Narrative characters can be decoded as permutations of a semic opposition system.

Evidence

Now, moving from the ultimate opposition which codes the narra­ tive to its concrete articulation in the characters and the local events of the text, we can begin to reconstruct a system analogous to that found operative in Lord Jim, but more complex. We will schematically suggest that the opposition of Decoud and Nostromo can be semically desig­ nated as that between the Ideal and the Self (this last taken to designate the impossible immanence either of the individuar body or of the people) : the consequence would then be that our other terms would mark out something like the place of an anti-ideal, or cynicism, and that· of a selflessness or devotion: But with these new terms already the appropriate characters are given, for the women-Antonia as Decoud’s political allegory and muse (“Antonia, gigantic and lovely like an allegorical statue, looking on with scornful eyes at his weakness”: p. — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 6586

Categorization

• XREF: This semic square of Ideal/Self/Cynicism/Devotion is the Greimasian structuralist method at work — connects to the reader’s broader structuralist/poststructuralist theory work (Greimas, Lévi-Strauss). — connects to: Greimasian semiotic squares generate narrative characters from logical combinations of semes — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 3984; Splitting a coded situation into parts reveals its underlying interactions. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 303; Audiences can decode the same message in a globally contrary or oppositional way (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Splitting a coded situation into parts reveals its underlying interactions. #expands (0.82) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 303
• Audiences can decode the same message in a globally contrary or oppositional way #expands (0.75)
• Individualist acting methods subordinate narrative form to autonomous character #complicates (0.72)