Ludic Narrative Structure and Character Formation in Susanna Clare’s Piranesi

Abstract

The article examines Piranesi by Susanna Clarke using digital humanities, which considers the mechanics of the gameplay and flow of the characters in the piece. The article positions Piranesi as a story incorporating the exploratory gameplay features to shape the development of the characters by spatial traversing, learning new game rules, expanding memory, and uncovering the story bit by bit. The main character documents his findings of the House, but those who explore the game world do not get explicit data but rather find out its hidden mechanisms. The paper uses digital humanities, based on the narrative theory and ludic studies and shows that Piranesi builds characters by performing repetitive actions as they face constraints and discovery. Diary entries are one of the storytelling devices used in the novel, which makes the narrative work well, but restricts the reader's knowledge since the story is presented in the game-like format of character growth over the years. The game narrative of Piranesi functions on another system than game storytelling, whereby the players are more concerned with ethical behaviour rather than dominance and control. The system of the game does not allow the players to employ extractive or goal-oriented gameplay techniques. In addition, the paper shows that Piranesi incorporates the literary storytelling technique by using game-based systems to illustrate that modern literature is not exempt from using its digital components to draw upon experimental structural constructs. It supplements digital humanities scholarship by indicating that a method of analysing data through games can indicate the character development in modern English literature in a manner that goes beyond a superficial game-like interpretation. Piranesi exposes a human presence of competitive play in the manner in which it portrays knowledge acquisition as one of the things that takes place during physical exploration rather than by means of competition domination.