![]() More to the point, this is what gives us tools like themes, tropes, archetypes, genres, dominant vs oppositional readings, etc, through which we interpret Western literature as conveying more than its literal content. I struggle to find depth in the characters or the plot, and am rather bored by both. Overall, Titus Groan is a book that gives you no way to engage with it except in the most literal terms. The fact that the book has a third person omniscient narrator doesn’t help, since it positions the narrative as objective and impartial, thereby leaving you little interpretive license for what’s going on. ![]() ![]() This gives an effect of such profound narrative ambivalence that you wonder why you’re being told any of this in the first place, and your only impetus to keep caring is your knowledge that you and Titus Groan are in a social contract where it is obliged to be telling you a story. Both the crucial and the trivial are expounded with such excruciating verbosity (more on this below) that one wonders if any of it is important. Each character’s actions are driven by one defining motive or character trait while these interact in often quite clever ways, they don’t particularly inspire reflection or even investment. For all its twisted and fantastical nature, I find it a somehow superficial and lacklustre story. The stories of these diverse individuals unfold and interweave over the course of the book, proceeding chronologically from the day of Titus’ birth. ![]()
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