A Reader's Manipulation

Upon beginning a novel, you relax and project yourself into events that exist within the text. As Calvino states, “once you’re absorbed in reading there will be no budging you.” You choose to begin the novel, but as the first sentence glides beneath your eyes, you give up your ability to make decisions because the new world you enter is not your own. The text is the driving force, compelling you to “follow events of pages and pages with passive resignation.” Yet, while you have no control over the passing events, you still “find yourself involved, despite yourself.” This is the manipulative world of the story, which is the basic plot to Calvino’s novel.
Calvino structures If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler in a way that demonstrates your lake of control. By beginning a new story every other chapter, Calvino erases the traditional method of storytelling, in which an ending resolves the main idea of the narrative. The absence of an ending evokes frustration, as it goes against your expectations. You feel the need to enter the novel to find a resolution, but you are bound to the text and unable to influence its structure. So you carry your frustration with you, which influences your understanding of the text. So, to represent you, the reader, Calvino inserts a protagonist called “Reader.” Throughout the novel, this character searches for the endings of the books he begins but is consistently disappointed. Your annoyance is reflected in him, as you both yearn to find some meaning to the plots of the many novels. Yet, neither of you are ever satisfied with an ending.
However, by the novel’s end, you realize that the plot was never the point of the story, and that you and “Reader” are chasing a main idea that never existed. Instead of a moral or lesson, the main idea of the novel is to demonstrate how a text manipulates the reader. Because the text is unchangeable, you are forced surrender your control on events, just as “Reader,” regardless of the frustration involved.