protagonist in "Carrie"
I've been following this thread from the beginning, and I'm learning a great deal. Thank you, everyone.
I'm interested in the Sue/Carrie as protagonist discussion, even though no one else has commented, yet. I thought I'd take a stab at it.
Our modern concept of protagonist descends from Aristotle's hero: described as "good," "appropriate," "like," and "consistent" (from Aristotle's Poetics.)
Now how we, either as readers or writers, define Aristotle's terms determines how we view a character--assuming we even accept that definition and those terms, to begin with.
It seems to me that a more modern definition of "protagonist" would also have to include a measure of growth. That is, the character must develop/change over the course of the story. Hopefully for the better. If the protagonist/hero changes for the worse, we have something that resembles either an antihero, or a tragic hero--not a romantic hero, (hearkening back upstream to the discussion of writing novel-as-romance.)
Tragic heroes bring a set of rules unique to themselves. Without getting into a lengthy description of why the character Carrie doesn't fit the model, I am inclined to disqualify her as a protagonist because she doesn't show growth. She wanders through the novel, a perpetual victim--in spite of her supernatural abilities--and finally dies, completely regressed into a state of childhood, calling for her mother (whole end of the chapter "Prom Night".)
While I could argue that Carrie does, in some ways, fit the Aristotelian models of "good," "appropriate", and "consistent" the character seems to fail on the criteria of "like" or typicality (is that a word?) Carrie is terrifyingly "other" and becomes difficult to identify with, as a result. On a surface level, anyone who ever felt unlovely and unloved as an adolescent should be able to form some sort of emotional commitment to her...but she proves so terribly alien in terms of her scarred psyche, that I think she beomes ultimately inaccessible.
I don't think that has to be the case, with characters who typify "other" (Van Vogt's character, Jemmie, from Slan, comes to mind, for example--I found that character extremely accessible, although undeniably "other"..."
Hmmm...now I'm just maundering, and I still haven't adressed Sue Snell as a potential protagonist. Think I'll leave off, before boring everyone to death.
Mac