Quantum Character Identity: Superposition and Reader Collapse in Literary Ambiguity

Abstract

This essay introduces the concept of Quantum Character Identity, a new framework for understanding literary ambiguity through the metaphor of quantum superposition. Drawing from physics, narratology, and reader-response theory, it argues that certain fictional characters exist in multiple contradictory identities simultaneously, awaiting resolution through the reader’s interpretive act—termed Reader Collapse. Through case studies of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Borges’s The Garden of Forking Paths, and Danielewski’s House of Leaves, the essay demonstrates how ambiguity functions as a structural condition rather than a stylistic device. This interdisciplinary model reframes ambiguity as a dynamic interplay between text and reader, enriching literary theory and opening new paths for analysis across postmodern, ergodic, and metamodern literature.