BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

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Thursday, February 9, 2023

“The Famished Road” by Ben Okri: Should Author’s Cultural Background Override Protagonist’s Psychological Symptoms?

Two-thirds through this 500-page Booker Prize-winning novel (1), I am not yet clear about its cultural premises (Ben Okri was born in Nigeria), or whether the author’s cultural background should be more important than the protagonist’s psychological symptoms.


What kind of boy is the protagonist, Azaro? Is he an “Abiku” (3) or a “Spirit child”(4) and what do these African terms mean? Do they explain why, since early in the novel, Azaro has been hearing the voices of his “spirit companions”? Or should his hearing voices be interpreted psychologically, just like characters in any other novel?


I hope the final third of the novel helps me deal with these issues.


1. Ben Okri. The Famished Road. New York, Anchor/Doubleday, 1992.

2. John C. Hawley. “Ben Okri’s Spirit Child: Abiku Migration and Postmodernity.” https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/engl/70/

3. Wikipedia. “Abiku.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiku

4. Wikipedia. “Spirit Children.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_children

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