As I mentioned before, I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in a group of talented department majors in my senior capstone group. After considering the next step that I want to take, I decided to post and continue the narrative on my personal website. It truly is a concept that provokes the important discussion into the flaws represented in human structures. However, the narrative is dramatized to make a bold statement and illustration of such issue.
For the background of this story, I included the preface below. If you wanted to check out the technical and creative process that went into creating In Plain Sight, it’s all here. For anyone visiting this site, feel free to email or leave comments if you want to chat about literature or storytelling.
Similarly, I hope to be able to use this website to log my journey and growth in my writing. If this sounds interesting, please consider sticking around. Cheers!
In Plain Sight is a narrative that plays with the convention of the unreliable narrator and focuses on optimizing the characters in it. It is based on aspects of traditional detective fiction, which include the premise of a murder, problem, mystery, and the steps taken to solve it. However, In Plain Sight entangles that to craft a story that plays on the morals and strays from the good morals of the police. It offers and engages the tropes of a character that is not supposed to be seen as a good person and plays with the concept of morals.
To play fully on a character that the reader knew they could not trust, the story was written from the first-person perspective, to portray a distorted narrative that highlighted the concept of an unreliable narrator. It dives into a larger image that relies on the message of corruption within systems, it feels necessary to deliver events through a character that does not hold strong morals and is involved in the scheme from the start. The story is not criticism of police systems but critiques systems more broadly and raises the possibility that there is corruption everywhere. But why? It plays on the moral idea that humans are flawed creatures. Speakers like Aristotle, who talk about the golden mean of human behavior, reflect this theory. Aristotle’s concept of the golden mean develops the idea that there is a right balance to characteristics that make us morally reasonable beings. Because humans are creatures that are influenced by our own desires, there are bound to be flaws in any system that is human-run.
A flawed character allows the story to explore human sin, error, and moral imperfection. Navin is a character that borders aspects of sociopathic behavior and is meant to represent an issue we see in society. The main character acts as an allegory to the overexaggerated depiction of the flaws of human curiosity and fascination that goes part the golden mean. Navin lacks skills in socializing, introducing dramatic irony to the plot because of his role as a police office. His character is not meant to be sympathetic towards others. Reflections of conditioning and abuse are hinted at through Navin and David’s relationship. This does not fully excuse his actions but offers an explanation to his demeanor.
Navin plays the role of an antagonist. The plot structuring of the story contrasts with the Japanese genre of Shin Hokaku. Shin Hokaku is a sub-genre of mystery and known as detective fiction, where clues are exposed, and the reader needs to piece together the truth. Two types of conflicts are presented in the story. The external conflict is shown through the handling of crimes and the police force, itself, presenting the structure of a Person vs. Person and Person vs. Society external conflict. Person vs. Person extends to relationships that the antagonist faces and the rising action that results from these interactions. Person vs. Society reflects the story’s allegory that points to forms of human corruption in work structures. The main character, Navin, struggles with an internal struggle of Person vs. Self, where morals are challenged and discarded in a grotesque manner.
Characterization is a literary device that is used to explain the details of a character and comes in two forms: Direct and Indirect. Indirect characterization is used to shape the personalities of the characters and build to the climax of the story, without directly stating the characteristics of them. Details are discovered through dialogue and interactions with other supporting characters. The concept in this story was expanded with the incorporation of the character’s declining mental health. Clues are presented in relationship dynamics to identify complications and obstacles that hindered the character’s development to obtain acceptable morals. Heightened character flaws help speculate elements of relationships that may be more complicated than the reader thinks. It is not a piece-by-piece puzzle traditionally seen in the structure of Shin Hokaku. The reader is constantly guessing and suspecting all the characters. Narrative immersion is achieved using this complexity to engage the reader in situations that may contrast their own virtues and expose them to grotesque characters throughout the story. An example of this can be seen in the interaction between Navin and Drew.
“‘Drew rolled his eyes, ‘Very funny, Navin. Not the time to joke though. I’d rather not mess around while the scene is still fresh.’
‘Right. If you put it in the freezer, it may last longer” I remarked and ignored his uptight expression. I did that with meat, veggies, and soup. You could freeze anything with the right amount of work.”’
The interaction presents a moral and ethical dilemma. The criminal investigations unit is ordered to control a scene where a body was brutally dismembered. The plot is not mentioned indirectly, but the reader is able to pick up the severity of the crime through the character’s brief descriptions. Navin’s perspective offers the reader a chance to gauge the setting themselves and imagine it in their own way. The experience is like stepping into a dark room and being guided by a voice that only talks about what they think is in it while ignoring things that do not interest them.
The distortion of character is a tool that Flannery O’Connor uses in her works. The tone of the story is set to be shocking and hooks the reader through its gross telling. Characters are mediums for their own beliefs and argue extremes of moral concepts. O’Connor writes her character Ruby Turpin from Revelation as the virtue of self-righteousness. Conflicts and distortions of reality that O’Connor presents alludes to a revelation that she pushes the reader to make through her writing styles. Interactions are written to bother the reader in their shockingly unbothered tones around grotesque topics. In Plain Sight uses these conventions through Navin and the other characters. The distortion of the police is meant to reveal darker truths about systems and flawed moral decisions by “trusted” authorities. Navin’s dialogue is jarring in his nonchalant descriptions of death and mutilation.
Drew is a character that plays a reasonable character, who is driven by his own fears and poor financial situation. Each character introduced in the plotline is morally flawed in diverse ways and represents the forms of the seven deadly sins described in Christianity: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Drew is corrupt for ignoring the wrongdoings that occurred in the police force. The greed of his own financial situation is built on the back of human suffering. His character is fully aware of what is happening but does not speak to afford expenses. The character reflects the reality that people face to keep a job that is against their own morals to provide income. Not one character is fully right in what they are doing, and all in-turn play into the corrupt nature of the system, whether they do so for right reasons or not.
The story centers around mental health, the unreliable narrator, social/familial dynamic issues, corruption, moral imperfection, addictions, and blinding the audience to the full picture. For example, the tone of the character’s own thoughts and feelings on the matter. In Jeff Lindsay’s 1952 book Darkly Dreaming Dexter, his character’s tone stood as a steppingstone on how I could approach Navin’s own speaking in the story.
Examples of this are seen in Darkly Dreaming Dexter:
“There were seven of them, seven small bodies, seven extra dirty orphan children laid out on rubber shower sheets, which are neater and don’t leak. Seven straight lines pointing straight across the room” (Lindsay 6).
“Neatness takes time, of course, but it’s worth it. It is worth it to make the Dark Passenger happy, keep him quiet for another long while. Worth it just to do it right and tidy. Remove one more heap of mess from the world. A few more neatly wrapped bags of garbage and my one small corner of the world is a neater, happier place. A better place” (Lindsay 7).
Notably, concepts I took from Lindsay’s handling of Dexter are statements that are bold and outlandish. Even those that are gruesome when you consider what context they are said in. Like Dexter, Navin’s character takes a similar listlessness towards the brutality of the scenes that he describes in his work as a police officer. Lindsay uses language that plays up Dexter’s own admiration for himself. This mechanism was used the writing and structuring of Navin. He is a narcissistic and uncaring character, whose crassness can be played up in comments that he makes himself.
“’Would you rather take the rookie to a coffee shop for standard talks?’’ I hummed while hopping into the driver’s seat of the van, half my body hanging out. Drew raised an eyebrow, ‘…Yeah, actually I would.’
I smiled and closed the door to the van. The CSI van’s engine roared to life, as I reached for the buckle.”’
Navin’s interaction and comment of asking if Drew would rather do paperwork, he makes no consideration to his preference and drives off. Furthermore, the result of this scene is more shown through the reactions of other characters, like Connor.
‘“Connor, who must have been listening to our conversation, looked over, “…is Drew coming with us?” He appeared hesitant to ask. I shook my head, “Drew said he wanted to go do paperwork.” For some reason, the rookie decided to stay silent the rest of the drive to the station.”’
Connor is a character set up to have strong morals that are shown later in the story, reacts with silence. Navin cannot gauge “why” exactly this was his reaction, which is another example in the plot of how incapable Navin’s ability to read emotions and understand them is. To Navin, Connor did not want to talk. However, for Connor this is a very awkward interaction to view between two coworkers and would be considered rude to most, if this were told from another perspective.
The plot utilizes indirect characterization to display the mental instabilities of the character but can be assumed through the choice of languages and optimization of the use of dialogue. It is not a story that relies on setting up the scene, but the story is told through the first-person perspective of a character that is in his own world and is careless with others that do not meet his needs. The limitation of this perspective is that the reader is unable to fully grasp what is going on in the plot. If the story was told by a third person, it would allow a fuller picture of the setting and how off-putting the interactions are.
The nature of the investigation scene and police handling were taken from works of Detective Conan by Gosho Aoyama, a classic Japanese detective story. Detective Conan, as a character, has extraordinarily strong beliefs and intricate processes in how he went about investigations. Or the audience can look to a work like Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police were a larger mystery or convention strikes an island. Ogawa’s tale incorporates a larger “villain” of the Memory Police, whose purpose is to act as an object of opposition. In Plain Sight the audience read from the complicated perspective of the opposition itself. Navin is involved in the problem that is plaguing the city, but it won’t be revealed till later.
Inspiration is taken from the author Osamu Dazai, a Japanese artist who experienced severe mental health issues. Dazai wrote No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, both of which are used for the capstone. Ironically, Dazai writes under the semi-autobiographical genre, but plays up the narratives to fit his books. Most of them make a grim and depressive commentary towards the nature of the human condition, all of which were meant to depict the tragedies that he faced while growing up. Dazai was fascinated by death, which allows for his writing to come as off-putting, as he talks about morbid subjects with a tinge of normalcy. Taking from that, Navin’s character took on this normalcy in topics around death. In investigation scenes, Navin never asks about the identity or expresses any sorrowful reactions to these murders.
Dazai’s writing reflects his desire to die in an obsessive and rationalized way, like Navin’s fascination with the complexity of crimes.
“Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgement on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men” (The Setting Sun 135).
“Is Immaculate truthfulness a sin? Now that I harbored doubts about the one virtue I had depended on, I lost all comprehension of everything around me. My only resort was drink” (No Longer Human 103).
In the first example, Dazai talks about his own fantasies around the topic of suicide and in the second are his comments about abuse from husbands in marriages. He uses a complicated balance between his own commentary on life, versus the small instances of hope that he experienced. A plot that comes off as too negative will fail to engage the reader is a compelling story that is meant to carry the message about corruption. There is importance in how much of a grim tone is needed to create a strong character. While Navin’s character was also inspired by characters like Dexter and Dazai’s own disposition, the story would not allow the reader to immerse themselves if the darker tones were too strong.
In Plain Sight presents a grim undertone, where the characters’ own behavior points towards larger issues. Navin’s character to hold similar archetypes of the “likeable killer” like Dexter, who the audience could not help but continue to read more about. Literature that showcased balancing out and handling characters that are mentally unwell were the works of In the Dream House by Carmen Machado, which construct a darker view of relationships and mental health in a toxic situation. The character’s actions and personality are wrapped from the experiences that she faced. But the lack of empathy from Navin’s help hint to the inexperience that he may have with socializing.
Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin allows readers to experience his navigation in writing a character facing addiction and the complicated feelings that result from the family. In the story, the reader can understand the hurt that the family faced during the narrator’s struggle with alcohol and drugs. Still, it showcased criticism from both sides in how they handled dealing with such issues. The question of “who’s in the right?” was brought up by Baldwin, which carried on into my project. No one is completely justified in their actions during the plot of In Plain Sight. But reflection back to the theory of human nature being corrupt in nature, each character has rationalized their part in this crime. Just like how it takes a village to raise something, it takes a village to destroy it too.
The story was planned for Navin to be the sole killer in this string of murders and the plot would be his incoherent fantasies about this. But a plot like that would be too strong in one way and too straightforward for detective fiction. In the study of fiction, an antagonist character that is impossible to garner sympathy only retains short-term benefits. Thomas Harris’s 1981 Hannibal Lecturer is an amazing example of this. Lecter is completely wrong in his ideals. However, the difference in this type of plot is Harris’s use of the character of Will Graham, who served as a strong character that caught Lecter’s fascination. Navin’s character is not driven by his obsessiveness towards a particular person but by his interest in observing and being near brutalities. There is not an appropriate character is this sidekick role in this capstone.
This is the opposite of the antagonistic characters like Dracula by Bram Stoker from 1987. Navin’s character is more flexible, and the story starts to hint to contributing factors of why he is like this through comments, especially regarding the comments about David and Rogers. The character is an object of obsession towards Rogers and David. Their history will be revealed to be existing since the academy where Navin was made to drive both characters to the bar, knowing that it would get him in trouble. Navin’s superiority complex is diminished with the mention of these two characters. What makes a self-absorbed character back down to this extent?
In Plain Sight is a play-on narrative that used the exaggerated elements of mental health and drove them into an unstable narrator. This capstone showcases the complexity of using characterization to build a mystery that the reader is forced to piece together through the reactions and interactions between the characters. Nothing is told directly or revealed and gives the reader their own mental loopholes in the process of reading about this crime.
Kayanne Marti 
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