Role of Perspective or Point of View in Lagerkvists The Dwarf - Book Report/Review Example

Role of Perspective or Point of View in Lagerkvist’s The Dwarf al Affiliation Introduction Lagerkvist wrote this novel The Dwarf in around 1945 when the World War II was just at the climax and was just about to end. The historical background gave an inspiration to the novel, which centres on the main character, the dwarf, and the way Lagerkvist depicts this character in the novel also suggests that the novel was written around this period. The acts that Lagerkvist highlights being carried out by the dwarf are very much related to the world war and kingship during that particular era in Italy. The other minor characters such as Boccarossa are used to point out actions and deeds that are related to the way the leaders of war operated during this period and how evil some of the rulers were. With the help of the dwarf, an outside narrator, the author is able to express his view upon the dark side of humanity through the voice of the dwarf. At the same time, the author depicts the dwarf as an unreliable narrator who is a representation of evil and deformity, factor that can be closely connected to the background of World War II (Bell, 2004). This paper makes an attempt to analyse the extent to which the dwarf’s character and depiction in the novel illustrate the general voice and unreliable stand of the author for only exposing the negative side of the human behaviour. Role of Perspective or Point of View in Lagerkvists the Dwarf The dwarf in this novel is a character that is very proud and regrets being placed in a situation whereby he has to live with the humans. This is not something that the dwarf likes but he lacks any other option hence he continues to live amongst the human race that he considers as a pack of ingratiating cows according to the novel. Piccoline the dwarf shows a very strong hatred for the human race and does not like anything that is associated with the human race including their smell, their looks and anything about the humans. For this reason, the dwarf decides to do everything subjectively for the humans and in this case for the prince who uses him to perform political assassinations and the dwarf willingly takes up this opportunity with the aim of perpetrating his hatred for the humans. Despite all the hatred that the dwarf shows against the human race, it is impossible for him to totally isolate himself from the humans; he still remains to be human and it would be wrong for him to concentrate only on the negative side of the humans as he does in this novel. Above all, we are aware that it is Lagerkvist who uses the dwarf as a tool to air out his opinions with regard to the character and behaviours of the leaders and people with power during the Second World War. However, the extremity of how Lagerkvist takes this hatred and how he looks at the human race as an evil group of creation is what raises questions about the reliability of this novel as a potential source of information (Lagerkvist, 1945). To start with, the dwarf is used by Lagerkvist as a non-human character to some extent that is very loyal at implementing the evil thoughts of humans. Through this character, Lagerkvist tries to expose the evil behaviours of leaders during the Second World War although he decides to focus only on the negative things that the leaders do including innocent murders, forgetting the good deeds that the leaders also did however few they were. The prince of the land of the Renaissance is one character who is very self-centred and is associated with other characteristics such as being adulterous. On the contrary, he still believes that he is a strong Christian though some people would consider this as stupid Christianity without biblical basis. It is evident from the novel that he does not rule justly because he is fond of eliminating those that are against his dictatorial kind of leadership. To the greater extent, he is a king who does not or rarely embraces democracy, ruling the way he feels right in his thoughts and if as a normal citizen you raise issues against his way of ruling, you risk losing your life. The elimination method of leadership expressed by the prince is not straightforward; it involves a third party, and this is the dwarf who is used as a mercenary to the throne. Therefore, if you are not observant and inquisitive, enough you may end up thinking that the prince is not to be associated with the many assassinations that occur on the land during the time frame. In as much as the dwarf as explained in this novel only receives and implements orders that come from the prince who fully operates as the king, the dwarf still takes advantage and performs some of the bad acts out of sadism and his own evil nature. It is through this character, the dwarf, which Lagerkvist tries to expose the evil and sometimes hidden side of the human creation. Analytically, the dwarf lives in the courtyard and interacts with all the staff who work at the courtyard. From a lay mans point of view, it would be expected that the dwarf would befriend since he is allowed to live a normal human and also a noble life. We would have expected the dwarf to appreciate such a life and consider it a great opportunity to live among the normal individuals and be able to interact freely with the nobles despite being far much shorter that a normal adult human being (0.66m tall). This however is not what happens since the dwarf develops negative attitudes towards some of the members of staff within the palace and secretly wishes eliminate them through the program of eliminating the enemies of his boss, the Prince (Lagerkvist, 1945). The negative and evil side of human beings in this novel is expressed loudly through the leadership of the prince. The prince has enemies just like every other human being in the world, yet he does not know how to deal accordingly with his enemies. Instead of creating a chance for him to reconcile with his enemies, what comes to his mind is to eliminate them so that he can continue without having any further trouble from such enemies. What he prince fails to understand is that all of his subjects would even at some point turn against him and without further thought he orders the dwarf or Boccarossa to eliminate them as he is used to doing. What would then happen is that there finally would be no subjects to rule over and then the biggest question and problem at the same time would be how the prince would rule over nobody. Of course, a king requires subjects to rule over and if the king or the prince, in this case, decides on killing his subjects, it is quite tricky as regards what would happen if all subjects decided to become his enemies and then he ordered their murder. It would then be useless to refer himself as a king or prince since such people rule over subjects and the power of the king or prince is determined by how many subjects the king or prince rules over (Lagerkvist, 1945). Lagerkvist is very careful in pointing out the issue of hatred amongst the human race through his creation in the character of the dwarf as illustrated in the novel. The dwarf does not seem to like anybody in the palace, including the princes wife whom the dwarf considers adulterous and deserves punishment from God through him, the dwarf. Once the dwarf is directed to eliminate some of the enemies of the prince who according to him deserved to die for a better kingdom, he would take the advantage and involve his enemies also in their unplanned death. These types of killings are a true representation of how humans can hate each other to the extent of even planning their fellow humans deaths for no good reason at all. Once again, the solution to ending enmity with fellow human beings is not through killing them unlawfully since there exist so many other ways of trying to reconcile all of us despite the magnitude of the enmity. Boccarossas actions may not have been driven by hatred as depicted in the actions by the dwarf, but these may be as a result of being subjective to the prince and being ready to do all that the prince wishes without thinking. The idea of fear in leadership is therefore brought up in the novel; Boccarossa perhaps is afraid that there would be dire consequences for refusing to do what the prince demands. But, on the other hand, Boccarossa receives the monetary token of appreciation that the prince offers meaning that his actions may be driven by the love of money. Lagerkvist here brings up an idea of not valuing life for what it is worth. Looking at what Boccarossa does, it is evident that Lagerkvist is illustrating a low value of life and tries to compare the value of life as equivalent to some amount of money which is an unreliable perspective for him as an author. This aspect can greatly undermine the esteem of the reader and hence affect the moral of the novel negatively (Bell, 2004). Psychologically, the reader would expect that once the dwarf befriended the prince, then he would automatically be a friend to the princess. Such a friendship would be beneficial to safeguard the good relationship that already exists between the dwarf and the prince. A great confusion attacks the reader when the dwarf finally towards the end of the novel beats up the princes and finally kills her which, as a result, earns the dwarf a lifetime imprisonment in the dungeon. The act of the dwarf killing the princess continues to reinforce the authors depiction of the evil side of humans in that this dwarf could even go to the extent of killing his best friends wife. This implies that there is no friendship among the human beings according to Lagerkvist if even your best friend can kill your wife for any reason whatsoever (Formosa, 2008). The most disturbing thing about the author of this novel is that he wants us as readers to feel that the dwarf was fairly punished by being thrown into the dungeon forever. Some readers however would consider this as a joke considering the magnitude of the crime that this dwarf was involved in. Having spilled innocent blood just because he did not like the victims that he murdered and the eventually earning himself a lifetime imprisonment in a dungeon while still eating and drinking is sincerely not just enough for him. It is therefore wrong for the author to direct us to believe that all is well since the dwarf was punished for having killed the princes wife yet the punishment that the dwarf received does not equate to the magnitude of the crime that he had committed. Conclusion It is evident in this case that the narrator of this story who is the dwarf is very unreliable especially because of biasness of his perspective. Apparently, the dwarf is aware of the human beings’ brighter side of life, but he decides only to concentrate on the darker side while portraying behaviours such as murder of the innocent through wine poisoning and the aspect of exchanging human life for money as depicted by Boccarossa. It is possible that what the dwarf brings out through his narration in the novel is a true representation of what the rulers during the renaissance period were doing, but this does not mean that the rulers were only capable of performing evil acts. There must have been some positive things associated with their leadership despite being quite ruthless especially to those that were against their method of leadership. For the reasons highlighted in this paper therefore, it is true to conclude that the dwarf is an unreliable narrator and Lagerkvist is no better for having chosen the dwarf to represent only one side of the human behaviour. References Bell, W. (2004). Who is really evil? The Futurist, 38(2), 54-60. Formosa, P. (2008). A conception of evil. Journal of Value Inquiry, 42(2), 217-239. Lagerkvist, P. (1945). The Dwarf. Trans. Alexandra Dick. New York Read More