#thesisnovel

It is what the writer of fiction does when she asks herself what her protagonists are likely to do in the situation she has created. To characterize is to go back to the past starting from the present that poses the question, not so as to deduce this present from the past but so as to give the present its thickness: so as to question the protagonists of a situation from the point of view of what they may become capable of, the manner in which they are likely to respond to this situation. The “we” that this essay has intervene is the we who pose questions of this kind today, who know that the situation is critical but don’t know which protagonist’s cause to take up.