Escapism

[grace86]

I was reading the "Why do you Read Literature?" thread, and realized a lot of people read out of escaping their current reality or situation..or what have you. My literature teacher brought up a conversation and she was wondering how many of us make ourselves characters in the books we read.

So my question for all you is: Are you an observer while reading, or are you always making yourself one of the characters in the story?

Are there any books you have read that because you have done this that stick with you longer...like you keep thinking about them once they are way past being finished?

Just curious because we were talking about Don Quixote when this discussion came up.

[Veva]

Yes of course....
I have been thinking about this for a long time as I was reading The Sound And The Fury for the first time, I felt myself slowly identifying with Quentin. Since then I have read the book for at least 7 times and I am still getting myself back to the stream of his thoughts, just to see how similar we are.
I observ his ideas so attentively that I became to feel what he does.

[PeterL]

So my question for all you is: Are you an observer while reading, or are you always making yourself one of the characters in the story?

Are there any books you have read that because you have done this that stick with you longer...like you keep thinking about them once they are way past being finished?


I rarely put myself into the placee of a character, unless it is something that I wrote. I prefer to observe the action and how the writer carried out the job of writing.

[Shadowsarin]

Yes, almost always. In fact a lot of my characters are based on myself and people I know, sometimes I even go so far as to use their names. I just find the fictional world so much more loving than the real one!

[Bookworm Cris]

I read as an observer; but it doesn´t prevent me from getting emotionaly involved with the story and the characters.
Even the books that touched me most, when I finished them I kept this feeling with me for a couple of days... but it´s like the characters were good friends that I knew well. I don´t put myself in the "skin" of a character; maybe if they were my characters the feeling would have been different, I don´t know.

[subterranean]

I put myself as the character and wish that I was the character only when I read travel books, because it is my passion to travel around the globe someday. :)

In most fiction, I ussualy put myself as an observer.

[Nightmare9870]

I put myself in as a character. It can make things more interesting and allows me to keep reading even if the book is boring.

[kathycf]

I may identify with certain experiences that a character has, but I can't put myself in as the actual character. I like to observe how the story unfolds.

[Neo_Sephiroth]

I can identify with the character's emotions and sometimes his situations, but I don't necessarily put myself in the story itself.

Although, I can see how much more intense it would be to put oneself in the novel as you continue to read, as we all know how much excitement a fictional character can have.

[Taliesin]

We tend to make ourselves into a character, usually the protagonist.

That's why we couldn't get farther than 50 pages in Stendhals "The Red and the Black". The protagonist was just too hipocritical a person for us to be him.

[Poetess]

Every person had been put as one of the characters in a story he/she reads, intentionally and at least for seconds.

I do focus on observing the moves of characters in stories..

[omegaxx]

Yes of course....
I have been thinking about this for a long time as I was reading The Sound And The Fury for the first time, I felt myself slowly identifying with Quentin. Since then I have read the book for at least 7 times and I am still getting myself back to the stream of his thoughts, just to see how similar we are.
I observ his ideas so attentively that I became to feel what he does.

I'd have to say that it's because it's Faulkner. I identified myself with Benjy, Quentin AND Jason in that book. 'Twas a wonder that I didn't end up with multiple personality disorder:D I think it's because Faulkner taps into our deepest feeling--that of loss--and all the characters in "The Sound and the Fury" are facets of that feeling, each with his/her own language for articulating and experiencing and re-experiencing that universal loss.

I find that I don't tend to identify while I'm reading. I tend to observe the language, the characterization and the plot. However, I often find myself borrowing the language of a particular book or character, AFTER I'm done, to make sense of what's going on in my life. I guess in that sense I'm a sort of anti-reader's response reader: I experience the book FIRST, and then I re-live it in life.

[grace86]

I find that I don't tend to identify while I'm reading. I tend to observe the language, the characterization and the plot. However, I often find myself borrowing the language of a particular book or character, AFTER I'm done, to make sense of what's going on in my life. I guess in that sense I'm a sort of anti-reader's response reader: I experience the book FIRST, and then I re-live it in life.

That's interesting. So you just completely observe and then you sort of re-live what? You use the language of the characters? Cool. I had a friend who did that. If the book had some sort of accent, he would use it every once in a while just for kicks.