Do Our Characters Have to Be Likeable?

In a New York Times article about Dutch author Herman Koch's new novel, "The Dinner," Claire Messud takes Americans to task for our desire to always "like" the characters in our fiction:

"North American readers care inordinately that fictional characters be likable. This preference is strange, given that few real people are thoroughly nice and that those few aren’t interesting. "

I have often thought about this when watching European films, and it is an important reason to make sure to expose oneself to fiction from different cultures.

Is it important that fictional characters be likeable?  If you are a writer, this may be a question you've posed to yourself before.  Or perhaps you've never considered it.  Too wrapped up in our usual cultural understanding of good fiction, it may be difficult for most North American writers to consider writing an unlikeable protagonist.

We are all familiar with the "evil" or misguided antagonist and particularly enjoy seeing him or her discredited and the protagonist triumphing in the end.  If there are unlikeable or unsympathetic characters, they are almost always minor characters or people the protagonist must work around or overcome in order to succeed.

In most American fiction, our protagonists may be complex and may make mistakes, but we usually explain these away with a reason.  If a poor protagonist steals from the rich, the crime can be forgiven as necessarily survival technique and something that didn't really hurt the rich who were victimized.  If an alcoholic protagonist leaves his family, this perhaps can be forgiven because he is sick, and if he stops drinking and regrets his actions, we do not dislike him for his mistakes because he usually has other redeeming qualities.

Perhaps likeable is not the correct word.  I think what we want is sympathetic.  We want to side with our protagonists.  We want to believe that they are correct.  Because in some ways, we become the protagonist when we read a story.  We see the world through his or her eyes rather than our own, and we do not want to believe that we are wrong.

But this insistence on ignoring our own fallibility prevents us from having the intellectual and personal realizations we may come to have if we are forced to face a protagonist who is not sympathetic.  I have long noticed that American movies tend to create a black-and-white dichotomy of characters, with little room for the real good and bad traits we all have, while European movies tend to be more willing to give the protagonist some real flaws and the antagonist some sympathetic qualities.  As Messud points out, this is far closer to the truth in our everyday lives than a stark black-and-white, right-and-wrong scenario.

If we want to read fiction to get away from real life -- to experience an ordered world where things make sense and end happily -- then likeable protagonists will be our preference.  But it's important to look beyond this once in a while and have one's sense of self challenged by the consideration that we -- and the protagonists we identify with -- are not always right or even sympathetic.

We do stupid, selfish things.  We are mean to people.  We are ruthless.  We are self-loathing and self-defeatist.  These are qualities we should not ignore.  It is dangerous to always consider oneself to be right.  Reading about characters who we identify with but also see as unlikeable and/or wrong can help us identify these qualities in ourselves.  They do more than entertain; they stretch our minds and our sense of right and wrong, the very purpose of good fiction.

I once read that you should expose yourself to the opposite point of view to really learn the truth: if you are liberal, reading the New York Times will only reinforce your existing beliefs, while reading a more conservative paper will make you look at things in a different light.  It may be important to do the same with fiction.  Reading what is difficult and sometimes not enjoyable -- but good writing that makes you think -- has the potential to help you understand yourself and the world better.  And it will make you a better writer yourself.