A novel’s symbolic claims can exceed the terms that render its characters coherent

Evidence

In other words, the very dialectic – of shamelessness and shame, and their condensation in eruptions of violence – which governs the conceptual framework of the novel is fundamentally flawed; symbolic values which Rushdie assigns to Sufiya Zinobia simply exceed the terms within which he has fashioned her own existence. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 250

Categorization

• XREF: A generalizable critical criterion — a character’s assigned symbolic burden must be supported by her internally coherent capacities — applicable to many literary analyses. — connects to: The historical novel reveals contradictions of content becoming contradictions of form — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 695; The disillusionment novel’s inward turn replaces adventure with the risk of solipsism; Characters identified by death-drive repetitions replace conventional inner life in Peace’s fiction — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 224