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In this section of my paper, I am going to analyse the main characters of “The meddlesome passenger”. Actually, every single character in the story is important, but do not worry, there are just three characters here.  We can differentiate between: narrator, reader and author.

To begin with, it is necessary to say that I have mentioned them in this way because in the hyperfiction, Scott Rettberg calls them like that. They are referred with these names.

1. NARRATOR: we do not know if this character is a woman or a man, but what I can undoubtedly point out is that he/she is the main character of the story. He narrates in fist person the whole story, and establishes a kind of dialogue with the reader.I say a “kind of dialogue” because actually it is not. By means of questions and question tags, asserting, denying his or her own statements and conclusions, he/she establishes a conversation with the reader.

2. READER/AUTHOR: The reader of course is very important is this story, without him the story would not be possible, and the reader is OURSELVES. As we start to read the hypertext, we realize little by little that we are part of the plot. The person who the narrator is talking to is ourselves, although there is not a explicit answer in the text, is like if we were answering the narrator, as if we were maintaining a dialogue. He (we) becomes the author when he kills the real author. After that, the narrator gives the reader (to us)  tracks for him to know that since that moment the story is in his (our) hands. For instance, by means of asking him”What’s next?”, “Where are we going?”, “Where do you get off acting like this?”, “Haven’t you been playing? You don’t care?”, “This is where we’re going? Nowhere is not the same as somewhere”.

The narrator asks him “what’s next?” “What I am doing here?”, because he is expecting him to continue with the story. The same happens with the rest of the questions, he tells him if he has been playing because it is doing nothing, and he feels like a toy in the reader’s hands. The last sentence appears more frequently at the end of the story, because the narrator is expecting to reach to some point in the story (which represented as if they were to some place), and he is constantly asking “Where are we going?, but actually they do not reach any point and. They do not arrive to anywhere.

3. AUTHOR: At the very beginning of the story, the reader is told to have killed the Author, the real one. Because of the references the reader makes, we can know that is a man. Then, automatically the reader, without be aware of it, assumes his position and his task is to go ahead with the story. However, he does not know this, until more or less the middle of the story. in spite of his death, the author is still part of the fiction and he takes part in the story whit short interventions, clarifying words. You just have to click on the red highlighted words in the text.

BACK TO SECOND PAPER SPACE INTRODUCTION TOOLS PLOT CONCLUSION BIOGRAPHY