Beware The Introvert Redemption Plot
A plot pattern in some best-selling books and others popularly read in book clubs places introverted characters in a constraining box that subtly harms us all.
If you read as much as I do, you notice patterns. In a crime novel taking place in a cozy, remote setting, if a murder occurs early in the book, there will usually be a second murder around the halfway or two-thirds mark. In a spy novel, the betrayer will be the person most trusted and least suspected by the character who is most at risk. These conventions are harmless plot devices that normally go unnoticed when they are surrounded by vivid characters experiencing well-described dilemmas.
While reading to select works for my monthly Introvert Book Club series, I noticed a plot pattern that I do not regard as benign. I call it The Introvert Redemption Plot, and I believe it harmfully reinforces the cultural dominance of extroverts and contributes to disparagement and misunderstanding of introverts who refuse to play by the extrovert rule book.
In skeleton form, The Introvert Redemption Plot tells the story of an introvert whose solitary life is constrained by fears, timidity, a traumatic past or social awkwardness. He or she collides with another individual or with some new kind of social challenge. Transformation gradually occurs, with the introvert ending up more emotionally mature and either connected in a healthy relationship or more integrated into the community. He or she is much better off than before, having adopted the habits and preferences of extroverts.
Assumptions built into The Introvert Redemption Plot
First and foremost, this plot structure implicitly identifies being an introvert as the main character’s central problem. He or she is abnormal, flawed – not an ordinary individual with a friend or relative problem, someone whose life goal remains out of reach or a person who has had a run of bad luck. Rather, the problem is that he or she has embraced solitude. The character has boxed himself or herself in. The story’s drama consists in demonstrating to the character that his or her retreat is unfulfilling and unnecessary. The character shakes off previous introvert habits and emerges like a gorgeous butterfly, no longer an ugly, prickly caterpillar.
Contrary to that assumption, however, introverts can be content and healthy being introverts. There is already enough societal pressure, without novels and movies piling on as well, telling introverts that we need to become more extroverted, more “normal,” in order to live happily ever after. We don’t need redemption just for being introverts!
Second, this plot line gives relationships and community more transformative power than they necessarily have. It puts introverts in the position of the maiden waiting for the magical kiss of the prince or the welcoming beckon into a circle of accepting neighbors. After all, relationships can produce more pain than joy, and communities do not always envelop newcomers in a warm, welcoming hug. Just as often, more apartness or more self-acceptance without change helps the introvert – but this possibility gets ruled out by the very momentum of the narrative.
Third, The Introvert Redemption Plot ignores certain pleasures that self-affirming introverts can experience, such as the healthy joy of saying no to a silly party and instead settling in on the couch with ripe strawberries and a to-be-finished book. Or rowing out to the middle of a lake with an old friend and silently fishing together for hours. Or quitting a job because of its humiliating togetherness rituals. Every personality type experiences a combination of nourishments and troubles, not only the latter.
I dislike the word “broken,” but when it comes to what that expression signifies, it’s essential to understand that introverts are not broken simply by virtue of the way we were born. Emotional reserve, a hankering for quiet and a preference for just a few social connections are temperamental traits, not symptoms. Novels that imply that introverts thrive when they are “fixed” amount to cultural propaganda just as much as a plot line where the hero has surgery to become taller or the heroine triumphs after leaving her ethnic roots behind.
To avoid giving publicity to such propaganda, I haven’t named the novels I read that I rejected because I felt they typified The Introvert Redemption Plot. But I hope that after reading this, you’ll have the ability to recognize such damaging and unrealistic exemplars yourself.
Below I’ve listed three novels that most definitely defy The Introvert Redemption Plot and that I’ve written about for Introvert UpThink paid subscribers. To get access to past and upcoming Introvert Book Club posts and to support my efforts to expose harmful perspectives on personality differences, become a paid subscriber (if you’re not already one). And whether you are a paid or free subscriber, thank you for your interest.
Some non-redemption plots
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata