Narcissus
By Dave King | April 16, 2024 |
Narcissus, staring at his reflection, from a 14th century manuscript.
Kepler’s Fourth Law of Planetary Motion: The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know.
To write well, you need to get into other people’s heads – to understand that your way of seeing the world isn’t the only way there is. This empathy can become such a habit that you can forget that some people just can’t do it. Either these narcissists imagine that everyone who thinks differently from them is plain wrong, or they don’t even realize there are differences.
Narcissists, though, can make for good fiction. For one thing, they’re a rich source of comic relief. Some of the best comic characters – Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Collins, for instance, or P. G. Wodehouse’s Spode — are ridiculous because they are so lost in themselves, so locked into their own understanding of the world, that they can’t hear or don’t care how they sound to everyone else.
Ruth came across a good example of this in her Ngaio Marsh reading, in this case, Death at the Bar. Colonel Brammington is the chief constable who called Alleyn in on a poisoning case. He’s also a member of the gentry – a class that seems ripe pickings for this kind of humor. Fox, Alleyn’s sergeant, has just narrowly escaped becoming another poisoning victim:
“By heaven!” interrupted Colonel Brammington. “This pestilent poisoner o’er-tops it, does it not? The attempt, I imagine, was upon you both. Harper has told me the whole story. When will you make an arrest, Alleyn? May we send this fellow up the ladder to bed, and that no later than the Quarter Sessions? Let him wag upon a wooden nag. A pox on him! I trust you are recovered, Fox? Sherry, wasn’t it? Amontillado, I understand. Double sacrilege, by the Lord!”
Brammington, God bless him, is blissfully unaware he sounds like an nineteenth-century fop or that most people would not consider the use of good sherry for a poisoning as criminal as the poisoning itself.
Narcissists also give you room to grow your characters. In fact, one of the milestones of growth for children (well, most children) is the moment they realize other people are as real as they are. Having a character go through that realization in the course of your story can give you a satisfying ending. Of course, to pull off this kind of growth, your narcissist needs to be sympathetic – as opposed to the Spodes of the world. Which means you need to enter the head of someone who doesn’t know how to enter other people’s heads.
Some years ago, I worked on The Salamander Club, the story of a group of strangers who come together almost accidentally and become friends. (The book’s authors, Mats and Karin Eriksson have given me permission to use them as an example.) As the characters’ stories and relationships develop, they also explore the human condition, including people who are stuck in that early, self-involved state of development – what the Salamanders called “The Narcissus Parasite.”
We meet one of the core characters, RJ, as he suddenly breaks up with a woman he’s been with for some time. Though on his way out of her life, he stops in her kitchen to make himself a sandwich. But we see the scene from his point of view, so we see him leaving a boring relationship that isn’t going anywhere, and the woman’s anger is more a matter of her love of drama. And he made the sandwich because he was hungry, dammit. We also see RJ’s lifelong friendship with another of the core characters, Nilson. Though Nilson sometimes finds RJ annoying, RJ does have wit and exuberance for life, and they enjoy their time together.
As the book progresses, all of the characters grow in various ways – changes of career, romance, the death of a beloved spouse. RJ, after some struggles, forms a lasting relationship with another core character, Ingrid. But readers don’t truly realize just where RJ had been until the end of the book, when another character asks him what it felt like to be the Narcissus Parasite. And as RJ describes the inward-turning isolation, readers recognize him from those earlier scenes. His growth is satisfying because of how far he’s come. And that final, satisfying twist wouldn’t have been possible if RJ, despite being a narcissist, hadn’t been a plausible, likable character from the beginning.
Finally, having someone locked into their own way of seeing the world can be a powerful source of dramatic tension.
I’m currently working on a thriller (again, used with the client’s permission) in which a brilliant woman starts receiving vague, subtle, but subtly escalating threats – cryptic letters, silent phone calls. Because of serious trauma in her past, she lives an almost hermetic life – hardly ever leaving her office at work, never inviting anyone into her home, doing everything possible to cocoon herself in security and order.
But despite being brilliant, she cannot see or even imagine how other people feel, especially the ones who are trying to help her. As a result, she constantly pushes away the only people who may stand between her and the ominous threats, assuming any attempts to help are attacks. For instance, when a rather sweet, elderly beat cop who is aware of the letters checks up on her, she sees his pounding on her door as trying to break it down, hears his calling her name as bestial bellowing. The question that drives her story is whether she can break through her own locked-in view of the world enough to see the true motives of the people on her side before it’s too late.
Narcissists, of course, don’t realize they’re narcissists. That lack of self-awareness can generate humor, or compassion, or even terror. But ironically, this inability to embrace anyone else can allow you to create characters readers can love.
So, are any of your characters narcissists? Would your novel improve if they grew out of it? Have you got any narcissistic tendencies? And would outgrowing them make you a better writer?
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
[coffee]
Narcissists don’t grow out of it. They are mentally ill. They torture those around them because they must be in control. It is only their opinion that matters. There is no humor in a relationship with a narcissist. I’m glad that you haven’t had a real relationship with one. You could not have written this article had you.
I won’t get into details, but I was raised by a narcissist and am familiar with the damage they can leave behind. And, yes, the humor is usually found at a distance — I suspect Brammington’s wife a children didn’t have an easy time of it.
But I do think they’re capable of change, though it does take work. RJ doesn’t exactly grow out of it. Over the course of the book, he demonstrates a lot of courage and dedication to outgrow his own narcissistic tendencies.
Of course, if you’re involved with a narcissist, you need to be honest about who they are and whether or not they can change. But that change isn’t impossible.
Thanks for another engaging post, Dave. It’s hard to think of a topic more topical than narcissism, and we all know why. As for Mr. Collins, he may be my favorite product of Austen’s genius. A man so hopelessly proud of himself that he cannot (not will not, cannot) grasp someone refusing his proposal of marriage, over and over–perfect.
Several characters in my mystery series fill the bill as narcissists, and they’re all criminals. This makes sense: thinking you’re smart enough to get away with serious crimes can be thought of either in terms of stupidity, or narcissism.
But I will use your post to say something heretical regarding empathy. With the possible exception of “journey” (the writer’s journey), no word is more relied on at Writer Unboxed. But hold on: isn’t it vain and narcissistic to say or think that you actually feel someone else’s pain or joy? Sympathize with another’s pain, joy, rage, whatever–fine. But actually believe you know and experience it? I don’t think so. What the writer must do is succeed in convincing readers that she has created true-to-life characters, characters that persuade.
Or is this a vain quibble? Maybe so.
There is a distinction between sympathy and empathy, but it’s got more to do with shared experience. I can certainly sympathize with someone who has, say, lost a child. But I can’t really understand what they are feeling — empathize — because I’ve never had the experience myself. Yet, I think both are legitimate human interactions.
Can we absolutely know how someone else is feeling in all detail? Well, no. But I think there is enough commonality to the human experience that, if our own experiences are close enough, we can know with pretty good accuracy.
Yes I agree with you Dave, empathy is about acknowledging another’s feeling, letting them see you too have felt a similar emotion, even if from a different experience, and that simply you accept that person and their pain.
I knew a narcissist very closely over decades, and they would often (usually) say they really understood my pain in a difficult circumstance, because something like that had happened to them. They would then tell me the story, at length, and finish up with, “So you see, I really do understand.” But I never got to tell my story. The subject was over once they had told theirs (and it might have happened fifty years ago.) Catharsis for them, not for me.
This is already a great discussion. I hear what E.B. Davis is saying, having had business with two card-carrying Narcissists in my life. They tend not to change much underneath, but they do trot out new behaviors if old ones aren’t working. Upping their game, so to speak, which forces the people around them to change. They make wonderful bad guys for detectives and victims and family members to bang up against or run away from. And I kind of agree with Barry about the E word, which has become as prevalent in today’s zeitgeist as the word Narcissist. But writers who a have that gift, and I’d argue that most do, use it to create compelling stories that mirror human behavior to readers. Maybe we can just call it Mojo.
Mojo works much better for me, Susan.
Mojo works for me, as well.
I named my first cat Mojay because he had white socks (in Marathi).
While reading this, I couldn’t stop thinking of, you guessed it, cats!
I can see how you might feel that way, but I’ve always seen cats as more Asperger’s Syndrome than Narcissism. I have gotten what I think is genuine love from cats.
Chickens, now . . . The basic social dynamic of a flock is, if there are enough of you, you individually have a greater chance of not being prey. When we had to spend a few days in a hospital a few years ago, we asked a neighbor to take care of our chickens. We understand they never missed us. They just figured the foxes had eaten us first, and they were okay with that.
Cats are my favorite people, didn’t mean to suggest otherwise! It could be Asperger’s, but I understand that term is no longer in use.
My grandfather raised chickens. And just like you said.
It’s the perfect time for this article since the Narcissus Daffodils are in bloom. I’ve read that people are narcissistic to varying degrees and that there are different types of narcissists, that is something to consider when discussing narcissists. And, most people can change, even narcissists, especially when it is forced upon them. There’s slow growth (change) made over years, and then there’s growth that occurs due to a huge disturbance.
Thanks. I had suspected that narcissism was a spectrum rather than a binary choice. But I hadn’t done the research.
Amazing discussion. As always. I have never had a dog, though I love my Grand-Dog and she loves me. My only pet was a car Chloe, but then our second child was allergic. Losing Chloe created a family drama. One daughter was filled with grief. The other could now breathe. Sometimes it isn’t ego…it is life, confusing and requiring hard decisions.
We’ve had cats, dogs, and chickens over the years, and while they’ve all loved us in different ways, we’ve love them all the same, even the chickens. That’s why we don’t keep chickens any more. They were supposed to be stupid enough that they wouldn’t become pets. They became pets.
I was reflecting, on reading all these fascinating and diverse thoughts, on just how easy it is to think of people in labels, and miss seeing the individual. I guess if an individual does things that hurt and harm, it’s difficult to empathise. But I believe empathy is one of the most powerful emotions we have, a fundamental part of our intelligence and holds us together as humans.
Part of the writer’s art — and, arguably, reason for existence — is to humanize people very different from us in order to create that kind of empathy. As I say, the moment in the Erikson’s book when you realize JR was a narcissist is powerful because you’ve been sympathizing with him, at least in part, before then.
Dave, wonderful reflection on narcissists. Thank you. Can they change? Can they repent? I don’t know. From my observation of a couple of these kinds of men, I’d say no. And I agree, they make for great villains, though I’ve not written one, because I don’t think I could. Nor do I want to. It’d be so unpleasant to be inside the head of one.
One book haunts me. Hatter’s Castle by AJ Cronin. It was his first novel and I read his autobiography, My Adventures in Two Words, when I was 12 and wanted to read all he’d written. My mother allowed it, except for Hatter’s Castle. I read it long after she died and I understood why. It is a story of a narcissist who destroys his family.
I hadn’t really delved into the possibilities narcissists present as villains. But the fact that you’re still haunted by Cronin’s villain shows that power.
Interesting post, thank you. I’ve never thought of narcissism as a spectrum disorder, but I suppose it is. DSM lists nine characteristic behaviors, but I suppose a person could exhibit fewer and still qualify. The narcissists I have written are villains, incapable of doing anything that does not support or enhance their inflated and fragile self-image. We’ve certainly had some brilliant examples to work from in public life recently. The big difference I see between extreme narcissism and socio-/psychopathy is that the narcissist justifies his (they tend to be men) actions, but the socio-/psychopath doesn’t have to bother.
It is absolutely true that it’s much easier to be a villain of other people aren’t completely real to you. And you’re right, some of the great villains, in both history and fiction, have tried to bend the world to their will for their own, self-centered purposes. Modern history aside — I’m sure the listmoms don’t want us getting into it — I’ve heard it said that Kaiser Wilhelm got into a world war because he was spanked for being afraid to ride a horse when he was a child.