On Characters that Haunt the Narrative
By Andrea Magdana | Book Talk
My TikTok For You Page has been an abundance of character edits that “haunt the narrative”. Think the Hunger Games’ Lucy Gray Baird; her existence redefines much of what readers know of established characters' relationships and recurring elements. Although she never appears in the original trilogy and only in fragments in the prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping, Lucy Gray leaves a lasting impression on readers as a mysterious “ghost” trailing the story...
@limmadi8 The Hunger Games is coming back and it’s time for my girl Lucy Gray to haunt the narrative!!!! #thehungergames #sunriseonthereaping #sotr #theballadofsongbirdsandsnakes #booktok ♬ original sound - solo.mp3
A character that “haunts the narrative” is one that, despite their death or absence, impacts the story from beyond the words on the page. And despite it appearing to be a relatively new internet phrase — not appearing in Google search trends until mid to late 2022, it’s not a new concept. It’s similar to what is described by TVTropes.org as “The Ghost,” a post-humorous character dead from the start or killed early in the story, and is developed mostly through flashbacks.
A we
ll-known example appears in the Gothic novel Rebecca, by Daphne De Maurier in 1938. The film adapted by Alfred Hitchcock does a particularly great job with depicting the deceased title character, panning over rooms and objects Rebecca existed in. The living characters narrate her old habits or events that predate the novel.
There’s something intriguing about these sorts of characters. Often tragic figures, readers make their own assumptions about their motivations, or what-ifs, or even their true nature. You know them, but you don’t, and you want to learn more, but you can’t. It’s a “straining for something just out of reach” situation. Readers necessarily learn about these characters from a limited perspective since removing the haze would make them too familiar. The haze, however, forces one to fill in the gaps themselves.
“Ghosts” are really the best way to describe them — their absence defines their role. I’m not the first to say it’s like there is a person-shaped hole where they should be in these sorts of stories. In fact, the best depiction of a character that haunts the narrative is the one where it feels as though the character hovers over your shoulder, or stares over the pages of a book and directly at you.
What's interesting about characters that haunt the narrative is that they are dangled over you. Regardless of their disappearance, death, or intentional relocation, the characters left behind continue to feel the aftereffects of whatever became of The Ghost. As many of the edits and their chosen songs describe them as, they’ve left marks etched on the surface of the story, deep enough to linger on the reader's mind after the end, but despite it all, you’ve never met them. Not really.
Laura Palmer from TV show Twin Peaks | A classic example of a character that haunts the narrative, although in a different medium.
