar et al., after Oatley, consider identification an emotion such as sympathy and empathy, while I do not. "When we identify with a character", they argue, "we imagine ourselves to be in his or her position" (823). While this is true, this is not as compatible as sympathy and empathy are to

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each other. This is because identification is an outcome of emotions such as sympathy and empathy rather than another emotion running alongside them. Interestingly, Mar et al. argue that "identification can result in the evocation of emotions" (823). Here, then, they show the interplay between emotions and identification, admitting that identification is not an emotion as such. Identification is further explored in chapter 2.5.

Relived emotions are reader-related emotions, which already exist within the reader. However, the reader needs a cause to relive them again: in this case, literary fiction. Within the narrative, there must be a trigger to recall a certain feeling or emotion. Scheff discerns literary fiction, drama, or other kinds of narratives as particularly well-fitting in this role, because these texts particularly "enable people to relive, and hence assimilate unassimilated emotions from one's past" (Mar et al. 825). In that sense, literary fiction would have a therapeutic notion to it. Relived emotions, however, are not purely replicative; they can be modified within and through the literary setting, "and perhaps become more fully understood and assimilated" (Mar et al. 825). Relived emotions are a powerful kind of emotion to come into play, because they directly tie up memory and emotion to interact between the reader and the text.

Mar et al. distinguish remembered emotions from relived emotions, indicating that not all such emotions are pre-existing, personal emotions within the reader's mind. Contrarily, some emotions derive from collective memory. These are labelled as "remembered emotions" (Mar et al 825). The reader does know and have them, but did not necessarily personally witness the happenings that caused them. These happenings can be real-life happenings, such as war, or happenings within other works of fiction. As long as the reader recognises and feels them, they are hers. However, she has these emotions because they are part of the society she lives in. They are part of her collective identity. They can, therefore, be incorporated by the reader, but are technically not her own. Nonetheless, they can be triggered by literary fiction, and are sincere emotions.

In conclusion, the above-described emotions allow for the reader to further fill in gaps left in the text, and become emotionally engaged with it. In doing so, the text is personalised to a higher extent. Emotions are, of course, highly personal. Therefore, when they interact with a text, the text automatically

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becomes more personal to the reader too. She can relate to the happenings and characters to a more personal extent thanks to the personal connections she can make. Of course, not all emotions described above have to happen, or happen at once. But once they, or a combination of them occur, they cause the reader to be more emotionally involved with the text. The text can then have great influence on the reader, making her feel as if she is part of it. Emotions pave the way for transportation and identification, or the feeling of being close to a character. How these processes come into play is described below. First I discuss transportation (chapter 2.3), and then identification (chapter 2.4).

2.3 Transportation

With emotions coming into play, the reader can personalise the text to a greater extent. It is then possible for the reader to be transported into the text: getting the feeling of "being lost" in a story. Alongside or after that, the reader can start to identify with one or more character(s). The process of identification is described in chapter 2.4. First, we will turn to transportation.

Engagement and transportation are not the same thing; they are two of the four elements of the reading experience. Kuijpers agrees with this, although she recognises them as two parts of what she calls 'story world absorption'. Her concept of story world absorption, however, is very similar to what I understand as the reading experience. Story world absorption is defined as "an experiential state that can emerge during the reading of a narrative text. This state is characterized by readers' focused attention on the alternate story world presented in the text" (Kuijpers et al. 95). As a consequence of this, Kuijpers et al. point out that readers can become "less aware of their surroundings and themselves and lose track of time" (ibid. 95). They can feel transported into the story in the book "and this feeling can be supported by strong emotional reactions" (ibid. 95). Kuijpers' concept and definition of story world absorption, then, comes very close to what I call the reading experience. The fact that Kuijpers uses the word 'experiential' in her definition, signals that the entire process is in fact better called an 'experience'. Kuijpers' concept of story world absorption consists of four dimensions, namely attention, mental imagery, emotional engagement, and transportation. Again, this comes very close to the concept of the reading experience, where attention and mental imagery are

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replaced by sense making, and identification is added. The term 'sense making' specifies what kind of attention is needed within the reading experience, and the concept incorporates 'mental imagery'. Therefore it replaces both 'attention' and 'mental imagery'. Identification is added because it is regarded as different from transportation, which is shown in chapter 2.5. In both the concept of story world absorption and the reading experience, however, emotional engagement precedes transportation and identification. These two might occur simultaneously, or one after the other. Both can be strong, but sometimes, one is stronger than the other, and might even trigger the other.

Kuijpers points out that "sometimes [engagement and transportation] co-occur, while at other times one is much stronger than the other, perhaps even causing the other (93). Kuijpers understands transportation as "a feeling of entering a story world, without completely losing contact with the actual world" (93). For two reasons, this definition is appropriate. First of all, because with the term 'entering' Kuijpers signifies the feeling of movement that is characteristic to transportation, and second of all, because this definition signifies that the reader does not completely lose touch with the actual world, which, as we will see, is true.

This definition deviates from the original definition of transportation, first coined by Richard Gerrig and later more elaborated on by Melanie Green and colleagues. Gerrig uses travel as a metaphor, and proposes that the reader "travels" into a story by means of transportation, which is conceptualised as a state of detachment from the actual world into the story world, which the reader experiences because she is highly engaged with the story (cf. Gerrig 10-11). Green and Brock define transportation as "absorption into a story, [which] entails imagery, affect, and attentional focus" (701), and a few years later Green defines it again as "a melding of concentration, affective engagement and mental imagery, all focused on the events of a narrative" (Green 451). Not only do these definitions ignore the importance of movement within transportation, they also suggest that transportation is the entire reading experience an sich, while it is actually part of the reading experience. Still, the term 'transportation' itself is most suitable, since other terms, such as immersion, engrossment, presence (the latter used by Busselle and Bilandzic), or involvement (used by Tal-Or and Cohen), do not have the sense of movement incorporated in them.

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This movement has got everything to do with the deictic shift the reader has to make to become transported into the story. A deictic shift involves a psychological shift into the story (cf. Busselle and Bilandzic 261), so that the reader can fully emerge with it. The term comes from the Greek word deixis, which refers to words and phrases that cannot be fully comprehended without their context. These often are function words, such as I, she, this, and that. These words only obtain meaning when we know to who or what they refer to. In literary fiction, a deictic shift takes place when such words start to obtain their meaning from the narrative; the 'I' person, for example, becomes the 'I' person in the book instead of the actual 'I' of the reader. A deictic shift causes the reader to feel as though she were "inside" the story.

Green does not explain transportation by means of a deictic shift. Instead, she describes it as a flow-like state in which the reader loses herself completely (cf. Green and Dill 451), which seems to be too rigorous a way of describing the experience. This flow-like state is described in four different stages (see ibid. 452). First, Green and Dill argue, the reader will lose sense of her bodily awareness. She will not be conscious of her own body's place, position, or situation; it is as if the reader retreats in her own mind, guided by the narrative. Next, as a consequence of this, the reader will lose awareness of her environment. Just like her body enters oblivion, her environment is forgotten too. The reader does not perceive what happens there anymore; people walking by can be overlooked, happenings are not noticed anymore, and sounds are not heard. The reality of the narrative becomes the reader's temporary reality. Green and Dill argue that the reader is capable of doing this because of the capability to suspense reality testing (452), also known as "suspension of disbelief". "Suspension of disbelief" is defined by Busselle and Bilandzic (cf. 264) as the reader's conscious suppression of the awareness that fiction is indeed fictional. Busselle and Bilandzic, after Worth, show that the opposite is in fact the case. What the reader actually does, is (temporarily) believe that the narrative worlds and the character and her thoughts and feelings are in fact true. This is because the reader cannot consciously switch her awareness off – what she, however, can do, is accept things to be true. The reader, then, does not actively disbelieve the story by suspending her own

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reality, but actively believes it by accepting the so-called narrative reality (cf. ibid. 265).

Busselle and Bilandzic explain this in the light of external and narrative realism (see 267-271). External realism concerns the events as we perceive them in the outside world – i.e., everyday realism. Narrative realism is the realism within the narrative world. Narrative realism is tested according to external realism, and judgements are made alongside it. This is the same mechanism as the one mentioned before in the story world model. If a reader regards narrative realism as plausible, she will accept the happenings of the narrative. Usually, she will judge the narrative realism as plausible if it resembles external realism. If it does not, it should be explained in the narrative. However, if a story does not give a coherent, plausible explanation for deviations from the reader's reality norm, it is likely the reader will dismiss the story and transportation will be disrupted or not occur at all. Yet, if the narrative's realism is perceived as plausible, the narrative is more likely to be transporting (see Green and Dill 455). In addition, Green and Dill mention the importance of a well-written story (455), with which Nünning (210) agrees. In addition, Green and Donahue (246) introduce foregrounding as an important factor. Texts that use foregrounding are rated as more striking, and readers spend more time reading them. Foregrounding is defined as "a literary device that makes aspects of the familiar world seem new or strange, thus allowing readers to break out of their automatic or customary ways of seeing the world and gain a deeper understanding of the human experience" (ibid.).

Transportation, however, can still be counted as a general immersion in the story world (cf. Green and Dill 455). Tal-Or and Cohen argue that "[transportation] does not specify what it is in the narrative with which a reader is engaged" (406). Transportation happens by paying close attention to the plot and a sense of suspense about how it will be resolved, without being specifically concerned about a particular character. This empathic engagement happens during identification.

2.4 Identification

Like transportation, identification can be seen as a way to describe how the reader becomes highly engaged with a literary text (cf. Tal-Or and Cohen 406).

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But as said above, transportation is not specifically focused on a particular aspect of the story, whereas identification is especially focused on the reader's attachment to a character "indicated by seeing the character as positive and adopting his or her goals and perspective on the narrative events" (ibid.). Busselle and Bilandzic, too, describe identification as the process where the reader takes on the perspective of the character (263). Tal-Or and Cohen argue that if we accept the invitation to engage with a story, there are two ways in which we can do this: as external observers or as participants (403). Yet, even though these two concepts may seem like two different types of reactions, they actually are not mutually exclusive and often occur interchangeably, or even simultaneously. Tal-Or and Cohen stress that "very strong reactions to texts may occur without the loss of identity or awareness, (…), and loss of self-awareness does not mean that one loses all cultural knowledge and engages with the text tabula rasa" (403). Identification, then, does not always have to happen as strongly, if at all, and when it happens, it does not mean the reader is completely losing herself. She will always bring something to the text. Still, it is hard to deny that some texts draw us in to such an extent that they make us feel very close to particular characters.

This feeling, that we are very close to particular characters, can cause us to come to care for these characters; we are concerned with how they are doing, the disposition they are in, and how their problems will be resolved. These concerns are caused by empathic responses, which make us share the character's perspective and can make us adopt her feelings – even if only for a moment. Within media psychology, it is defined as "an imaginary process that entails merging with the character and sharing the character's knowledge about the narrated events, adopting the character's goals (…), and sharing the character's emotions. [It] is a temporary, imaginary process that takes place during exposure" (Tal-Or and Cohen 404). Tal-Or and Cohen hypothesise that identification is based on a shared perspective between viewers and characters, and that it intensifies when the reader feels she knows as much as the character. That would mean that the more the reader knows about the character's past and background, the more she is able to identify with her. In addition, if the reader feels she knows as much about the character's future as the character does, that would intensify identification too (407). But Tal-Or and

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Cohen found that this is not how identification works. Nünning agrees with them, arguing that identification is not dependent on the similarities between reader and character (210). Rather, what mostly makes the reader identify with a character is emotional engagement (see Nünning 210, Tal-Or and Cohen 413). This follows from Kuijpers et al.'s tested hypotheses too, in which they found that more than the text's type, the text's content determines what they call the "absorption score" (114).

Nünning stresses the importance of emotional engagement too. This is more important than similarities between reader and character within the perspective taking process, she argues (210). However, this perspective process might increase when the reader "has endured the same slings and arrows as the target person" (Galinsky and Moskowitz 709) – which here would be the character. In addition, Nünning shows that emotional engagement and the taking on of characters' perspectives depends on the reader's preference of the text's genre, the degree to which the persuasive subtext is obvious or obtrusive, and the quality of the text as a whole. As per Nünning, there are three narrative strategies a text can employ "to encourage the reader to adopt a particular character's perspective and lessen the distance between reader and character" (199). First, the text can have the particular character as focaliser, so that the reader will be presented with her impressions, beliefs, feelings and opinions first and foremost. This can be done by means of free indirect speech, interior monologue, and psycho-narration (cf. Nünning 199). Nünning defines psycho-narration as "a mode of representing internal processes characterised by a relatively high degree of compression and a high level of narrator participation" (199). This high level of narrator participation is the second strategy the text can employ: an (often omniscient) narrator, who addresses the reader, can make explicit comments and voice her opinion about events and characters, and by doing so steers the reader to an understanding of the character (cf. ibid. 200). Lastly, by putting this character in a precarious position, the reader will most probably empathise quicker with the character (cf. ibid. 201), through compassion or pity perhaps. Note that these strategies do not happen in isolation, but rather in various combinations (cf. ibid.). In addition, they do not happen in all kind of stories and for all kind of readers (cf. ibid. 208).

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While these techniques may encourage the reader to take on a certain character's perspective and lessen the distance between the reader and that character, it seems unlikely that the reader really thinks she is the character. Tal-Or and Cohen argue that the reader may experience a feeling of shifting identity, but only very briefly (see 403). Nünning further develops this idea. She points out that "if identity is defined as a loss of distance between the self and the other, that implies that readers adopt the character's aim and feelings as their own, and thus an imagine-self perspective" (238). But, like Tal-Or and Cohen, Nünning argues that this feeling would only be "brief and fleeting" (239). Instead, Nünning deems the imagine-other perspective, in which the reader still regards the character as the experiencing party, as more likely, for three different reasons (see Nünning 239-241). First, the imagine-other perspective connects better to the concept of aesthetic distance, "which suggests that fiction always maintains a clear self-other differentiation" (ibid. 240). Second, and more strongly, literary reading comes about best when the reader is well and feels safe. She would not be if she felt like she was a character who is in a troubling disposition. Third, the reader almost always knows more than the character thanks to the narrator. She is, then, almost always a step ahead of the character, which is why the reader can never totally feel as if she is the character. Identification, in conclusion, means that we, as readers, empathise with a character to a high extent, care for her and feel for her, but that does not mean we become her; we will always remain readers.

Even though Nünning and Tal-Or and Cohen argue that character identification is not primarily based on the similarities between reader and character, it is remarkable to find a number of protagonists in recent, highly popular literary fictions that resemble the reader in one very important and obvious way: these protagonists are readers. In fact, reading and books, as we will find, make up a large part of their identity. What is also remarkable is that the books that feature these protagonists are purposely placed into their reader base, by making special reading communities for them – mostly on the Internet. These books are a typical example of what Collins calls "popular literary fiction": books that are purposely placed in "the heart of popular literature" (in De Bruyn and Collins 194), by means of online or TV advertisement through Internet forums and TV shows. They are explicitly not for the professional reader, but for

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the amateur reader, who is thus empowered (see De Bruyn and Collins 194). Lastly, by discussing these books online and in TV shows, the reading of them is transformed from a "thoroughly private" experience into an "exuberantly social" experience (Collins 4) that is all around them. As such, these books become part of the reader's daily life.

A result of the creation of a reader base is that an implied reader is created alongside with that. The actual readers are invited to identify with this implied reader; to see themselves as this implied reader. This process of "matching", as Ellen Peel (27) calls it, results in the further taking in of the actual reader in the story and its characters. Peel explains the process of matching first as follows: "pairing the implied reader with a real reader who has relevant corresponding traits – in terms of reading ability, prior knowledge, openness to change, beliefs about states of affairs and their values, and so on" (27). To this she adds: "the more closely a real reader fits the profile of a text's implied reader, or fits the profile of one of a text's various implied readers, the more likely it is that the real reader will be persuaded as the implied author intends" (29).

What we will see in the discussed novels is that this process of matching does not only happen between actual reader and implied reader, but is also meant to happen between character and implied reader, and ideally between character and actual reader. Just like the protagonists, the actual reader is meant to see reading as part of her daily life and identity, as a result of which she can immediately identify with the protagonists, who hold a similar attitude towards books and reading. In what follows, the identity of these protagonists as readers is laid bare. As will be shown, their reader identity is presented as something unique. In effect, it seems to be advocated in these books that being a reader makes you unique – which can be either a good or a bad thing.

2.5 Conclusion

Reading literary fiction is a creative process that asks for a reader to actively engage with the text, and in doing so, personalise it. A text as such does not facilitate this process; a writer has to carefully craft the text, and leave gaps and omissions in it, which the reader subsequently has to fill in. As such, literary reading is an experience consisting of four parts. First, the reader has to make

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sense of the text by means of mental models and schemata. Second, by having certain emotions coming into play, the reader can emotionally engage with the text. These emotions are a set of five according to Oatley and Mar et al. They do not all have to come into play, and also not all at once. In addition, the "emotion" of identification is not regarded as an emotion as such within the theory of the reading experience. In fact, it is a consequence of the reader's emotional engagement, together with transportation. Transportation is a feeling of entering a story world, without completely losing contact with the actual world. Identification is caused by empathic responses, which make us, even if only very briefly, share the character's identity. However, identification does not mean we become the character. As readers, we will always remain readers.

In recent years, a certain popular literary fiction has been published and placed within the reader base that has protagonists who remarkably resemble readers by being avid readers themselves too. This is presented as something unique, which can either be good or bad. Now follows an analysis of these books to explore in what way they resemble readers, and what their identity says about what it is to be a reader.

3. Methodology

To demonstrate that a set of popular literary fictions have protagonists that are themselves ideal readers, these books and their protagonists have to be analysed. I do so in the form of a close reading, the results of which can be found in the next chapter.

First, to ensure that the analysed books can indeed be regarded as popular literary fiction, I have taken them from the top 25 of the list Best Books of the 21st Century on the website Goodreads.com. On its own about-page, Goodreads describes itself as, "the world's largest site for readers and book recommendations". In 2014, more than 25 million people were active on the website (Narula), together ranking and reviewing over 395 million books (Fidelman). Its "mission", as stated on its own website, is "to help people find and share books they love". Goodreads, then, is very much focused on the amateur reader who loves to read books. In addition, this reader wants to share

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her experiences online, and discover new books that might give her a similar experience.

The choice I made with regards to what books to include is somewhat personal. Even though the books are all listed on Goodread's list of the Best Books of the 21st Century, they are not the highest ranked or most popular books on there. I came to the decision for the used books as follows: First, I deleted all non-realistic novels, since I wanted to restrict my research to one genre and I wanted to work with realistic stories. Next, I picked out the books in which the protagonists have a relationship towards books and reading2. From the list I ended up with after the deletions, I picked the books I was most interested in. The books that remain are John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, Markus Zusak's The Book Thief and Ian McEwan's Atonement.

The resulting analyses are composed as follows: first, the book's general story is explained. Then, the narrative is analysed in terms of Genette's narrative taxonomy, so as to give a clear overview of the story. Third, the book's reception on Goodreads and beyond is explored, to explain its position within the domain of popular literary fiction. Afterwards, the close reading is done. Here, the book is regarded as an entire work and therefore its paratexts, such as the cover, the title page, and the author's note, are taken into account as well. The focus is on the protagonist, and other characters are only discussed with regards to the protagonists. The focus is first on the protagonists as readers, and afterwards on other features of their personality. Chapter 4 consists of three separate analyses, which are combined into the discussion in chapter 5. The results can be found below.

4. Analyses

Below, the analyses of the novels can be found. They are in random order and independent from each other. Hazel from The Fault in Our Stars is analysed first, then Liesel from The Book Thief, and lastly, Briony from Atonement. The results of the analyses are combined in the discussion (Chapter 5).

2

Other books I could have included are, e.g., Kathryn Stockett's The Help, Alice Sebold's The Lovely

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4.1 The Fault in Our Stars: Hazel

John Green's 2012 bestselling novel The Fault in Our Stars is the first novel discussed here that has an ideal reader as its protagonist. It tells the story of 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster, who is diagnosed with thyroid cancer and is terminally ill. To treat her depression, she has to go to a support group, where she meets with other teenaged cancer patients to talk about their disease and what consequences it has. One day at the support group, she meets Augustus Waters, whose osteosarcoma caused him to lose a leg. They almost immediately fall in love and spend all of their time together. The story is told in first person by Hazel, which makes her the story's autodiegetic narrator according to Genette's taxonomy. She is an overt narrator, commenting on all happenings and making her opinion well known. The focalization lies with Hazel as well, making the novel character-focalized. The story is really her story, which is clearly indicated by the book's blurb. Here, this episode in her life is called "her final chapter", in which "a plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears", who makes for her "story" to be "completely rewritten". Already Hazel's life is directly tied up with stories and books.

In addition, the author's note emphasises the importance of Hazel's story, and stories in general. Here, Green claims that "made-up stories matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species" (XI). Note too that with language such as "sort of" Green adopts a language that is typically used by his young adult readers, so as to indicate their like-mindedness. From the author's biography in the back of the book we learn that the readers can find Green on digital social networks such as YouTube, Tumblr, and Twitter, where they can join the other millions who follow Green. They can also "visit" him on his personal website. Here, it becomes clear that a reader base is created, and that Green wants to be included in it.

From the book's cover we learn that it was met with wide critical acclaim, including by Time Magazine, The New York Times, and by Green's fellow writer Markus Zusak, author of the The Book Thief (discussed below). Zusak is quoted on the book's cover, saying "You laugh, you cry, and then you come back for more". Clearly, the appraisal of another best-selling writer is highly valued. The book ranks number 16 on Goodread's list of Best Books of the 21st Century, 12 places after The Book Thief (#4), and 7 before Atonement (#23). The book has

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received 4.38 stars out of 5 on Goodreads, and it is described by its fans as "amazing" ("Rosalinda"), "fantastic" ("Veronica Roth"), and "inspirational" ("Erika"). Most fans refer to its sad ending; some said they felt like "[they] lost a friend" ("Enxhi Mana"), and that they "felt so lonely when [they] finished the book" ("Arokeum Vanessa").

That readers would describe Hazel as their 'friend' is understandable when taken into account that they and Hazel share an interest: reading. Hazel is particularly obsessed with one book: An Imperial Affliction, by (fictitious) writer Peter van Houten. She has read it multiple times and is able to quote extensively from it. She explains her love for the book as follows:

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird, evangelical zeal and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal (Green 33; emphasis his).

Hazel regards the book so high, that she perceives it as hers; as if it is part of her. As such, it makes up part of her identity, and she is not willing to show that part to everyone. Nevertheless, she decides to recommend the book to Augustus upon their first meeting, who reads it and is as much attracted to it as she is. It is really the first thing that brings them together, as oppose to their shared experience with cancer. Books, or a book, then, are of great importance to these main characters and their lives.

Hazel and Augustus go on an An Imperial Affliction inspired trip to Amsterdam, to meet its author Peter van Houten. Initially Hazel describes him as her "third best friend (…) who did not know [she] exist[ed]" (ibid. 12). Here it is argued that alongside a special bond with a book, a reader can have a secret bond with its writer. Without knowing it, an author can be a reader's best friend, helping her and offering her therapeutic aid. Van Houten's book is about a cancer patient, but unlike other books with the same subject ("cancer books", according to Hazel (ibid. 48)), she can relate the main character Anna. Anna starts a foundation for cholera patients, because starting one for cancer patients as a cancer patient "is a bit narcissistic" – with which Hazel agrees. Furthermore, "Anna is honest about it in a way no one else really is" (ibid. 49). Anna calls herself "the side effect [of cancer]", a term Hazel adopts (ibid.). This

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might well be called an ideal case of identification – in which the reader totally agrees with the character and feels very close to her. Hazel is so concerned about Anna and her family that she wants to ask Van Houten what happens to them when Anna dies (when An Imperial Affliction ends). She finally gets her chance to ask her questions when she meets Van Houten in person in Amsterdam, only to find out he is an unkind alcoholic, unwilling to answer her questions. In the end, however, she finds out Anna is based on Van Houten's own daughter, who died of cancer at age 6. Hazel, purposely clothed like (16-year-old) Anna, confronted Van Houten to such an extent that he was not capable of facing her. As such, Hazel had become her favourite fictional character, even to the author. Here, then, it is argued that identification can be taken one step further, so that the reader becomes the character. But as we have seen in chapter 2, this is actually not possible.

The Fault in Our Stars contains a strong sense of the possibility to

identify with characters – it happens within the book to its main character. In that sense, it invites its own readers to do the same with the characters of Hazel and Augustus. The reader can firstly take an example in Hazel and Augustus. These two are the ideal readers – they have taken on their favourite book An

Imperial Affliction as their guide or, even, "bible" (ibid. 13) and they quote

extensively and exceptionally well from it, without having the book ready at hand. These quotes, such as "pain demands to be felt" (ibid. 57) and "some infinities are bigger than others" (ibid. 233), serve as inspirational and guiding lines to them and their relationship. Even when Augustus' best friend, whom he has known for many years, is having a fit, the former finds time to turn to Hazel and quote from the book. Hazel, in addition, is a well-read, almost autodidactical 16-year-old. Even though she has missed three years of school because of her illness, she shows herself to be culturally engaged in general, and knowledgeable about literature in particular. When she asked what she likes to do, the first thing that comes to her mind is reading. When she is asked what she reads, she replies with "everything" (ibid. 33). On occasion she refers to Allen Ginsberg's Howl, she is able to recite T.S. Elliot's The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock, and she wears T-shirts with Magritte's Ceci ne'est pas une pipe

printed on it. Additionally, her mum describes her as "a brilliant young reader" (ibid. 103).

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This "brilliant young reader" the actual readers are invited to identify with, is additionally at times often cynical about her life and the people around her. This cynicism is introduced from the beginning of the book onwards, when she describes the mental health professional Patrick, who leads the support group. He has had cancer himself, but survived:

(…) and [I] listened to Patrick recount for the thousandth time his depressive miserable life story – how he had cancer in his balls and they thought he was going to die and now here he is, a full-grown adult in a church basement in the 137th_{nicest city in America, divorced,}

addicted to video games, mostly friendless, eking out a meagre living by exploiting his cancertastic past [sic], slowly working his way towards a master's degree that will not improve his career prospects, … (ibid. 4-5)

This cynicism remains a recurrent theme throughout the entire book. Even though Hazel is, at times, aware of her teenaged behaviour – for example when she wants to do "an old-fashioned Teenager Walkout" (ibid. 255) when she has had a fight with her parents – she also perceives herself as different from her peers. This is not only because of the obvious reason of cancer; she seems to have different interests in general and takes pride in it: "I take pride in not knowing what's cool" (ibid. 40), she says to her mum. She describes herself as "dishevelled and awkward and stunted" (ibid. 43). This especially becomes clear when she is juxtaposed with her best friend Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn is "alarmed" when she learns Hazel is reading a sci-fi novel, and immediately wants to shop (ibid. 43). Kaitlyn is the archetypical popular schoolgirl who is concerned with diet coke, boys, and what her toes look like when they stick out of her shoes. When Hazel points out this "toe-specific dysmorphia" to her (ibid. 44), she does not know what that means. Kaitlyn seems to function as Hazel's antagonist: the not-reading schoolgirl, mostly concerned with her appearance and boyfriends. Whereas Kaitlyn is archetypical in that sense, Hazel is clearly atypical, unique even. Of course, this has to do with the fact that she is sick. But in addition to that, it has to do with her interests, reading most of all. Here is implied, then, that being a reader makes you unique and different – something a lot of actual readers might want to be or feel like too.

This is not the case when Hazel is compared to her boyfriend Augustus. Just like Hazel, Augustus loves to read, especially after her recommendation,

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like her, keeps doing that throughout the book. In addition, he uses phrases such as "I was awash in the nobility of sacrifice" to describe what he experienced when he watched an action movie (ibid. 151), and "existentially fraught free throws" to describe shooting hoops (ibid. 30). Hazel and Augustus seem to want to prove their maturity by the use of these phrases, together with occasional cynicism, which is a feature they share as well. Love, for example, he calls "a shout into the void" (ibid. 153). In addition, Augustus explains he is "a big believer of metaphor" (ibid. 21) by putting a cigarette between his lips, but never lighting it: "you put the killing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing" (ibid. 20). At the same time, Augustus is described as good-looking, intelligent and witty, and Hazel is intimidated by him at first. Thanks to his cigarette metaphor he convinced her to come home with him to watch a movie, and he finally wins her trust when he has read and is intoxicated by An Imperial Affliction. He reveals himself as a gentleman of grand gestures, taking Hazel out to an elaborate picnic and finally to Amsterdam to meet her favourite author. Hazel, in turn, does not let herself be swept away by this, deciding that he has "overdone it all" at the picnic. Literarily engaged as she is, she calls it "Romantic, but not romantic" (ibid. 93). Augustus is described as charismatic till the very end – even when he is very sick, "[he] is the kind of person who inspires doctors to give their best bottles of champagne to children" (ibid. 23). Little differences between Hazel and Augustus reveal themselves in their movie preferences and their engagements in sports. Whereas Augustus can carry on an animated conversation about basketball, Hazel does not care, and whereas Augustus likes action movies, Hazel asks herself why boys would expect girls to like these sort of "boy movies" (ibid. 35). Other than that, there do not seem to be any differences between Hazel and Augustus. In that sense, he seems to be an extra emphasis on the kind of girl she is: a unique, affected book lover, who identifies herself first and foremost with reading and books as opposed to anything else.

Through Hazel and Augustus, the idea that reading and books, and thoroughly engaging with them, make you unique seems to be stressed. Hazel and Augustus are not just readers; they are ideal readers who make books and reading part of their lives and their identity. The idea that a reader can thoroughly identify with a character is made clear in the book by means of

Characters as Readers: The Reading Experience and Identification in Three Popular Novels of the 21st Century