3.4: Narrative Style and Personal Integrity

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See 392c-398b. Some stories are told entirely through the words and gestures of the characters depicted. Other stories are told entirely in the voice of the poet. Still other stories have a mix of styles, the poet sometimes speaking in his or her own voice, the characters sometimes speaking in their own voices. Plays are of the first sort. Many songs are of the second sort. And epic poems fall into the third category. Which narrative style, Socrates asks, is best suited for the poems that the guardians-in-training are to study? He recommends a version of the third, mixed style: “when a moderate man comes upon the words or actions of a good man in the course of a narration, he will be willing to report them as if he were that man himself” and quote the man directly; but “when he comes upon a character who is beneath him . . . he will be unwilling to make himself resemble this inferior character.” Socrates bases his recommendation upon the principle that every citizen is to do one and only one job, a single craft or integrated cluster of crafts. In keeping with this idea, each citizen should have an integrated moral character. No one should be fickle or moody – passionate about an issue one day, indifferent the next, abstemious one day, drunk the next. Everyone should understand, appreciate, and remain who and what they are. Literary education, therefore, should support and not undermine one’s personal integrity. Recall that young people in Socrates’ day would have memorized the poems they studied by reciting them aloud, probably with feeling and expression, perhaps also with gestures. In this way, the first-person voices woven into the fabric of the poems would have been brought to life by the student again and again. Socrates assumes that imitative playacting of this sort cannot help but influence a person’s character. Hence his proscriptions.

To what extent are professional actors affected in their private lives by the roles they take on?
To what extent do children become like the persons they imitate through playacting?
Suppose someone were to object that the intimacy of first-person narration, far from corrupting young people, helps them imagine and appreciate what it is like to suffer from a moral vice, and that this is not something they are likely to find appealing afterwards. How might Socrates reply?