# Are there any novels where a character breaks the Fourth Wall **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 13, 2015, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742 "2015-08-13T14:52:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/21 "2015-08-13T17:49:05Z")
John Barth does this all the time. In “Dunyazadiad,” the first book of **Chimera** , Barth shows up in Shaharazade’s bedroom. In “Bellerophoniad,” there’s a discussion of how the story resembles Joseph Campbell’s archetype. “Lost in the Funhouse” is a story where Ambrose is lost in a funhouse and tries to get out by imagining he’s the character in a story about being lost in a funhouse. The character also gives advice on how to write a story. **LETTERS** has Barth as one of the characters. Gene Wolfe’s **Book of the New Sun** ends each volume with a paragraph saying something like, “Reader, I’ve taken you this far. You may not want to continue.” ---
**Author:** ![Stephe96](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Stephe96](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stephe96)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/22 "2015-08-13T17:51:41Z")
_ **The Athenian Murders** _ (2003) by Jose Carlos Somoza. Yep, the fourth wall is most certainly broken, but to say any more would be a spoiler. ---
**Author:** ![Disheavel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@Disheavel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disheavel)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/23 "2015-08-13T18:21:16Z")
Two novels that don’t explicitly break the third wall, but seem to be speaking directly to the reader rather than to a journal or someone else in the room are **The Martian** by Andy Weir and **The Life of Pi** by Yann Martel. In many ways this is similar to **RealityChuck** ’s suggestion of Moby Dick, _etc_. Many narrative books written in the first person with more details than would ever be written down or said aloud break the fourth wall simply due to the style. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/24 "2015-08-13T18:29:28Z")
One of Tim Dorsey’s “Serge Storm” novels has a _narrator_ go psycho. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/25 "2015-08-13T18:29:30Z")
It’s may not what the OP means, but I always felt like Stephen King’s Dark Tower books regularly broke the fourth wall by referencing other books or characters in his novels. If you hadn’t read those novels, the references might be totally lost on you, though the idea of interconnecting all of his works was an intentional point of the Dark Tower series. I seem to remember that Stephen King himself appears in the novels. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/26 "2015-08-13T19:30:21Z")
_Don Quijote_ does this vividly. Besides the story-within-a-story tricks, at the start of the second part, Cervantes addresses the reader by (IIRC) having Quijote talk about how Cervantes is telling you the REAL story. IRL, this was in response to someone who pretended to be Cervantes and published an unauthorized Quijote sequel. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/27 "2015-08-13T21:55:21Z")
In _The Number of the Beast_, Heinlein has one of his point-of-view characters say, “Let me tell you, you nonexistent reader sitting there with a tolerant sneer. Jane is more real than you are.” Clearly breaking the fourth wall, certainly. But it also foreshadows… …the later discovery in the book that all universes are merely fiction in another universe. So the character is speaking nothing but literal truth. There’s a reader out there who he fears is mocking him. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/28 "2015-08-13T21:58:55Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > _Don Quijote_ does this vividly. Besides the story-within-a-story tricks, at the start of the second part, Cervantes addresses the reader by (IIRC) having Quijote talk about how Cervantes is telling you the REAL story. IRL, this was in response to someone who pretended to be Cervantes and published an unauthorized Quijote sequel. Oh, yeah, good one! In the second book, too, Quixote and Sancho Panza meet people who have read about them in the first book. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/29 "2015-08-13T22:13:21Z")
The narrator in Charlotte Bronte’s novel **Villette** does this. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/30 "2015-08-13T22:21:54Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > _Moby Dick_: “Call me Ishmael.” First one that popped into my mind - but then, I once had to write an entire dissertation on that one line, so 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/31 "2015-08-13T22:31:18Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Any book written in the first person, really. I’m pretty sure that most books written in the first person never “break the fourth wall”, the narrator just says “I did this and I did that” without ever addressing the reader. There are also stories where a first person narrator may be telling their story to a “you” who is clearly another fictional character, as in an epistolary novel. There are plenty of exceptions though, as this thread shows. One that hasn’t been mentioned yet is _A Clockwork Orange_. Alex addresses the reader as “you” and “my brothers” in a rather old-fashioned way. There’s also _The Princess Bride_, where William Goldman addresses the reader as part of the framing device where he’s editing/abridging the “original” S. Morgenstern novel. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/32 "2015-08-13T22:38:12Z")
Asimov’s another author who’s explicitly written himself into his own stories, specifically in _Murder at the ABA_. ---
**Author:** ![Wallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/dc4da7/32.png) [@Wallaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallaby)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/33 "2015-08-13T22:45:14Z")
> [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](#): > > Bored of the Rings: > > _“No,” agreed Bromosel, looking across the gray surface of the page to the thick half of the book still in the reader’s right hand. “We have a long way to go.”_ > > …and of course the famous prophecy: > > _Five-eleven’s your height, one-ninety your weight > You cash in your chips around page eighty-eight._ Actually, both _The Hobbit_ and _Lord of the Rings_ directly talk to the reader in a few places - although in _LOTR_ that gets quickly dropped in the shift in style from ‘telling a kid’s story’ in the first half of _Fellowship_ to ‘Noble Historic Saga’ for the rest. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/34 "2015-08-14T00:55:37Z")
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne, in nine volumes published from 1759 to 1767. > [@](#): > > I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing;— \*\*[forwarding along] \*\* —I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me.—Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;—you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, &c.& c.—and . . . Don Quixote is older (1605 and 1615), but Tristram Shandy is pretty old. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/35 "2015-08-14T01:10:39Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I’m pretty sure that most books written in the first person never “break the fourth wall”, the narrator just says “I did this and I did that” without ever addressing the reader. As someone once pointed out, the narrator is talking to _someone_, and it’s usually the reader (though he or she might not call attention to the fact). “The Ballad of Eskimo Nell” has the stanza : “Have you seen the giant pistons On the mighty C.P.R. With the driving force of a thousand horse. Well, you know what pistons are.” ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/36 "2015-08-14T01:30:24Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > As someone once pointed out, the narrator is talking to _someone_, and it’s usually the reader (though he or she might not call attention to the fact). Well, I have to disagree with “someone” then. First person narratives are often presented as the narrator’s _thoughts_ and not a story being told to or written for anyone else. In theater characters sometimes share their thoughts with the audience through a soliloquy, but this isn’t considered a breaking of the fourth wall. It’s only breaking the fourth wall if the character directly acknowledges the audience. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/37 "2015-08-14T03:22:04Z")
**The Catcher in the Rye** : > [@](#): > > If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. ---
**Author:** ![Biotop](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biotop/32/321_2.png) [@Biotop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biotop)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/38 "2015-08-14T04:38:01Z")
In what is possibly the best locked room mystery of all time, John Dickson Carr’s\*\* The Three Coffins\*\*, detective Dr. Fell comes right out and says that the story is just detective fiction and his lecture on how locked room puzzles as a whole may be solved is purely for those interested in an academic discussion of the genre. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/39 "2015-08-14T05:21:43Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > It’s may not what the OP means, but I always felt like Stephen King’s Dark Tower books regularly broke the fourth wall by referencing other books or characters in his novels. If you hadn’t read those novels, the references might be totally lost on you, though the idea of interconnecting all of his works was an intentional point of the Dark Tower series. I seem to remember that Stephen King himself appears in the novels. Specifically, the character of Don Callahan (who first appears in _Wolves of the Calla_, and also appears in _Song of Susannah_ and _The Dark Tower_ - books 5-7 of the _Dark Tower_ series) finds out that he is a character in _'Salem’s Lot_, yet is real in the _Dark Tower_ series. And Roland and Eddie have to come to “Keystone Earth” to get King to keep writing the Dark Tower books. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742/40 "2015-08-14T06:06:10Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Well, I have to disagree with “someone” then. First person narratives are often presented as the narrator’s _thoughts_ and not a story being told to or written for anyone else. In theater characters sometimes share their thoughts with the audience through a soliloquy, but this isn’t considered a breaking of the fourth wall. It’s only breaking the fourth wall if the character directly acknowledges the audience. And many, many first-person narratives do this, as noted above. It’s as old as the hills. The notion of breaking the fourth wall as some kind of unusual thing comes from theater, not literature. In literature it’s an old tradition. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-novels-where-a-character-breaks-the-fourth-wall/727742.md?page=3)