adventures-of-huckleberry-finn

Duality Is Their Reality

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Today is the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, but it was also still autumn for a few hours. So, a two-faced day.

As in real life, some fictional characters also have two faces — offering different personas at different times and in different situations. This can be among the many building blocks involved in making a character complex, nuanced, and three-dimensional.

Perhaps the most literal depiction of a Janus-like character is the star of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The duality in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel happens when Jekyll, a basically good man with some repressed dark tendencies, takes a potion that turns him into the evil Hyde.

But things are usually somewhat more subtle when it comes to characters with binary tendencies.

For instance, the villainous Count Fosco can also be quite charming in Wilkie Collins’ 1860 classic The Woman in White.

Much more recently, we have Percival Everett’s 2024 novel James, which reimagines Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the vantage point of escaped slave Jim — after Twain mostly focused on Huck in his 1884 book. The duality here is that James, in a recognizable self-preservation maneuver, speaks in a different way (intellectually) to his fellow Black people than to white people (with whom he plays dumb). James, which I read last week, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction earlier this year.

Jim’s dual persona reminds me of female characters who are smarter and/or more strategic than they let on. Daisy Buchanan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) would be one example.

Returning to contemporary literature, we have Val McDermid’s crime series about cold-case detective Karen Pirie. She is mostly tough while on the job — both with suspects and with the people (including sexist men) she works with — while Pirie’s more vulnerable side emerges in her personal life.

Then there are the characters who are warrior-like in battle even as they can have more-tender aspects when not fighting. Jamie Fraser of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series certainly has those two elements.

Sometimes, two parts of a personality exist more consecutively than simultaneously — as with young Neville Longbottom of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. He starts off bumbling and insecure, but eventually becomes quite courageous. Perhaps that arc is more maturity than duality.

Any comments about and/or examples of this topic?

Misty the cat says: “It’s the first day of winter. Autumn must still be around here somewhere.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which has a dystopian novel theme as it discusses 19 school-district jobs saved and 84 not saved (evoking George Orwell’s 1984) — is here.

Reimagination Actualization

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Four years ago, I blogged about fiction that uses previous fiction as a jumping-off point — and perhaps reimagines well-known characters. This post is sort of a sequel to that post, taking a somewhat different angle and including several novels I’ve read since 2021.

In general, I’m not a huge fan of fiction that’s heavily inspired by a famous work; I’d rather writers be more original than that. Still, there have been some excellent novels that offer insights into the previous work and might be great in their own right.

My latest encounter with this reimagining phenomenon was Queen Macbeth, Val McDermid’s 2024 novella that takes a fascinating approach to characters in Shakespeare’s iconic Macbeth play. The book is excellent, giving Lady Macbeth a more positive (and more historically accurate) persona as a compelling plot unfolds in two different timelines.

McDermid’s book reminded me a bit of Margaret Atwood’s 2005 novella The Penelopiad (mentioned in my 2021 post) that gives Penelope a bigger and more feminist role than she had in Homer’s ancient Odyssey poem.

There’s also Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s 2022 tour de force that gives Charles Dickens’ 1850 classic David Copperfield a modern spin in America’s Appalachian region during the opioid epidemic.

Kristin Hannah’s gripping 2021 novel The Four Winds was obviously inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939), but it’s still plenty original and differs in featuring a female protagonist. (The title character in Demon Copperhead is male.)

Zadie Smith has described the structure/focus of her novel On Beauty (2005) as an homage to E.M. Forster’s Howards End (1910).

In her also-published-in-2005 novel March, Geraldine Brooks takes the father from Louisa May Alcott’s 1868-released Little Women and gives him his own story.

I haven’t read it yet, but Percival Everett’s acclaimed James (2024) reimagines Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) from the perspective of the escaped slave Jim.

In my 2021 post, I mentioned the 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea, in which Jean Rhys gives three-dimensionality to the “madwoman in the attic” of Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre; Rhys’ creation is in effect a prequel to Bronte’s 1847 book. I also discussed the novel (by Gregory Maguire) and the play Wicked, which sympathetically portray the Wicked Witch from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz novel (1900) and The Wizard of Oz movie (1939).

Mentioned as well in that post were Isabel Allende’s 2005 novel Zorro, Jasper Fforde’s 2001 novel The Eyre Affair, and Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 Jane Austen parody Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — the last of which I haven’t felt the “Persuasion” to read.

Comments about, and examples of, this theme?

Misty the cat says: “My right turn has nothing to do with politics.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a badly maintained lower-income apartment building, a change in venue for a senior center, and more — is here.