Rebels in Literature

This talk introduces the idea of the literary rebel. How do we decide who to root for in a literary text? Stories do not exist only in fiction, yet in fiction we are often on the side of the rebel in ways we may not be in everyday life.  The fact that we identify so much with literary rebels is not because all novelists are radicals, nor is it because all readers are. We, as readers, can love characters a novel that we would give a wide berth to in real life. Classic novels give us what real life cannot: access to other people’s heads. Moreover, in a novel characters are presented in finely drawn social contexts that make sense of their actions. The literary rebel is often presented to us as messy, as flawed, as compelled to action by the injustice that surrounds them. Why do we want to be their friend, or their lover, or their saviour? What is it about literature that enables it to create such a strong relationship between its rebelling protagonists and us?