The main character is always right

In his short story The Black Cat, Edgar Allan Poe presents us with something that seems to be one of the key stones of his writing: The use of anonymous main characters. After considering this, we might be wondering: Why does he do it? Is there any purpose behind it?

First of all, it is important to remember that most of Poe’s main characters –especially in his horror stories—are murderers, rapists and other type of outlaws that could be easily deemed as socially unacceptable people; however, we do not use to judge them like that so easily, let me ask you: Why do you think is that? From my opinion, it has to do with two factors: 1. The fact that we are told the story from exactly THAT character’s perspective, which obviously make it really easy to sympathize with that character’s motivations, situation and problems; and 2. The fact that we are told the story from the point of view of a NAMELESS character gives room to thoughts like: what if any of us were in the situation of that character? Or even further, what if I was in that character’s situation?

The impact of these possibilities also deeply resonates in Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. Why can we sympathise so easily with V’s actions despite we could –easily—call them just “terrorism” if we heard of them in “real life”? I believe it has to do with exactly the same means used by Poe to somehow redeem his characters as: 1. We are aware of V’s motivations, we are able to understand why he does what he does, and 2. By not giving us V’s true identity, the possibility of any of us being V is left open.

Although the last possibility is made forcefully explicit in the movie, I believe it does not challenge Moore’s original intention of showing us that anyone could actually have been V. These ideas clearly resonates with Poe’s in the sense that –by being able to identify with the characters, even up to the point of sharing their identities—we become able to sympathize with them at a much higher level and, for that reason, we also become able to understand, justify, and even support their actions.

Have you ever considered how much our opinion of a murder or a terrorist act could change if we could look at it from the “terrorist” eyes? Have you ever thought on how important it is to consider which side we are looking act before judging someone else’s action? I believe the title of this entry pretty much summarises it: The main character –the one whose side is closer to us—will always be the one on the right, as it is the perspective that provides us with the most information. 

Reference

Edgar Allan Poe, and Cheloniidae Press. The black cat. United Holdings Group, 1984.