TBAY: Crouch - "My mother saved me." (5 of 9)

[ssk7882 <skelkins@attbi.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 47932

Five

"My mother saved me."

---------------

"Crouch had been serving the forces of evil his entire life," Elkins 
states, from up high on her pale hobby horse.  "He really *was* 
Ever So Evil, you know."

Eileen says nothing for a long time.  She rearranges the little
paper cups on her CRAB CUSTARD table, casts a despairing look over
to the long line which has now formed at Cindy's Rookwood thong
booth, and then ducks down beneath her folding table.  After a few 
moments of rummaging around through a small cardboard box down there, 
she straightens, red magic marker in one hand.  She clambers up onto 
the table and reaching up, adds a phrase to the CRAB CUSTARD banner 
hanging above her display.

"C.R.A.B.C.U.S.T.A.R.D," the banner now reads.  "So exciting it'll
make your eyes bulge!  More Dark Sexiness than even Augustus 
Rookwood!  Try some today!"

She hops down, somewhat out of breath, and glares at Elkins.

"I'm beginning to see why you liked Brutus so much," she says.  "The 
*other* Brutus, I mean.  Brutus Jr.  The one with a taste for 
*parricide.*  And for *stabbing.*  This is...this is just a 
*character assassination!*"

"Character assassination?"  Elkins thinks about this for a moment,
then smiles.  "Character assassination," she repeats.  "Heh.  Oh.
Oh, Eileen.  I am only getting started.  I did tell you that I hadn't
even begun to touch on Mr. Crouch's iniquities, didn't I?  Trust me.  
I have only just begun."  Her lips draw back in a snarl.  "I have not 
yet made my peace with Mr. Crouch."

"Yes," says Eileen, in a tight little voice.  "Well.  We all know
what your bias is, don't we.  But I can't believe that you actually 
just...just thematically *hedgehogged* poor Barty Crouch Sr.  Have
you no pity, Elkins?"

Elkins tilts her head to one side and peers down at Eileen over the 
tops of her spectacles.

"You told me that you *wanted* me to attack Crouch Sr." she reminds 
her.  "You said that you liked nothing better.  You claimed that you 
found it exciting.  You explained that you were suckled on 
controversy.  And you insisted that you really *did* want to hear me 
out on this subject."

"I really did say that all of that," Eileen agrees glumly.  "Didn't 
I."

"Yes.  You did."

"Can I take it back?" Eileen asks, without much hope.

"No.  But if you like, we can take a short breather from Crouch's 
iniquities.  A little break, perhaps, Eileen?  A little pause?"  
Elkins grins wolfishly.  "How about we talk about Mrs. Crouch for 
a while instead?"

"Mrs. Crouch?"  Eileen scowls.  "Oh, I don't like that Mrs. Crouch.  
I don't like her at all."

"I know that you don't.  Would you care to explain why?"

"Well, I think my problem is that she put unbearable pressure on her 
husband to do something that was totally wrong. I can't forgive her 
that. Crouch Sr. made all his other horrible mistakes of his own 
volition, but she forced him into that one."

"Did she really?"

"Yes!  He couldn't refuse her last request.  Because he *was* a man 
of honour, Elkins.  Just like you've said yourself, even if you are 
trying to recant that now.  Wizards take last requests very 
seriously.  The text establishes that through Harry's last actions in 
the graveyard.  It shows us there that good people, decent people, do 
not deny last requests.  And people with True Wizarding Pride 
*certainly* don't.  They honour them.  No matter what."

"Hmmmm."  Elkins thinks about this.  "You know, you may have a point 
there?"

"Of course I have a point there!  Mrs. Crouch left her husband no 
choice.  And that's precisely why I dislike her so.  Let's just say 
that I don't like dying characters who impose last commands on their 
loved ones."

"No," agrees Elkins.  "That really isn't fair play, is it?  Ugly 
coercive behavior, that.  Mrs. Crouch really does seem to have been a 
nasty passive-aggressive piece of goods.  *Especially* if it's true 
that the wizarding world holds the honoring of last requests as an 
important part of its ethos.  That would make it very coercive 
behavior indeed, wouldn't it?  Why, it would be almost as bad as 
placing disobedient family members under the Imperius Curse!  Or 
casting over-enthusiastic memory charms on your subordinates!"

"Or keeping the man that you're impersonating under the Imperius 
Curse and locked half-freezing in a trunk while you *interrogate* him 
for seven months?" demands Eileen angrily.  "Or torturing two people 
into a state of irrevocable insanity?"

"Well," says Elkins, laughing.  "Quite a bit less severe than *that,* 
I'd say.  But similarly coercive, yes.  Seems to have run in the 
family, doesn't it?  Definitely unacceptable behavior.  Although I 
have to say that I do find it rather more sympathetic for someone to 
engage in that sort of behavior in order to save a human *life* than 
I do for someone to engage in it just to protect himself from 
exposure as a law-breaker.  Or to gratify his lust for dominion by 
seeking to bend his rebellious son to his will.  Or to facilitate the 
return of Voldemort, for that matter," she adds, almost as an 
afterthought.

"Well, I still don't like Mrs. Crouch," Eileen says stubbornly.  "She
used unfair tactics to force her husband into doing something that he
really didn't want to do...in the name of love.  It sickens me 
somehow, even if she was brave to die in Azkaban like that, and did 
sacrifice herself for her son." 

"Even if she was brave to die in Azkaban like that," Elkins repeats 
slowly.  "And did sacrifice herself for her son."  She smiles and 
shakes her head.

"What?"

"Coercive behavior," says Elkins.  "Unbearable pressure.  Something 
that no one with Proper Wizarding Pride could ever refuse.  Not 
ever.  Not under any circumstances.  No matter what.  She left him no 
choice.  She forced his hand.  She made him do it."  She 
sighs.  "Eileen," she says.  "You don't really *believe* that story, 
do you?"

"What?"

"The 'last favor' story.  Do you really believe it?"

"Man, these Rookwood thongs really *move,*" announces Cindy, 
returning to the CRAB CUSTARD table with a smug smile on her face and 
a considerable quantity of galleons jingling in her pockets.  She 
lowers herself into one of the wooden benches lining the promenade 
and puts her feet up.  "I'm completely out.  What is Elkins saying 
now?"

"She's trying to claim that Barty Crouch didn't really save his son 
from prison to honor his wife's dying request," Eileen tells 
her.  "So *typical.*  Elkins just doesn't want to give poor Barty a 
pass on a single one of his fatal errors, is what I'm thinking."

"Well, really, Eileen," says Elkins.  "Have you ever paused to 
consider the *source* of that story?"

"Its source?  You mean the *canon*?"

"No, I mean its source *within* the canon.  Where does this idea that 
Crouch only saved his son to honor his wife's dying request come from 
in the first place?  Where does it originate?  How do we know that it 
really happened that way?"

"Well, we know it because..." Eileen begins, then stops.  "Oh," she 
says.  "Oh."  

"Yes?"

Eileen closes her eyes.  "We know it," she says slowly.  "Because his 
son says so."

"Yes," says Elkins.  "We know it because his son says so."

She reaches into her satchel, pulls out her own copy of _GoF,_  opens 
it to the right page, and begins to read:

"'My mother saved me.  She knew she was dying.  She persuaded my 
father to rescue me as a last favor to her.  He loved her as he had 
never loved me.  He agreed.'"

She slams the book shut.

"That," she says.  "Is our *only* evidence for this notion that Crouch
saved his son's life only because his wife put unbearable 
psychological pressure on him to convince him to do so.  That's it.  
All of it.  How much credence do we give it?"

"Well," says Cindy thoughtfully.  "Crouch Jr. did say it under the 
influence of the veritaserum.  And Winky was right there when he said
it, too, and she didn't contradict him."

"Crouch Jr. also implies that his father never really loved him under 
the influence of the veritaserum," Elkins points out.  "And Winky 
doesn't contradict him when he says that, either.  Yet we don't 
generally believe him when he says that, do we?"

"Oh, but look," objects Eileen.  "These two statements aren't really 
at all the same thing.  Whether or not Crouch really loved his son is 
a matter of opinion.  But that he saved his son because his wife made 
it her dying request is a statement of *fact.*"

"Is it?"  Elkins thinks about this for a moment.  "But how would young
Crouch have known it?" she asks.

"What?"

"How would he have *known* it?  How could young Crouch possibly have 
known anything about the precise nature of his parents' deliberations 
over whether or not to save him from Azkaban?  It's not as if he was 
privy to those conversations.  He was in prison at the time.  
*Dying.*  Really, anything that Crouch Jr. says about his father's 
reasons for saving his life has to be one of two things, doesn't it?  
Either it's hearsay, something that someone told him directly, or 
it's extrapolation from hearsay.  Speculation.  Deduction."

"I guess so," says Eileen dubiously.  "But--"  

"And honestly, it seems far more likely to be the latter to me.  
After all, who would have told him such a thing?  Who told him that 
his father was only persuaded to agree to a plan to save him from 
prison as a last favor to his dying mother?  Can you imagine his 
*father* telling him that?  'Just so you know, boy, I would have 
happily left you to rot in Azkaban, if only your sainted mother 
hadn't forced my hand with that blasted dying request of hers.'  I 
really can't see that.  Can you?"

"Well..."

"And I certainly can't imagine *Winky* telling him such a thing.  Not 
unless we're willing to propose an Ever So Evil Winky, one who wants 
to make sure that young Crouch keeps on hating his father just as 
much as he possibly can."

"That Ever So Evil Winky just keeps looking better and better," 
mutters Cindy.

"I know," agrees Elkins.  "It's just awful, isn't it?  But unless we 
want to accept either ESE Winky or a rather stunningly brutal elder 
Crouch, I think that we're left with extrapolation.  Extrapolation, 
speculation, deduction.  None of which is precisely immune from bias."

"Yes, we've noticed that," says Eileen, with a pointed look at 
Elkins' hobby horse.

"Are you saying that Crouch Jr. was deluded?" demands Cindy.

"Deluded?"  Elkins considers the question.  She toys absently with her
horse's mane, then looks down and begins plaiting it carefully into 
small tight braids.  "I think," she says slowly, "that it has got to 
be very easy to play Good Parent/Bad Parent when one of your parents 
isn't even around to piss you off anymore, while the other one is 
holding you prisoner by means of an Unforgivable Curse.  I think," 
she says, "that it has got to be even easier to play that game when 
one of your parents died in your place in Azkaban, while the other 
one first publicly denounced you and then, while you were screaming 
and struggling and pleading for mercy while being dragged off by the 
dementors, exhorted you at the top of his lungs to go and rot there.  
I think," says Elkins.  "That it is appallingly easy to idolize and 
to romanticize a dead parent under *any* circumstances.  But when 
that parent actually died in your *stead?*"  

Elkins shakes her head.  "I don't think that Crouch Jr. had to be 
deluded to believe what he believed," she says.  "I just think that 
he had to be human.  We already know that he thought that his father 
didn't love him very much.  We already know that he loved his mother."

"I'm not sure if Crouch Jr. ever really loved anyone," says Eileen.

"No?"  Elkins raises an eyebrow.  "Well, if you don't want to ascribe 
to him even enough humanity to assume that he loved his mother, you 
still must concede that he was highly emotionally *dependent* on 
her.  Sirius heard him screaming out for her in his cell in Azkaban, 
and there was no one he could have been hoping to manipulate by doing 
that.  There was no one around to hear him.  No one who could have 
helped him, at any rate.  No one who *cared.*  I doubt that he was 
trying to manipulate the *dementors* by doing that.  So I think that 
we have to accept that there, at least, he was not acting.  That was 
genuine.  That was for real."

Eileen thinks about this for a moment, then exhales irritably.  "Oh, 
I just *hate* your Crouch Jr. apologetics, Elkins," she 
complains.  "You know, now I'm feeling sorry for the evil little 
brat?"

"As well you should," Elkins tells her, smiling slightly.  "As well 
you should.  Have you ever wondered how they broke the news to him, 
by the way?"

"The news?"

"Of his mother's death.  He was dying when his father carted him out 
of Azkaban.  That was the only reason that his parents were allowed 
to visit him in the first place: it was a *death bed* visit.  Sirius 
saw him leaving while disguised as his mother, and he says that 
Crouch was 'half-carrying' him out of there.  I very much doubt that 
he was in any condition to understand what was going on.  He was 
probably only vaguely aware of what was happening at the time.  So 
who explained it to him?  How do you explain to a very sick young man 
who has just been nursed back from the very brink of death that his 
mother has died in his place in Azkaban, and that his father never 
claimed her body but instead left her there to be buried on the 
prison grounds by dementors?"

"I very much doubt that he cared about that," says Eileen coldly.

"No?  Oh, I really wouldn't be so sure about that.  There's something 
else that we might deduce from Cedric's last request in the 
graveyard, you know.  We might deduce from it that proper burial is 
important to wizards.  We learn about the disposition of Mrs. 
Crouch's body three times over the course of this novel.  Really, she 
gets a lot more to do as a *corpse* than she does as a human being.  
Sirius tells us about her burial, and then Crouch Jr. mentions it not 
just once in the course of his interrogation, but *twice.*  He tells 
Dumbledore that his mother was buried at Azkaban, bearing his 
appearance and his identity, and then later on, he specifies that her 
grave is empty.  It's utterly redundant information, that.  It's 
not necessary plot exposition for the reader, and it isn't 
information that Crouch Jr. needs to provide in order to satisfy the 
strictures of his interrogation either.  It isn't directly responsive 
to Dumbledore's question.  He's already explained that his mother was 
buried at Azkaban.  He's already explained that his father 'staged' 
her funeral.  Really, the fact her grave is a cenotaph is sort of a 
no-brainer, isn't it?  It's the default assumption.  It goes without 
saying.  Yet he doesn't allow it to go without saying.  Instead, he 
says it.  Why?"

"Because he has to," says Cindy.  "He's under the influence of the 
veritaserum, and..."

But Elkins is shaking her head slowly back and forth.

"It doesn't seem to work that way," she says.  "No matter what Harry
might have feared when Snape threatened him with the veritaserum, it
doesn't seem to make people babble at random.  Crouch Jr's testimony
isn't incoherent.  He really doesn't digress all that much in the 
veritaserum scene at all.  Just about everything that he says is
either directly responsive to a question he's been asked, or it is
plot exposition for the reader's benefit.  When he *does* volunteer
extraneous information, it speaks to his character, to his 
motivations.  When he does digress, it is always on a topic that has 
some strong emotional resonance for him."

Elkins pulls a thin red ribbon out of one pocket and begins threading 
it into one of the braids of her horse's mane.

"Haven't you ever wondered," she asks, "why Crouch Jr. went to all 
the trouble to turn his father's body into a bone and then bury it in 
Hagrid's garden, rather than just, say, transfiguring it to dust?  
Young Crouch's sense of justice was twisted.  It was bent.  It was 
warped utterly out of proportion.  But there wasn't anything 
*stunted* about it.  If anything, it was overdeveloped.  
Overdeveloped, and very badly broken.  I'd say that he cared a great 
deal about what became of his mother's body.  I think that he cared 
enormously about that."

"*I* think that he was just a twisted little psycho," Cindy says.

"Well."  Elkins shrugs.  "The two are hardly mutually exclusive.  But 
all right.  Let's leave aside the question of how Crouch Jr. might 
have felt about his father leaving his mother to be buried on prison 
grounds by Dark creatures under the identity of a notorious and 
publicly loathed convicted criminal.  Let's get back on topic.  
*Somebody* had to tell young Crouch about his mother's death.  Either 
Winky did it, or his father did.  And I just keep thinking...well, 
how would you go about explaining something like that to a very sick 
teenager?  Especially if he hadn't yet started shooting his mouth off 
about wanting to run off to restore his fallen master to power?  If 
you didn't know yet that he was Ever So Evil?  If you thought that he 
might actually be repentent, or at least redeemable?  Seriously.  How 
would you?"

"Well," says Eileen slowly.  "I guess that all depends.  Am I winky, 
or am I Barty Crouch Sr.?"

"An excellent question.  I'm sure that Winky would have tried to 
soften the blow a whole lot more.  But whoever it was, I imagine that 
they would have emphasized the following factors."

Elkins holds up her hand and begins ticking them off on her fingers.  
"Your mother really wanted to do this for you," she says.  "She did 
it willingly.  It was her idea.  She absolutely insisted upon it.  It 
was the very last thing that she wanted to do on this earth..."

"All of which was true," says Cindy.

"All of which was certainly true.  But all of which, taken together, 
still doesn't quite add up to the story that Crouch Jr. implies: that 
his father had been dead-set against the idea, that his ailing mother 
had forced his father's hand, that she had only prevailed on her 
husband to relent by placing upon him the unbearable onus of a last 
request.  It doesn't *quite* add up that way.  But I can certainly 
see how if I had been Crouch Jr, then I might have come up with just 
that as my final answer when I sat down to do the math.  Especially 
given what we see elsewhere of his rationalizations when it comes to 
his father."  

"His rationalizations?" repeats Cindy, frowning.

"Yes.  Have you ever taken a really close look at Crouch Jr's own 
account of his rescue from Azkaban?  It's actually quite 
interesting.  Look."  

Elkins reaches down into her satchel of Crouch Jr. Apologetics.  
After a bit of rummaging, she pulls out a rather thick binder, with 
the words "Sympathy For The Devil: Veritaserum, A Close Reading" 
written across the top.

"This is young Crouch's own account of his rescue from Azkaban," she
says.  "With Winky's interjections and the intrusions of the 
narrative voice left out.  It's all part of his response to the first 
question that Dumbledore puts to him formally: 'How did you escape 
from Azkaban?'  Listen."  She opens the binder to a marked page and 
begins to read:

"'They came to visit me.  They gave me a draft of Polyjuice Potion 
containing one of my mother's hairs.  She took a draft of Polyjuice 
Potion containing one of my hairs.  We took on each other's 
appearance....The dementors are blind.  They sensed one healthy, one 
dying person entering Azkaban.  They sensed one healthy, one dying 
person leaving it.  My father smuggled me out, disguised as my 
mother, in case any prisoners were watching through their doors.... 
My mother died a short while afterward in Azkaban.  She was careful 
to drink Polyjuice Potion until the end.  She was buried under my 
name and bearing my appearance.  Everyone believed her to be me.'"

Elkins closes the binder.

"That's Crouch Jr's own account of how he was rescued from Azkaban," 
she says.  "Do you notice anything unusual about it?"

"His father," Eileen whispers.  "Where's his poor father?  His father 
is barely even *there.*" 

"No.  He really isn't, is he?  Crouch Jr. doesn't even make his 
father the subject of his *sentences* when he can avoid it.  He 
denies his father even the grammatical role of active agent.  The 
subject of his sentences is almost always either 'my mother' or the 
ever-so-evasive 'they.'  'They gave me a draft of Polyjuice Potion 
containing one of my mother's hairs.'  Yes?  Well, *who* did?  Who 
actually handed him the potion to drink?  What do you think, Eileen?" 

"His father," says Eileen.  "His father did."

Elkins nods.  "If he can really remember that event at all," she 
says. "If he's not just going by what he was told about it later, 
then I'd be willing to bet that it was his father who handed it to 
him.  If it had been his mother, then he would have said so.  He 
can't actually lie under the veritaserum, though, so instead he uses 
that evasive parental plural.  There is only one place in his entire 
account of his rescue from prison where Crouch Jr. allows his father 
to be the subject of the sentence. 'My father smuggled me out, 
disguised as my mother, in case any prisoners were watching through 
their doors.'  He doesn't deny his father the role of active agent in 
that sentence, but he does smear him with that rather dubious 
verb.  'Smuggled.'  It's as if he wants to taint his father's 
involvement as much as possible, to imbue it with criminal 
associations.  His mother is the one who 'saved' him.  His father 
just 'smuggled' him.

"And have you ever paused to consider what the very first sentence of 
Crouch Jr's confession is?  The very first thing that he says under 
interrogation?"

"'Yes,'" says Cindy.

Elkins waits.

"No," explains Cindy.  "I mean, that's the first thing that he says 
under interrogation.  Dumbledore asks him if he can hear him.  And he 
answers: 'Yes.'"

"Oh, for..."  Elkins closes her eyes.  "Work *with* me here, can't 
you?  *After* that!  The first thing that he says *after* that!"

"Oh, sorry," says Cindy innocently.  "I guess I misunderstood."  

Eileen giggles.

Elkins glares at both of them.  "Dumbledore asks him," she says 
through gritted teeth.  "How he came to be there.  How he escaped 
from Azkaban.  And the very first thing that he says, his very first 
sentence in response is: 'My mother saved me.'  Don't you find that 
telling?  If his affect weren't so deadened, one might even be 
tempted to call it defensive.  How did you come to be here?  'My 
*mother* saved me.'  His entire opening paragraph, in fact: 

"'My mother saved me.  She knew she was dying.  She persuaded my 
father to rescue me as a last favor to her.  He loved her as he had 
never loved me.  He agreed.' 

"It all seems very much of a piece to me.  Those concepts all go 
together: my mother was the one who saved me, my mother pressured my 
father into rescuing me, my father never really loved me.  They are a 
conceptual whole.  Taken together, they form a coherent emotional 
argument."

"A coherent emotional argument?"

"Yes.  And what that argument says is: 'I didn't owe my father a 
damned thing.'"

Eileen nods slowly.  "I've never believed Barty Jr. when he says that 
his father didn't love him," she says.  "It seems to me like the sort 
of thing any immature teenager might say."

"Yes.  Well, that whole dying request story strikes me in very much 
the same way, honestly.  It seems like exactly the sort of spin that 
an adolescent in young Crouch's position would have put on what he 
had very likely been told about his mother's death.  It's very 
romantic.  It's very dramatic.  It casts his mother as an absolute 
saint, and his father as a bit of an ogre.  And it does something 
else as well.  Something very important."

"It absolves him from gratitude," says Cindy.

"Yep.  That's precisely what it does.  *Especially* if we assume that 
wizards really do take last requests very seriously.  If last 
requests can't be refused, then what does young Crouch really owe to 
his father for saving his life, anyway?  Nothing, that's what.  
Nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  Zero.  He owes it all to his mother.  Who, 
conveniently enough, is *dead* and therefore in no position to place 
any demands on him."  

"Convenient, that."

"Oh, it's *very* convenient.  Particularly when you consider one last 
thing."  Elkins takes a deep breath.  "By the time that he is 
speaking under the veritaserum," she says.  "Crouch Jr. has become a 
*parricide.*  And while we're only guessing that wizards might have a 
strong belief in last requests, and while we're only guessing that 
they might have strong feelings about proper burial, there is 
something that we *know* that they believe in."

She waits.

"We know that they believe in life debts," says Eileen.

"Yes.  We know that they believe in life debts.  Awkward things, life 
debts." 

"Don't children owe their parents a life debt as a matter of simple 
default?" asks Cindy.

"Awkward things," Elkins says again.  "Life debts."  

This time, with narrative feeling.

She sighs and presses the heels of her palms hard against her eyes.

"Crouch Jr. implies that his father only saved him because his mother 
prevailed upon him to do so," she says.  "He says it under 
veritaserum, which means that it must be his truth.  But his truth is 
not necessarily the same thing as his father's truth.  And I can 
think of far too many reasons why it *would* have been his truth.  
And far too few ways that he could possibly have known it for sure.

"I'm somewhat reminded, in fact," she adds, "of that painting that 
you linked to, Eileen."  She removes her hands from her eyes and 
glances over to Eileen.  "In your Crouch as Tragic Hero post?  The 
URL that Porphyria sent you?  The one that you proposed as the Crouch 
family portrait?"

Eileen nods.  "Jacques-Louis David," she says.  "_The Lictors Bring 
to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons._"  

"Yes, that's the one.  Brutus' wife is featured in that painting, 
isn't she?  She's there with her two daughters, on the right hand 
side, the very brightest part of the canvas.  She's bathed in light.  
The viewer's eye is naturally drawn to her first; it just can't help 
but be.  But she's not really the subject of the painting at all, is 
she?  The subject of the painting is really her husband.  Who is 
harder to see.  Slower to catch the attention of the viewer.  
Obscured in the shadows.

"But Brutus is the *real* subject of that painting," concludes 
Elkins.  "Not his wife.  I don't think that saving his son from 
Azkaban was only Crouch's wife's error.  I think that it was also his 
own.  I think that in the end, Crouch saved his son because he wanted 
to."


*******************

Elkins
(who prefers The Death of Marat)

**********************************************************************

REFERENCES

This post is continued from part four.  It is mainly a response
to messages 45402 (Crouch Sr as Tragic Hero) and 45693 (Crouch and
Winky), but also cites or references messages 43326, 43447, 44636, 
46923, and 46935.

"This time, with narrative feeling" -- in some branches of reader 
response criticism, 'narrative feeling' is the term used to describe 
those emotional reactions to the text which derive from the reader's 
engagement with the text's narrative, or story-telling, elements.  
The most common example is a reader's sense of personal 
identification with a fictional character.

Link to "The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons:"
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/david/brutus.jpg 

For further explanation of the acronyms and theories in this post, 
visit Hypothetic Alley at
http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon/faq/ 
and Inish Alley at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database?
method=reportRows&tbl=13