Seems Like Someone's Rooting for the Wrong Side

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by davem

And to risk repeating myself, why does it actually matter if a reader is 'in agreement with' a fictional character or not? It tells us precisely nothing about the reader's morality, psychology, ethics, political stance or inside leg measurement.

I thoroughly disagree. I would submit that a reader's genuine reaction to a work of fiction can, depending upon the nature of the work, tell us much concerning their morality, psychology, ethics and, perhaps, their political stance. Most probably not their inside leg meansurement, though.

Of course, we would be judging that by reference to our own conceptions of morals, psychology, ethics and politics, but that is inevitable. And I think, at least within a single society at a fixed period of time, one can establish an approximation of consensus in these areas (right/wrong, sane/insane, left-wing/right-wing etc), even if there is disagreement on some of the grey areas. But we are not really talking about grey areas here. We are talking about good an evil.

I would certainly feel that I was able to draw conclusions about a person if they genuinely sympathised with Big Brother and though that Winston Smith had it coming to him or, to use an example cited earlier by Lal, if they thought that Hannibal Lector's dietary preferences were quite normal.