Both editors and novelists—e.g., The Third Man and Gone Girl—may fail to recognize when characters have multiple personality, but for different reasons

In my posts on Graham Greene’s The Third Man and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, I quoted passages from the first half or two-thirds of each novel, which show that the main character has multiple personality. But the issue is dropped later on in these novels, and multiple personality, per se, plays no part in their plots.

That is, judging only by the text, one would think that the author had initially intended to make an issue of multiple personality, then had decided against doing so, but had inadvertently failed to delete it in the rewrite. And the editor had evidently not recognized that the character was portrayed inconsistently, first as having multiple personality, later on as not.

However, I suspect that the editor and the novelist missed the multiple personality for different reasons. I would guess that the editor missed it, because it was the farthest thing from the editor’s mind as to what might be present in that novel. I would guess that the novelist missed the presence of multiple personality, per se, because, in the personal experience of novelists, it is just ordinary psychology.

I could speculate on other reasons that multiple personality might “inadvertently” get into a novel. One possibility is that the novelist has more than one narrative “voice” (alternate identity), and that novels are a cooperative effort, perhaps with one narrator in charge at the beginning, but other narrators having their turn later on. Thus, one narrator’s version of a character may differ from another’s.

But why wouldn’t such inconsistencies be reconciled in the rewrite? One possibility is that the narrators have an understanding not to step on each other’s toes. Another possibility is that one narrator may have a blind spot for what is written by another narrator (with whom they are not co-conscious). In other words, the novelist’s rewriter identity may not have been aware of the narrative inconsistency.

Of course, I do not know, and do not know anything about, either Gillian Flynn or her editors. All I know is that Gone Girl has gratuitous multiple personality in its text, like The Third Man and various other novels discussed in this blog.