The Living Library Character Analysis

Atypical behaviour for a first time encounter, Sylvia the protagonist of "The Living Library" by Linda McCleardy, self-sabotages her meeting through her personal presentation and lack of boundaries. Disclosing questionable information from one 's personal life and creating an uncomfortable situation for a professional seems detrimental when seeking their guidance. However, nonchalantly, avoiding social cues and lacking insight, the 25-year-old woman flounders through her conversation, surprisingly unaware of the resulting projected effect caused by her behaviour. With an impressive lack of insight and a tendency to ignore social cues, Sylvia is a complex character who due to her traits, is unable to develop throughout the text in order

Interrupting her “open book” by commenting “I think I’ve got good judgement” (175) and commenting later on about how she would study psychology especially “cause I’ve got good listening skills” (178) , is an accurate display of how her illusion of herself differs in great magnitude from how she is perceived by others. Due to her inability to accurately self reflect and represent, her capacity for change, improvements and growth are stunted, for one can not fix a problem they do not know is present. However, not only is her self perception imprecise and unreliable, Sylvia is also unable to comprehend social cues from others which provide feedback with respects to the response evoked by her disposition. Failing to respect her company’s explicit refusal to her invasion of his personal space, Sylvia “starts giving him a vigorous back massage” (177). Even though she was directly given feedback for her actions, she struggled to respect the simple request. As a result of her blatant disregard to criticism from others and her unreliable self perception Sylvia remains a static as she has no motive to change her ways, not being able to comprehend her affect on