"Making the best of it" - stories about trapped characters

It's often said that giving a character "agency" is a good thing. I’d generally agree, but what about novels in which a character is trapped and has to make the best of it, while appearing to follow the rules made for him? I’m thinking of stories like Gladiator, where the hero reacts to whatever is thrown at him in the arena, or The Prisoner or The Great Escape, where the characters are trying to break out of a prison without their preparations being known. Perhaps this would also include stories where the hero is stuck in some military action that he knows to be insane (there are probably a few novels about conscripts like this), blackmailed into committing some crime or where the hero is faced with inevitable death (Breaking Bad, perhaps?).

Is the important thing that the characters are trying to escape or somehow take control of the circumstances, rather than just make a good job of responding to them? Or is it sufficient for the reader that the characters try to survive, and remain reasonable people in doing so?

For me, they need to have something they want to achieve. Gladiator is a great eg - would we have cared half as much if he was just trying to survive? He wasn't really trying to - he was trying to enact revenge and free others from evil. Which makes us cheer along so much more!

… unless you think - as Frank Herbert did - that revenge is for children. Great film though.

Escape is always a good theme because the reader is rooting for the underdog, which most readers instinctively do if the scenario is presented to them.

Toby Frost said:

what about novels in which a character is trapped

Click to expand...

Fighting the rules, working against the system, planning to escape, break, or overthrow it - all these are examples of agency. Just plodding along isn't.

But it can be a surprisingly difficult balance to find, especially if you have one or more characters subject to forces and events too big for them to fight or overcome.

I think I'm with Jo on this one, in that characters need a goal beyond survival. So for example just 'escape' is less interesting than 'escape and get back to the farm in time to stop it being sold by evil landlord and save siblings'.

I think the Shawshank Redemption is an example of where a character is trapped, but never loses sight of his goal or his self worth. Despite outwardly appearing to conform he is constantly working towards his goal while at the same time undermining a corrupt system.

Maybe I'm being too philosophical, but in what story isn't the protagonist trapped in their circumstances. "Destiny", the mission, the war, the speed of light, whatever. Is any of that, story wise, fundamentally different than slavery or a prison? In all of those kinds of stories, survival and "escape" are usually the same thing.

I don't think there was any place for the Gladiator to escape to - his family was dead, and the other slaves became his family. Leading a revolt is the only type of excape/survival left to him.

I think the vast majority of authors would be well advised to give the character a goal beyond mere survival.

I would be very interesting in reading a fictional book by an incredibly good author that was mainly an account of a character making the best of such a situation with no real goal beyond that. But I think you need some proper skills to pull that off.

The Big Peat said:

I think the vast majority of authors would be well advised to give the character a goal beyond mere survival.

I would be very interesting in reading a fictional book by an incredibly good author that was mainly an account of a character making the best of such a situation with no real goal beyond that. But I think you need some proper skills to pull that off.

Click to expand...

I just got thoroughly pulled on it by the editor of my next book. It's that old devil called agency again....

The Big Peat said:

I would be very interesting in reading a fictional book by an incredibly good author that was mainly an account of a character making the best of such a situation with no real goal beyond that.

Click to expand...

That's essentially what "Into the Wild" is, despite being non-fiction. Several of Jack London's stories might be looked at that way, too.

The thing is, it is hard to right a "story" that is just a list of chronological events without either a goal or resolution. If survival turns into a goal - like in Castaway, then it is no longer just a survival story. If the survivor dies or is rescued, the survival events become the "quest" that is fulfilled by arriving at a time where rescue is provided or the death that the rest of the story makes inevitable.

"Just surviving" is the equivalent of saying "no plot".

The Big Peat said:

I would be very interesting in reading a fictional book by an incredibly good author that was mainly an account of a character making the best of such a situation with no real goal beyond that. But I think you need some proper skills to pull that off.

Click to expand...

1984 ... The Handmaid's Tale ...?

So there we go. Be as good as Orwell/Atwood, and you can pull it off.

As RX-79G says though, there's plenty of non-fiction books in this vein. For whatever reason (Jo probably has hit it), it doesn't work so good in fiction. Different expectations.

As with the books Brian notes though, there is a subtle sense of agency there; the choice of whether to conform or not.

Would classic tragedy count as a "survival only" story?