Chapter4 character notes
The Centrality of Characters in Fiction
Characters are fundamental to the experience of fiction for both writers and readers.
Fact: The watercolor Dickens' Dream depicts Charles Dickens surrounded by his vast array of characters, illustrating their pervasive presence in a writer's mind.
Fact: Author Elie Wiesel states that characters can feel sentient, compelling a writer to "tell their stories" because "they want to get out," highlighting their profound influence on the creative process.
Readers primarily engage with stories due to the "someone" to whom events happen, and this "someone" often lingers in memory long after plot details fade.
Example: While broad knowledge of Charles Dickens might be limited, iconic characters like Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol (1843) remain vividly recognizable, demonstrating how characters can transcend their original texts.
Defining a Character in Literature
A character is formally defined as any personage in a literary work who acts, appears, or is referred to as playing a part.
Clarification of "Personage": While often implying a human being, "personage" is not exclusively human.
Fact: Specific fictional genres are partly distinguished by their types of nonhuman characters:
Science Fiction: Often features alien species and intelligent machines.
Fables: Commonly uses animals as central figures.
Traditional Fairy Tales and Modern Fantasy: Frequently includes elves, monsters, and other mythical beings.
Universal Requirement: Regardless of their form, all characters must possess at least some human qualities, such as the capacity for thought, the ability to feel pain, or the experience of falling in love.
Characters, Conventions, and Beliefs in Fictional Worlds
Fictional Worlds and Their Unique Rules
Fictional universes and their characters operate under distinct rules, which often differ significantly from the real world.
These rules also vary from one fictional world to another.
Fact: Literary critic James Wood highlights that a reader's expectation for a character's "depth or reality level" is guided by the author and "adapts to the internal conventions of each book."
Reader Adaptation to Narrative Conventions
Readers must adapt their understanding and expectations to the specific conventions of each work of fiction.
Fact: The ability to read diverse authors like W. G. Sebald, Virginia Woolf, or Philip Roth back-to-back demonstrates this adaptability, as readers do not demand they conform to a single standard.
Learning Objective: A work of fiction succeeds when it effectively teaches the reader how to adapt to its unique conventions and manage their expectations for its characters and their "reality level." Conversely, a failure occurs when this guidance is absent.
Subgenre-Specific Characterization
Different fictional subgenres employ characterization techniques that are unique to their form.
Example: A folktale typically features:
A small number of mainly flat, archetypal characters.
Limited access to characters' inner thoughts.
Minimal detailed descriptions of physiques or wardrobes.
Fact: If a folktale were to deviate significantly from these conventions, it would cease to be a folktale and would lose the particular pleasures and insights inherent to the genre.
Learning Objective: Readers gain a richer experience by understanding and respecting the characterization conventions specific to a subgenre, rather than imposing external expectations.
Cultural and Historical Influences on Character
The portrayal of characters can vary widely across different time periods and cultures, even within the same fictional subgenre.
Fact: These variations often stem from fundamental differences in how societies and individuals understand human nature and personality.
Fact: Conflicting views exist regarding the origins of personality, including:
Innate factors (e.g., genes).
Environmental factors (e.g., upbringing).
Supernatural forces.
Unconscious impulses or drives.
Various combinations of these factors.
Static vs. Dynamic Character and the Self
Cultural and historical perspectives also shape beliefs about whether character is inherently fixed or capable of change.
Fact: Views differ on whether a character is an "unchanging given" or can evolve through experience, conversion, or an act of will.
Learning Objective: Many works of fiction, especially those from different cultures or eras, implicitly reveal diverse understandings of the self through their characterization, prompting readers to re-examine their own assumptions about human nature.
Learning from Diverse Characters and Narratives
Engaging with a wide range of fiction and its varied characters offers significant opportunities for personal growth and self-reflection.
Learning Objective: By encountering characters whose values, beliefs, and ways of life differ from our own, readers can gain deeper insights into their own values, prejudices, and beliefs.
Purpose: The diverse stories presented in texts aim to introduce characters—complex, compelling, or ordinary—who struggle to understand their worlds, mirroring the reader's own journey of making sense of them and, ultimately, themselves.
Heroes and Villains vs. Protagonists and Antagonists
Understanding character roles in fiction involves distinguishing between traditional terms like "hero" and "villain" and more neutral analytical terms like "protagonist" and "antagonist."
Hero/Heroine:
Definition: The leading male (hero) or female (heroine) character, often considered the "good guy."
Traits: Usually larger-than-life, stronger, or better than most humans, sometimes almost godlike.
Purpose: Characters that a text encourages readers to admire and emulate; can apply to admirable non-leading roles as well.
Villain:
Definition: The "bad guy" who opposes the hero.
Protagonist/Antagonist:
Definition: More neutral and older terms for the leading character (protagonist) and their opponent (antagonist).
Distinction: These terms do not imply outstanding virtue or vice, making them generally more appropriate for modern fiction's often more ordinary leading characters.
Analytical Value: Whether a character is a hero can be a strong thesis for an essay, whereas their status as a protagonist usually is not debatable.
Example: Montresor (The Cask of Amontillado) or Ebenezer Scrooge (A Christmas Carol) are undeniably protagonists, though their heroic status is highly questionable.
Exceptions: Some stories allow debate over who the protagonist is (e.g., Sonny and his brother in Sonny's Blues are equally central).
The Antihero:
Definition: A particular type of protagonist, mainly found in fiction since around 1850, who possesses traits that make them the opposite of a traditional hero.
Characteristics: May be difficult to like or admire.
Examples:
The narrator-protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1864 novella Notes from the Underground (paralyzed by hypersensitivity).
More familiar modern examples include Homer and Bart Simpson.
Major Versus Minor Characters
Characters in fiction can be classified by their prominence and complexity within a narrative, typically as either major or minor.
Distinguishing Major and Minor Characters
Major Characters:
Are more frequently present in the narrative over time.
Readers gain more in-depth knowledge about them.
Are perceived as more complex and frequently "realistic" than minor characters.
Minor Characters:
Serve to "fill out" the story.
Are less prominent and may appear less complex.
The Indispensability of Minor Characters
Despite their lesser prominence, minor characters are just as indispensable to a story as major characters.
They play a crucial role in:
Shaping readers' interpretations of, and attitudes toward, the major characters.
Precipitating significant changes that major characters undergo.
Minor Characters as Foils
A common function of a minor character is to act as a foil.
Definition: A character that, by way of contrast, helps to reveal the unique qualities of another character, especially a main character.
Analytical Significance of Minor Characters
Questions concerning minor characters are often suitable for essay topics.
Reason: Their significance to a story is not always immediately apparent.
Process: Formulating a persuasive interpretation of their roles often requires readers to "probe the details of the story."
Flat Versus Round and Static Versus Dynamic Characters
Characters can be further classified by their psychological complexity and whether they undergo change throughout a narrative.
Round Characters:
Definition: Characters that act from varied, often conflicting motives, impulses, and desires.
Complexity: Possess psychological complexity, making them seem more lifelike.
Behavior: They can "surprise convincingly" (as one critic puts it), meaning their actions are not always predictable but remain believable within their complex nature.
Flat Characters:
Definition: Simple, one-dimensional characters.
Behavior: Behave and speak in predictable or repetitive ways, though sometimes these ways can be odd.
Perception vs. Character Change:
Sometimes, characters seem round because readers' impressions of them evolve as the story unfolds.
Other times, the characters themselves physically or psychologically change as a result of story events.
Dynamic Characters:
Definition: A character that undergoes significant internal or external change as a result of the events that occur in the story.
Static Characters:
Definition: A character that does not change throughout the story.
Relationship Between Roundness/Flatness and Dynamism/Staticsm:
General Tendency: Roundness and dynamism often go together, as complex characters are more likely to undergo development.
Distinct Qualities: However, these two qualities are distinct, and one does not necessarily require the other:
Not all round characters are dynamic (a complex character might not change).
Not all dynamic characters are round (a simple character might undergo a clear change, but without deep psychological complexity).
Avoiding Value Judgments:
Caution: It is important not to let terms like flat and round or dynamic and static harden into value judgments.
Misconception: It's easy to assume flat characters are artistically inferior due to their lesser complexity.
Fact/Counter-argument: This assumption is incorrect. Many memorable characters, such as those by Charles Dickens, are flat.
Example: A "truly original flat character" with only one or two distinctive traits or verbal/behavioral tics can often be more memorable than a complex round one.
Real-Life Analogy: In real life, people often know individuals who consistently say or do the same predictable things.
Artistic Purpose: Exaggeration in flat characters can provide both insight and humor.
Specific Examples:
Charles Dickens's gallery includes a middle-aged man who constantly pulls himself up by his own hair and an old man who must continually be "fluffed up" by others because he tends to slide right out of his chair.
South Park's Kenny, who is largely a hooded orange snowsuit, is known for repeatedly dying in outrageous ways and coming back to life.
Stock Characters
Definition: Stock characters are flat characters who represent a familiar, frequently recurring type.
Characteristic: They seem to be pulled out of a "stock-room" of familiar, prefabricated figures.
Examples:
The dumb blond
The mad scientist
The inept sidekick
The plain yet ever-sympathetic best friend
Archetypes
Definition: Archetypes are characters (or other elements like actions or symbols) that recur in the myths and literature of many different ages and cultures.
Distinction: While related to recurring character types, archetypes encompass a broader range of narrative elements beyond just characters.
Examples of Archetypal Characters:
The Trickster Figure:
Appears in various guises across cultures:
Brer Rabbit in the Uncle Remus stories
The spider Anansi in African and Afro-Caribbean folktales
The coyote in Native American folklore
Bugs Bunny
The Scapegoat
Reading Characters in Fiction and Life
We approach characters in fiction similarly to how we understand people in real life.
Methods of Observation:
Observing possessions, attire, appearance, dwelling.
Noticing demeanor and facial expressions.
Analyzing behavior in various situations.
Paying attention to what characters say, how they say it, and what they don't say.
Considering what other characters say about them and how others act in their presence.
Deductive Analysis:
We infer characters' motives, desires, values, and beliefs.
We identify their strengths and weaknesses.
We try to understand what drives them and predict their reactions to new circumstances.
Fact/Learning Objective: The skills of observation and interpretation, combined with an enlarged experience and capacity for empathy developed through reading fiction, are crucial for navigating the real world.
Fictional characters differ significantly from real people.
Artistic Construction:
Fictional characters are imaginary personages, meticulously crafted by authors.
Fact/Learning Objective: They are a product of "careful, deliberate characterization"—the artistic technique of representing fictional figures.
Structured Fictional World:
Fiction presents a more orderly and expansive world than reality.
Every person, gesture, and word serves a meaningful part of a coherent, purposeful design.
Readers' responses are guided by a narrator and the author's intent.
Fiction allows access to characters' inner thoughts, providing unique insights.
It enables interaction with diverse characters (e.g., murderers, ministers, monsters) that might be inaccessible or dangerous in real life.
Characters become meaningful when they represent concepts beyond the narrative.
Fact/Learning Objective: All characters, even highly individualized ones, gain significance by representing something larger than themselves.
This includes: a type of person, a specific set of values or worldview, a human tendency, or a demographic group.
Analytical Approach: To analyze a character deeply, consider:
How the story would change without their presence.
What the author communicates or demonstrates through the character's existence and actions.
Character Likability and Story Quality
The quality of a work of fiction is not dependent on whether its characters are likable or admirable.
Fact: It would be incorrect to assume that an author's outlook or values are identical to those of the protagonist.
Learning Objective: Unlikable or unadmirable characters can often be the most moving and instructive, providing profound insights and lessons.
Evidence for Character Analysis: A Comprehensive Checklist
To thoroughly analyze a character, one should consider the following elements, providing concrete evidence from the text:
The character’s name (e.g., its connotations or symbolism).
The character’s physical appearance (how they are described).
Objects and places associated with the character (what items they possess, where they are found).
The character’s actions (what they do).
The character’s thoughts and speech:
Content: What the character thinks or says.
Timing: When the character thinks or says it.
Phrasing: How the character thinks or says it (e.g., tone, vocabulary, style).
Other characters’ thoughts about the character.
Other characters’ comments to and about the character.
The narrator’s comments about the character (explicit descriptions or insights from the storyteller).
Understanding Character Through Dialogue: An Example from Jane Eyre
The provided conversation between Miss Eyre and Mrs. Fairfax from a nineteenth-century novel serves as an exercise in discerning character simply by attending to what each character says and how they say it.
Facts and Inferences About the Speakers
Facts about the two speakers gleaned from the conversation:
Miss Eyre:
Observant of her surroundings (comments on the order of the rooms, lack of dust).
Inquisitive and persistent in her questioning about Mr. Rochester.
Seeks to understand character beyond surface-level traits or status.
Values an individual's personal qualities over their material possessions or social standing.
Mrs. Fairfax:
Diligent and practical, keeping rooms ready for Mr. Rochester's sudden visits.
Prioritizes Mr. Rochester's comfort and preferences, observing that he "put him out to find everything swathed up."
Her responses are often linked to social standing, reputation, or property (e.g., "the family have always been respected here," "Almost all the land…belonged to the Rochesters").
Hesitant or unable to describe Mr. Rochester's "peculiarities" or deeper character beyond superficial observations like his travels or general cleverness, concluding he is "a very good master."
Inferences about their individual outlooks, personalities, and values:
Miss Eyre's Outlook, Personality, and Values:
Outlook: Critical and analytical, looking for deeper truths.
Personality: Direct, probing, and intellectually curious.
Values: Individual character, intrinsic worth, psychological depth, and personal connection over social status or material wealth.
Mrs. Fairfax's Outlook, Personality, and Values:
Outlook: Conventional, practical, and deferential to social norms and authority.
Personality: Compliant, observant of immediate duties, and somewhat superficial in her social assessments.
Values: Respectability, adherence to societal expectations, financial stability, and maintaining order, rather than deep personal analysis.
Conflicting Definitions of "Character"
Different definitions of the word "character" that emerge:
Mrs. Fairfax's view: "Character" is tied to social standing, inherited respectability, and one's role as a good landlord or master. It refers to an "unimpeachable" reputation, a lack of obvious faults, and perhaps a general sense of being "clever" or well-traveled, as opposed to intrinsic psychological traits. She struggles to articulate distinct peculiarities, suggesting a preference for a broad, socially acceptable definition.
Miss Eyre's view: "Character" signifies individual peculiarities, inner workings, a mix of jest and earnestness, and the true essence of a person's nature, independent of their wealth or position. She seeks a "definite notion of his identity" beyond titles.
How each speaker assesses what matters most in the assessment of character:
Mrs. Fairfax: What matters most is social standing, reputation within the community, and the fulfillment of one's social role (e.g., a "gentleman," a "landed proprietor," a "good master").
Miss Eyre: What matters most is an individual's unique personality, their psychological makeup, and the complexities that make them who they are, apart from their material circumstances.
Methods of Presenting Character: Direct vs. Indirect Characterization
Indirect Characterization (Showing): This method involves the author presenting what characters say, do, or think, and inviting the reader to infer who the characters are, how they see the world, and what they care about.
Fact: In the initial passage, Brontë shows us what Jane (the narrator) and Mrs. Fairfax say, allowing readers to infer details about them and the absent Mr. Rochester.
Direct Characterization (Telling): This method involves the narrator explicitly telling the reader what a character is like, what makes them tick, or what the reader should think of them.
Fact: Authors like Charlotte Brontë also use direct characterization, as seen in the paragraph immediately following the conversation, where Jane (as the narrator) provides her precise interpretation of Mrs. Fairfax.
Jane's Direct Characterization of Mrs. Fairfax and Self-Revelation
In the second passage, Jane (the narrator) tells the reader precisely what she thinks the conversation reveals about Mrs. Fairfax:
Jane describes Mrs. Fairfax as someone who has "no notion of sketching a character, or observing and describing salient points, either in persons or things."
She perceives Mrs. Fairfax as seeing "Mr Rochester was Mr Rochester… a gentleman, a landed proprietor—nothing more," and implies Mrs. Fairfax wondered at Jane's desire for a more definite notion of his identity.
Comparison and Complication of Views
How Jane's interpretation of Mrs. Fairfax compares to the reader's:
Jane's interpretation largely corroborates the inferences a careful reader would likely make from the initial dialogue. She confirms Mrs. Fairfax's lack of interest in complex character analysis and her focus on social and economic status. Jane's description solidifies the reader's perception gained from Mrs. Fairfax's struggle to articulate anything beyond superficial observations about Mr. Rochester.
How and why this paragraph might corroborate or complicate the view of Jane herself:
This paragraph primarily corroborates the view of Jane as a highly observant, analytical, and intellectually discerning character. Her ability to articulate Mrs. Fairfax's limitations in assessing character, and her own frustration at not getting a deeper understanding of Mr. Rochester, reinforces that Jane deeply values psychological insight and complexity in individuals. It shows her as someone who looks beyond the surface, validating the inquisitive and probing nature evident in her earlier questions.