Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
Edward R. Murrow
Differences in type of narrative structure may lead to differences in the way a story is perceived by a
reader. Where the use of an omniscient narrator may make the reader feel in control of the narrative
situation, a first-person point of view may make the reader identify with that particular character. Yet,
the type of narrator can disguise another important aspect of how a narrative is written; namely the
focus of character, or focalisation. A narrator can be so authoritative that the reader may forget that
events in the discourse do not necessarily have to be perceived by that narrator. In other words, the
focalisation can for example be with one of the characters, or several of them. The objectivity of the
narrator is then likely to overshadow the more subjective experiences of the character the focus lies
with. Consequently, a prejudiced character is likely to get away with not being objective because the
reader will not question the authority of the narrator. Thus in a case where the focus of character lies
with someone who has a background in a Diaspora culture, this background may highly influence the
focalisation as that particular character is likely to have been forced to leave their (traditional and
ethnic) homeland and thus be subjected to a culture that is not their own. Compared to novels which
characters do not have this origin in a Diaspora culture, it is interesting to see whether this seemingly
natural subjectivity towards the new culture really influences the focalisation in a novel which
between Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay, which clearly has this background and Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights, which has, apart from Heathcliff’s uncertain origin, no connections to a Diaspora,
or Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which protagonist is also subjected to a new and unfamiliar
culture?
culture on the focalisation, it is important to establish the fact that there is a tendency in the novel for
the narrator’s comments on what other people think of Hugo to be quite similar to Hugo’s own
feelings of inferiority. Because of the shift between the focus of narration and the focus of character
the reader is easily led to believe that Hugo is indeed almost rejected by the native Indian people,
because the focalisation never shifts to one of these natives. Consequently, the narrator’s refusal to tell
the reader about positive associations that people have with Hugo makes the reader feel that Hugo is
not projecting his own prejudices on other people and that it is not unreasonable of him to keep
thinking that he is always seen as ‘the foreigner’. A number of passages quite early on in the novel are
useful to exemplify this tendency. ‘The woman, washing, automatically edged her sari over her face
with a twitch of her wet hand as she did in the presence of any male; actually she hardly thought of
Baumgartner, a lump in grey pants, as one: the gesture was a conditioned one, now instinctive.’ (7) ‘…
the watchman on his stool shifted his legs to let Baumgartner pass, smiling faintly out of politeness but
with a twist of distaste at the corner of his mouth.’ […] ‘[Hugo] went down the steps into the street
with his bag, uncertain as ever of which language to employ. After fifty years, still uncertain.
Baumgartner, du Dummkopf.’ Because, in both cases, the narrator describes a negative association
with Hugo, Baumgartner’s insecurity, which is prominent in the third passage, is confirmed and
justified. The focalisation is thus not of any apparent importance, because the narrative structure
always confirms the focus of character that is subjected to feelings that derive from the characters
had been added to the description of the watchman (i.e. the disinterested watchman on his stool…),
the reader would have been more likely to dismiss Hugo’s feelings of insecurity as being overly
sensitive or inflicted by his own insecurity rather than by his feeling inferior to other people in this
culture that is not his own. It is Hugo’s background and feeling of exile that makes him feel as
insecure as he does, but it is the way the narrative structure imbeds this background in the focalisation
background in a Diaspora culture is the factor that makes the focalisation significant. In order to
clarify this, it is relevant to compare Baumgartner’s Bombay to Robinson Crusoe, as the focus of
character in the latter novel lies with the person who is also the narrator of the story, namely Robinson
himself. ‘However, I saw the poor fellow was most terribly scared; for nothing ran in his head but that
they had come to look for him; and would cut him in pieces and eat him..’ (226) Because Robinson
Crusoe is the narrator, the focalisation cannot shift to Friday and what he is actually feeling, as
Robinson can never know what other people think. He is not an omniscient narrator. Because
Robinson is in the first place a reliable and objective narrator, it is easy to forget that this lack of shift
in focus of character strengthens Robinson’s own feelings and fears towards the ‘savages’. ‘…and
especially while my mind was thus filled with thoughts of revenge, and of a bloody putting twenty or
thirty of them to the sword, as I may call it, the horror I had at the place and at the signals of the
barbarous wretches devouring one another abated my malice.’ Creating a situation where the
focalisation should have shifted to Friday in order to get an objective idea of what that man is thinking
and feeling, but not doing so because there is no omniscient narrator, backs Robinson’s own point of
view even while it is in fact an unreliable observation. It is hereby important to realise that also
Robinson Crusoe is a work of fiction and not a narrative based on a real person’s experiences. The
author thus chose to create a narrator who was also the protagonist of the story. An omniscient
narrator, as in the case of Baumgartner’s Bombay, would have decreased the intensity of Robinson’s
feeling of exile. Thus in order to retain the feeling of exile in a novel that is based on a character’s
shipwreck, it is necessary to keep the focus of character with the person who is exposed to that
different culture. In that way, the focalisation reflects the (Diaspora) background of the character, and
therefore the Diaspora background and its reflection in the focalisation are more important than the
ability of a narrator to influence the reader’s perception of the novel, of which I gave the example of
the watchman. To stay with the previous example about the watchman in Baumgartner’s Bombay, the
suggestiveness of the narrator in connection with the manners of the watchman are less likely to
influence the reader than if the narrator had chosen to shift the focus of narration to the watchman and
actually describe what that man felt when he saw Hugo. Then, a situation similar to the one where
Another way to find out whether the background of a character, in this case the Jewish
Diaspora background of Hugo Baumgartner, has any influence on the focalisation in the novel is to
compare it to a novel which has no background in a Diaspora culture whatsoever. Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights can be described as a novel in which the characters are hardly subjected to any
cultural differences. This is even true to the extend that the novel could not have existed in its present
form if the island-structure had not been imbedded as it disables the characters from interacting with
any other people besides their neighbours. Their isolation from ‘the world’ is the exact opposite from
Baumgartner’s situation in a multi-cultural society that is not his own. Because the narrative of
Wuthering Heights is told and re-told by two characters who also take part in the action, they are the
subjects of the focus of character in the novel. A couple of passages from the novel can clarify the
focalisation. ‘ “Get it ready, will you?” was the answer, uttered so savagely that I started. The tone in
which the words were said revealed a genuine bad nature. I no longer felt inclined to call Heathcliff a
capital fellow.’ and ‘ “I devined, from this account, that utter lack of sympathy had rendered young
Heathcliff selfish and disagreeable, if he were not so originally; and my interest in him, consequently,
decayed: though still I was moved with a sense of grief at his lot..”’(176) These passages, the first
uttered by Mr Lockwood and the second by Nelly Dean, make clear that it is the subject of the
focalisation that is important rather than the background of the subject of focalisation. It is the
unavoidable subjectivity of the person who the focus of character is with that makes it subjective. Had
Heathcliff or any other character in the novel been the narrator of the story, he would have been the
subject of the focalisation, which would have changed the story entire, presumably. The credibility of
the novel relies on the fact that we have a prejudiced narrator, who inflicts his own views on the story.
The opening chapters of Wuthering Heights are narratives of the narrator’s experiences with the
characters in the rest of the story. Because of this subjectivity, the reader tends to agree with the
narrator’s opinion of Heathcliff in the rest of the novel. Apparently, there is a need in every novel,
based or not on a character’s experiences in a Diaspora culture, for the focus of character to stress the
subjectivity of that person; otherwise, the dramatic tension would get lost and the story would lose its
One path that remains to be explored in order to find an answer to the significance of the
character’s background in a Diaspora culture is Hugo’s own perception of the world around him in
varying cultures. The whole novel is in fact the story of a Diaspora. An accepted description of a
Diaspora is ‘the spreading of people from a national group or culture to other areas’1. That is exactly
1
Longman: 431
what happens to Baumgartner in the novel; he has lived in Germany, he has lived in India, but he has
also been in Venice and he has been imprisoned during the war. Nevertheless, Hugo does not seem to
want to fight this feeling of not being able to find a home. This apparent acceptation of the situations
he finds himself in makes it important that he is the one whose thoughts and feelings the reader gets to
know. The focalisation stresses the fact that there is no real home for Hugo wherever he comes in the
world, because in every situation the focus of character lets the reader know that Hugo is not feeling at
home. ‘Then the agony was over and he could collapse into the dark ditch of his shame, What was the
shame? The sense that he did not belong to the picture-book world of the fir tree, the gifts and the
celebration? But no one had said that. Was it just that he sensed he did not belong to the radiant, the
triumphant of the world?’ Clearly, he does not feel at home in Germany. Neither does he feel at home
in the camp, which is in his word merely an extension of Germany. ‘Anything, but not this silence –
this whining, humming silence that seemed to come from the sky that had no colour, and the dust of
the earth, its particles grating upon each other, torturedly’ and ‘Baumgartner was willing to go along
with all these absurdities in the resigned, half-hearted way taught him by years of helpless submission
to bullying, first in Germany, then in the camp, which was an extension of the former’. The
focalisation thus helps to create the feeling of exile, of not belonging anywhere and Hugo’s
background is completely relevant to explain this; he has been forced to leave the home he never had,
and never found the place that he could call home. Because the reader gets to see the world through
Hugo’s eyes, they can feel the emptiness that he feels and completely understand it, too.
culture. The one aspect of the focalisation that is in any case relevant is the fact that without these
experiences, the feeling of exile could never have been transmitted to the reader. Because the reader
experiences the same things as Hugo does, and in the same way too, the reader can understand Hugo.
It has also become apparent that although the narrator can influence the reader’s perception of the
events that take place, it is in fact the focalisation that creates the dramatic tension because it creates
the feeling of subjectivity that makes the story interesting. This does, however, mean that it is not the
character’s background in a Diaspora culture that makes them subjective. If that had been the case, we
would all be strangers in our own culture because we can never be entirely objective with regard to the
things that happen around us. To conclude, without Baumgartner’s background Baumgartner’s
Bombay would have lost one of its most important themes, the feeling of exile, because it is Hugo’s
Jewish background that justifies his feeling of exile. Yet, it is the way in which the focalisation is
presented rather than the character’s background that keeps the tension.
Sources
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. USA: Heinle & Heinle, 1999.
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. London: Smith, Elder, and Co, 1894.
Bullen, Stephen., ed. Longman: Dictionary of Contemporary English. 5th ed. Harlow: Pearson