[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 56 KB, 482x664, Faramir.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12229640 No.12229640 [Reply] [Original]

Are there any books that have the POV of a sidekick or deuteragonist? And I don't just mean in a "oh well they end up being the protag anyway", I mean that they're literally a side character to the central conflict of the story. The big battle, the final confrontation, the big reveal, etc. all happen "off-screen" so to speak, and they only find out the ultimate conclusion to the plot after its already happened.

Is this a thing?

>> No.12229647

This is kinda what happens in LOTR, if you think about it.

>> No.12229648

Moby Dick

>> No.12229680

>>12229640
The Great Gatsby

>> No.12229682

That sounds mostly pointless.

>> No.12229747

black company kinda

>> No.12229769

The wheel of time is basically all about jumping between the doings of a bunch of different notables doing different stuff at the same time that occasionally intersects or sets up other stuff other people are doing later. (To the point that it became somewhat bogged down even.)

>> No.12229777

>>12229640
This is an odd question because this kind of thin happens a lot where the sidekick ends up being the narrator. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest is like this.

But is that the same as it being about the narrator necessarily and is an interesting jumping off point to wonder about what makes a protagonist and whats the difference between and protagonist and "a person that the story is about." I think a big part of the deal with a protagonist is that we are drawn to and autonomously identify them as heroes and see the story as being about them. Kids do this almost perfectly all the time with movies and nobody has to tell them who the hero is or socialize that idea into them which I find totally mind blowing. Like if you wrote a book from the perspective of a sidekick in a classic narrative, how hard would you have to try to move the spotlight off of the person who is most on a "hero's journey" before people would actually stop seeing the story as being about the actual hero? let me know what u think about this weird quandary

>> No.12229795

>>12229769


The universe is perfectly capable of producing an indefinite plenitude of different beings and powers getting up to stuff interacting and conflicting and cohering into greater super-powers and all sorts of other highly complex guffty-gup and what not; your typical writer is a much lesser divinity than the author of the universe, however.