A Prisoner Of The Past
I2Q February 2016 editorial
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There are many situations that reveal a character´s depth in storytelling. Seeing how they handle injustice or a handicap are just two examples. There is one element that is often used which includes a historical perspective of the character. It can be a positive force in the development of the character or a negative one. Elements such as foreshadowing can sometimes be a part of this storytelling element. This element is one I like to call ”A prisoner of the past” element (I don´t doubt that others have a more academic name for it and so be it) and it is part of all our daily lives in one form or another.

A good way to describe it would be to say that it´s when a character´s choice options seem dictated by past events. Or better yet, when the past can seem to foretell or dictate the future of a character. Now there is a tragic side to the ”prisoner of the past” storytelling element because whenever a character is robbed of free will or the possibility of molding their own future we consider that tragic.

A good example is a character with post traumatic stress disorder. This is extreme and it´s when a character is constantly reminded of past events and cannot move forward. So a brave soldier who moves back home after years of combat might have trouble moving forward with his new life as a civilian. He or she is in some ways prisoners of their past. In such stories we find ourselves rooting for the hero and the character development can be fairly positive.

Another more complicated example of ”A prisoner of the past” element are the patterns in a characters life that repeat themselves. (By ”patterns” I mean negative ones). So for example a character that always seems to loose people close to them by seemingly no fault of their own can be said to be a victim of their past. As in the movie ”Contact” when the character played by Jodie Foster looses the people closest to her, starting with her father when she was a child. As a result she is scared to commit herself to anybody and throws herself into the sciences. She is a prisoner of her past.

I can think of an example from real life of someone I know. This person (let´s call her Jane) has a bad habit of never telling the truth. She has gotten so much from life by lying. One day a sibling of hers passed away and left a huge inheritance to her brother. Jane and her sister never got along because of her pathological lying so her sister left her nothing in her will. Jane brought her lawyers to the will meeting and began to negotiate with her brother for a piece of the inheritance. Well in her case old habits don´t die and she began lying. Telling them what great friends her and her sister were. By the time the meeting ended she was only given enough to pay her lawyer fees.

Last I heard Jane is headed to another inheritance meeting from a different relative and I´m pretty sure that she will mess that one up too. In her case, malicious lying was a way for her to get what she wanted in life. This tactic for dealing with life´s adversities has put her in a tight box where she looses more and more over the years because of it. Jane is clearly a victim of her past and will continue to be.

So in conclusion, I´d like to say that many characters in storytelling are prisoners of their past. In the most interesting cases the character will find a way to break free from that grip. Such as the case of the soldier with PTSD I mentioned above. But whether the character does or doesn´t break free isn´t what´s most important. It´s the road to self discovery and their genuine effort that will endear us to them. How they walk that road will reveal the content of their character and what they´re capable of. The prisoner of the past is the protagonist at the root of so many good stories and so much mythology. In a way, I see Homer´s epic poem the “Odyssey” as a kind of metaphor for the prisoner of the past. (I highly recommend reading Homer´s “Odyssey” What a brilliant masterpiece!!!). 

In a nutshell, some links that a character has with the past are healthy while others aren´t. A prisoner of the past is a character who must break the unhealthy links from their past in order to move forward on their quest of self discovery and self actualization.

(Commentary by www.ink2quill.com )
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