In the last post, I wrote about narcissism. This prompted the question asking if I could tell the story from the narcissist’s perspective. I don’t know if that’s possible. From everything I’ve read about a narcissist, they do not recognize their problem. The problem is with the rest of the world and doesn’t lie within them.
I still think that telling the story from other people’s perspective of the narcissist would be better for a couple of reasons. The first is that it would be to show the damage that narcissist does to another character in the novel without even realizing it. The reader would know that the narcissist had absolutely no idea of the damage they do. They may very well see the damage and attributed it to a fault in the other person’s character. Another interesting angle might be to show the narcissist from the viewpoint of one of their “flying monkeys.” Wikipedia defines “flying monkeys” as “Flying monkeys is a term used in popular psychology, mainly in the context of narcissistic abuse, to describe people who act on behalf of a narcissist towards a third party, usually for an abusive purpose.”
I think everyone has seen narcissistic traits in someone they know by the time they are in their teens. In high school, narcissists often have a following that will defend the narcissist by becoming “flying monkeys.” We may not understand it when we first see it, but we will instinctively know when a group of people attacks another person, it is wrong. I know I was puzzled over why this seemed to happen. I wasn’t aware of personality defects in high school. I don’t believe I understood such a term existed. I just thought people who acted like “flying monkeys” were nasty.
The question remains how would you portray a narcissist?
