A “wink” towards the readers
This article is a consideration of how some writers give a certain importance to their main characters and how these in return give life to the story itself, not only as protagonists within the books they belong in, but also as background characters in other stories. In other words, I am not dealing with “saga characters”, hence the ones that are purposefully crafted to be found in volume after volume, but the ones that appear in works where you might not expect them. There are many novelists whom to draw examples from, but just for the purpose of this article, my attention will be focused on two of them in particular: Jules Verne and James Clavell.
Jules Verne was a French writer who was also a pioneer of sorts of the science fiction genre (even though his style is more akin to a positivistic scientism) and who lived at the end of the 19th century. He wrote especially about man-made apparatuses that permitted humanity to travel everywhere: on water and beneath it, on earth and underneath it, soaring across the skies and even in space. All this in a time when things of such sort were seen as impractical and, to some extent, maybe even impossible; there have been, for instance, many debates on From the earth to the moon, book that Verne considered as extremely accurate. The French author conceived various different inventions and concocted either brilliant or extravagant ideas: from the Nautilus to the floating city-island, from the all-purpose vehicle to the “bullet” that reached the moon. However, his greatest contribution was, in my opinion without a doubt, one of his characters: Captain Nemo.
Captain Nemo, known for being the protagonist of Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, is also considered as one of the most intelligent, bright and charming characters of Verne’s works. He is described in such a manner that could mislead the reader into thinking that Nemo is Verne himself, or at least his alias. A fact that people who have not read The mysterious island ignore, is that in this book we witness the end of this character’s “life”. Verne writes a novel that, even thou similar to Robinson Crusoe, portrays a cast of escaped convicts who arrive at a secluded island. Here, in the last pages of the story, these convicts witness Captain Nemo’s death. Just a few pages, without too much explanation, mark the end of one of the most important and fascinating characters in one of the most surprising ways ever imagined.
James Clavell was a great American author of the second half of 20th century who fought in the Second World War and was imprisoned in a Japanese camp in Java. During his time in Asia, he collected a vast quantity of information and wrote one of the best Asian series written by what I would call a Gaijin in regards to the oriental culture. Even though the plots of his books are not directly correlated with one another, if read carefully, you can discover that some characters either resurface or are merely hinted at (usually not even their name is spelled out). For example, in Shōgun, his greatest work in my opinion, the plot revolves around the first English captain to arrive in Japan and takes place in 1600 (it is however not a historic account). This character’s name is Blackthorne, but since the locals cannot pronounce it, they referred to him simply as Anjin, the Japanese word for captain. In Noble House, another one of his works, set in Hong Kong in 1963, just for a brief chapter a Japanese woman appears in the story and her surname is Anjin. When she is asked about it (considering that Japanese were known for not having good captains or boatmen), she replies by explaining an old legend of an Englishman who had come to Japan several centuries before.
In media, especially in games and movies, “Easter eggs” indicate inside jokes or hidden messages placed purposely by the programmers or by the directors. This concept can be easily adapted to novels. If writers decides to put the same character in different novels, without even advertising it, they will secretly hope that their readers will gather these minute details. Authors use these subtle hints to create a more ample world, with its characters and lore, and this in turn will make up for a greater appreciation on behalf of the bibliophiles. Some of these details can be only discovered by the clever and inquisitive readers – upon noticing such connections, they will understand the secret wink they have been given. It is, at its core, one of the most personal connection writers will establish with their counterparts.