'Sympathetic characters'

The narrator in Gatsby is trying to come across as a pretty straight guy, but it's clear he's a bit of a shit to people, and his narrative is contradictory and self-serving. So, though he's unlikeable, in a quietly fucked-up way he's pretty interesting.

Why do you have to like a character to relate to them, or even sympathise with them? The narrator of Disgrace is a hugely flawed man, but I'd hardly call him the single most dislikeable character I've ever seen...

I can't think of any book that I have not enjoyed because I didn't relate to the characters or because they were not "nice". What with a combo of empathy and suspension of disbelief I enjoy just about all the books I read.

The only book I can think of that I've read about a rapist was "The Green Light" by Ray Mooney, and it was a fantastic book. The only book I can think of at the moment that I didn't enjoy was about an archaeologist called "The Source". I was pretty young at the time though, perhaps now I'd be more capable of empathising with an archaeologist and therefore would enjoy it. Crikey it was boring the first time around.

my favourite actor in the world is swoony Ralph Fiennes. He always plays somewhat rubbish flawed characters. RoXoR.

Usually I don't care whether a character is sympathetic except in cases like this, because it's really irritating.

Baudelaire claimed Milton was subconsciously on Satan's side. I'm sure people have written dissertations on the concept of Paradise Lost as a parable of Milton's circumstances after the fall of Cromwell and the restoration of the monarchy.

Part of the problem is that people may be confusing "sympathetic" with "attention-grabbing." In some of the examples above, the wicked (or otherwise flawed) characters capture the audience's imagination a lot more readily. As for characters developed by the author with the intention of invoking sympathy in the audience, has everyone here heard of Oscar Wilde's comment on the death of Dickens' Little Nell?

I think this switch is basic to Romanticism and its (better) village-idiot cousin the Gothic. cf also Hannibal Lecter (org.name Hyppolite Lecteur = "hypocrite lecteur" = YOU the WICKED READER!! do you SEE!!)

(haha guess who just finished first draft of xenakis piece which = k-suXoR as stands)

oh and an SA reader's perspective on 'Disgrace': as terrible as the 'discombobulation' that the characters in the book undergo, I think there *is* a thread of optimism. In a society that's sometimes as unsympathetic as Lurie himself (today the newspaper was requested, and refused, to print a picture of the horribly mutilated body of a raped 6yr old girl, her "colon bulg[ing] out between her thing legs", as an anti-rape statement), confusion and sporadic violence are still infinitely preferable to government-mandated racism and murder. In an essay i've yet to read, a university professor of mine apparently tears the book to shreds, writing it off as bleak coffeetable talk for 'white guilt'-challenged whites.

Sympathy is a subjective thing. I always tended to relate to the villain in books when I was young for reasons I couldn't quite understand (and probably never even thought about). Now I think it's because I was intrigued by the occasional glimpses of goodness in them, while heroes never seemed to have any wicked thoughts.