Lee Child postscript: Jack Reacher hears the rational, autonomous voices of his alternate personalities, an example of unintended “gratuitous multiple personality”

Most readers pay no attention to Reacher’s voices, and rightly so, because they are unnecessary to both plot and character development in these Lee Child novels.

There is no indication the author even knows that rational, autonomous voices imply the existence of alternate personalities.

I have had to invent a term for this situation—gratuitous multiple personality—because so many of the novels discussed in this blog have had it, and have had it for no apparent reason other than that it probably reflects the author’s own subjective experience.

For previous discussions, search gratuitous multiple personality in this blog, for a discussion of the issue in only a small fraction of the novels in which I found it to occur.