posted
Sorry if a thread has already been had over this, but I came across the OSC tv interview on this site just now, and was interested in the awkward moment, when the interviewer asserted that OSC had given his own views on Islam in "Shadow of the Giant"
I disagree with his treatment of the question because what he said was very misleading, and the interviewer IMO noticed this right away and had an awkward moment and decided not to rock the boat.
I don't want to tell you what OSC's views are, and then refute my own interpretation of them, so watch the interview to get the gist of it, otherwise it is colored by my interpretation.
I think this is impossible. I think that when you write a characer, and you follow the logic which that character would use to come to his or her own conclusions, you must be following your OWN mental process, and thus, although the opinions or insights generated are not your official sponsored declared opionions, you understand the arguments and see the logic in them because you created them.
OSC is very very slick in the interview, Talking about how his characters come to their own conclusions. This really really sounds like he is saying: no the characters opinions are not mirrors of my own, but since the characters are rational, and I am rational, we share the opinions any rational person would have? Interesting sidestep if that is what this is. Or maybe OSC really thinks there is a significant distinction here?
I see the logic of his argument, that writers aught to be able to generate characters that don't share their opinions, but it is my personal view that a character is always either an echo or a REACTION to your view, meaning your character either describes what you feel, or what you specifically disagree with, but a character can never independently generate his or her own views, since he or she is not real.
Am I being too harsh? Am I missing the bigger picture? I don't know.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I think this is impossible. I think that when you write a characer, and you follow the logic which that character would use to come to his or her own conclusions, you must be following your OWN mental process, and thus, although the opinions or insights generated are not your official sponsored declared opionions, you understand the arguments and see the logic in them because you created them.
I disagree with your reasoning here. While I agree that the views of authors are always present in some extent, that hardly means that the opinions of characters are going to be identical to the author.
Even in the case of a rational and intelligent character, it is easy to think of reasons why their beliefs would be different than the author's. The past experiences of the character, for example, would play a large role in the decision making process of that character. It is not unreasonable for an author to decide, given a character's history, that they would come to different conclusions about an issue.
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posted
OSC is not Ayn Rand. But even Ayn Rand wrote characters that she disagreed with, so her mouthpiece characters would have greater opportunity to illustrate her opinions.
Anyway, there's just so much wrong with your syllogism about rational characters that it makes me tired to think about refuting it. You are rational. Apparently I am not. But it's something along the lines of rationality being a tool, and not a discrete state.
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quote:Originally posted by Will B: I certainly write about characters I disagree with.
That's my point, I wonder if it is possible to write characters you not only disagree with but DO NOT UNDERSTAND AT ALL. So I have not made my own idea clear, what I meant to say was that I think we either write our own opinions in the voices of characters, write opinions we have considered but rejected on logical or moral grounds, or write opinions which we understand in as far as we have specifically rejected them as false. I wonder if a writer has the ability to generate a character with motivations that the WRITER does not comprehend, basically a character that has the ability to surprise even the writer.
The first comment on my own first post i will ignore because the response was to argument that I did not make, remember that I am not saying that a writer must endorse or agree with the opinions of his characters, but I do beleive that the writer must in many ways identify with those views, either by having heard them and understood them to be wrong, generated them and discarded them, or specifically creating a view contrary to the writers own beleifs.
Is there any other way of generating a dynamic character? What do people think of that?
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posted
Wait, I believe that this thread was developed to determine Mr. Card's views on the Islamic religion, as compared to some of his characters, not whether his characters hold his views. I would prefer a more objective answer to this question, but if it was not developed for this purpose I apologize. If that is the case, would you be willing to form an alternate thread concerning that topic?
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quote:Originally posted by RunningBear: Wait, I believe that this thread was developed to determine Mr. Card's views on the Islamic religion, as compared to some of his characters, not whether his characters hold his views. I would prefer a more objective answer to this question, but if it was not developed for this purpose I apologize. If that is the case, would you be willing to form an alternate thread concerning that topic?
The thread name I chose was not quite appopriate sorry
You mistook me or I misled you. I don't care about OSC's religious views, my concerns are with his views of the seperation between character and author. This is in relation to Islam, and the thread title I wrote was misleading so I apologize for that. The question posed remains in my last post.
AS to forming a thread on OSC's views, I won't presume to do that because it would be alot of useless conjecture, and feelings might get needlessly hurt, you can do it if you want but I can't recommend it to you or do it myself
last edit: please everyone ignore my thread title and please do pay attention to my actual question here, which is not about OSC's SPECIFIC views, except those on writing.
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posted
Um, perhaps you're not aware that you can change your thread title? Simply open your first post, click on the edit link (the sheet of paper with pencil icon) and edit away, then click on edit.
Just make sure you don't click on the "delete thread" box unless you really do want to delete the thread. Deleting the first post in a thread deletes the entire thread, whereas deleting subsequent posts only deletes that one post.
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