[livens]

Another thread got me thinking about this. Your reading along just fine, had the characters in my head, then halfway or towards the end of the book the authors shatters that character by slipping in a detail about them not mentioned before or that I missed early on. This has happened twice that I can remember, and both times it was the charatcers race that changed. The one time I forced my mind to alter the character to match the authors description. The other time I found it easier to just ignore the author and keep on truckin with what I had.

My question has to do with race I guess, so I hope noone gets offended. I am in no way racist myself, in fact Im white and I married a girl from Ethiopia. Anyway, the question is.

If the author gives no clues as to the race/color of the character, do you usually default to your own race/color in your mind?

I do, 99.9% of the time I think. I had never really thought about it before, but looking back all of the characters in my mind, unless it was specifically stated in the book, they were white.

[Moander]

To avoid this problem, I try to stick with fantasy novels. Hope that helps.

[shesmilesclouds]

This happened to me just recently. I read the book called Neverwhere by Neil Gamon and the main character, Door's, hair was exposed in the very last chapter. She had short red hair, and I was imagining a long, dark blond style (like my own).

It was obvious she was white, because he said she was pale many times... but I do think that we have a tendency to make the protagonists as much like ourselves as we can with the information given. It makes it easier to relate to them and understand where they've been in life. It gives you background information that the author never has to share. I think it's very normal to do this, and no, I wouldn't call it racism. It's just what we know. We all think very highly of ourselves. Our own experiences are the only things we have to go off of.

[Zsinj]

Dude, I thought I was the only one that did what you did! :eek: You see I am very obsessive-compulsive about imagining a character in a book, down to their height, weight, race, hair-color, and even what clothes they wear. Yes, I make most of it up in my head, and I don't let my obsession ruin my reading experience, but I certainly see what you're saying, it can be rather frustrating when the author changes a detail about the character you thought you had down pat. But usually, I accept the change and just move on, and eventually, I've convinced myself that I've had the corrected image of the character in my mind from the beginning. :D

[daturaonfire]

It's a mistake for an author to wait 100+ pages to describe a character...that's just not thinking things through, if you ask me. Surely it must occur to them that readers have already got an idea in their head by that time? :rolleyes: Maybe they assume that everyone else will assume the correct race/hair color/etc. But you know where assuming gets you... To answer the question, I usually do assume it's my own race (i.e., white). That ego problem humans got, it gets me every time.