Narrative perspective and the interpretation of characters' motives

Abstract

This article addresses the question of the effects of narrative perspective on readers. A review of the (mainly social science) literature suggests a number of factors that may affect readers' interpretation of character behaviour while reading stories. An experiment is set up to check whether the manipulation of narrative perspective indeed results in such effects. Although the results are not always unambiguous, in the majority of cases it was found that readers' sympathy for a character in the story (as driven by the internal focalizations of that character) indeed shape their interpretations of characters' actions. For instance, 'legitimate' motives are preferred over 'egoistic' ones for characters the reader is in sympathy with. When a sympathetic character's actions are nevertheless perceived as 'egoistic', they are usually explained by appealing to situational factors, while the 'egoistic' acts of unsympathetic characters are viewed as resulting from dispositional factors. The article closes with a consideration of the effects of perspective, sympathy allocation and motive attribution in the reading act.