Embedded mental states in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief and uneven distribution of narratorial attention

Abstract

AbstractThe study of literary characters has been acknowledged to be a thorny field. Since Alex Woloch's The One vs. the Many (2003), exciting advances are scarce. The present article proposes cognitive narratology based on Theory of Mind, which focuses on multiple levels of embedded mental states that reflect and keep track of other characters' mental states (conveniently summarized as “I know that you know that I know”1), as a new analytical framework to push forward the study of literary characters and at the same time to test the validity of applying such a cognitive theory in literary studies. Through an analysis of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, a young adult (YA) fiction popular all over the world, it is argued that the protagonist Percy, who is also the figural narrator of the novel, distributes his mind‐reading activities on other characters unevenly. The distance between minor characters and Percy determines whether the narrator's discourse about them is accompanied by the narrator's interest in reading their minds, which is most clearly illustrated when they are first introduced in the novel. When Percy meets Annabeth for the first time, he subconsciously tries to bring their relationship closer at the discourse level by creating three levels of embedded mental states that include both of them as cognitive agents. Although this strong passion has not yet been fully revealed explicitly at the story level, it is discernable in the formal features of Percy's discourse. As the story develops, Percy's mind‐reading of Annabeth becomes a subconscious habit, whereas his narratorial treatments of two other minor characters have been steadily kept below three levels of embedded mental states. In this light, the complex relationships between these characters can be shown in a more pragmatic way by adopting Theory of Mind analysis, thus enabling us to explore the cognitive pattern of the text and offering a new perspective for the study of characters.