Isn't it funny how memory works. I have been wanting to write about The Pendergast novels by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston for some time especially to point out an interesting literary device, only I couldn't remember it. Not the literary device. that was simple. What I couldn't remember was the term....literary device. Rolling through my head was the term affectation which means a pose or act one 'affects' in order to present oneself as something (usually, something you are not as in an affected accent) But I knew I wasn't remembering the correct term. This morning as I walked down to the bus stop. POP into my head jumps the term literary device. Finally remembered the term I have been searching for for over a month. I would like to blame it on the fact that with 3.4 languages rolling through my head I just have to much vocabulary to keep it all straight, but I chalk it up to to much sugar and not enough sleep.
Anyway, on with the show. The literary device in these novels is one of perspective. When authors write novels they have to write in person. First person means the novel is written as though from that person's mind. You know only what that person knows. You can't read anyone's mind. Although sometimes authors will cheat a bit and slip conveniently into 3rd person omniscient in order to give us information they want. Now, we have introduced another person: 3rd person omniscient. From this perspective we the reader are clued in to everything. We know that the villain is secretly planning murder the protagonist and we know that the protagonist is completely clueless. Some authors will utilize a 3rd person format without the all-knowing aspect. This allows the reader to discover the thoughts and motivations of the characters based on their actions without hearing their thoughts. 2nd person novels a
nd writing are less common because it is difficult to convey things from the your perspective.What Child and Preston have done is to my mind quite distinct and like Pendergast himself borrowed from Sherlock Holmes. Now, I don't claim to be a Sherlock Holmes scholar (or any kind of scholar, just an average person with an avocation) but in the few Sherlock Holmes stories I have read, we don't get insight into the mind of Holmes except as he acts and explains himself to Watson. Pendergast is much the same way. Although Child and Preston have no problem revealing the thoughts and motivations of others Pendergast himself is rarely revealed. I noted this distinctly in Still Life with Crows. Through the entire book we 'hear' the thoughts of others but never Pendergast. We can only judge him by his actions, by what he does, and by what he says to other characters, and by their reactions to him. Whether this began as a conscious literary device or grew into one, we find it carrying on through the books. Only on the few rare occasions when Pendergast turns inward himself and meditates is his inner working revealed. I found this to be an powerful method of character development. It works much like real life. We learn about people largely through what we can observe and only rarely is their inner self revealed.
Citation Nods:
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Terms/index.html
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/general/glossary.htm
http://mrbraiman.home.att.net/lit.htm
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