|
| Characterization
|
|||
|
Students of literature spend some energy and time working to understand specific characters in literature, the techniques of creating them and logics of classifying them in the history of literature. The assumptions about the nature of human beings we make as we read are also all part of this complex of ideas. Note these ideas as Aristotle generalizes about characters in literature. Aristotle in the Poetics states that art as it imitates, imitates actions done by
Northrop Frye takes Aristotle's three part distinction and works out a more elaborate schema of classification: Frye claims we err if we think Aristotle is talking about simple morality when he refers to "good men or bad" above. Instead he says Aristotle has something more like power in mind:
This same passage as well as explanatory comments and questions are available at this web site: http://www.gprep.org/~donc/Anatomy_Frye.htm Here is a link to a suggested course plan for "In Quest of the Heroic" < http://www.gcsu.edu/acad_affairs/coll_artsci/int/hero.html > an extensive outline for a course with the theme of the hero archetype from Georgia College and State University. Some refuse to use terms like Hero (or Heroine) because they carry such a freight of judgment regarding virtues. Instead, the terms Protagonist and Antagonist are adopted. These terms also have an ancient history. The agon in Greek Drama was the ritual initially at the core of the spectacle. The leader of the chorus which recited the ritual was originally called the protagonist. Eventually he became more important than the group as a character in his own right. He was eventually joined by second character, the antagonist and then a third and so on. To read more about this history, visit these links: Drama: The Greek Theatre and Three Athenian Tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides <http://www.watson.org/%7Eleigh/drama.html> Others speak of characters in terms of their complexity and capacity to change. The terms flat and round appear in many text books. When E. M. Forester first used these terms in his book, Aspects of the Novel, he spoke of flat characters as one dimensional "types" whose qualities are based on the dominance of "humors" or traits which are physiological (based on the body) in origin--a very antique idea indeed. Click on the link to explore further the idea of "humors." You can also read an excellent essay "Hamlet: A Humoral Diagnosis" By Sarah Holland (December 1996) in which she describes Hamlet's personality in terms of his melancholy humors <http://www.engl.uvic.ca/Faculty/MBHomePage/ISShakespeare/Resources/WorldView/humours.html> Forester describes these flat characters as always being able to be summed up in one sentence. They are static; easily recognized; easily remembered; and usually comic because the serious and flat (as well as tragic) character, Forester says, is a bore. The round character, on the other hand, is unpredictable: "The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it is a flat character pretending to be round" ( Forster, E.M. "Flat and Round Characters," The Essentials of the Theory Of Fiction, edited by Michael J Hoffman and Patrick D. Murphy, Durham : Duke University Press, 1988, 42). The idea of types is far more complex than it might seem at first glance. For example, Biblical typology is an entire study unto itself and is based on the idea that the Bible contains "types" or characters who symbolize what is to come. You can read a brief and clear explanation on George Landow's Victorian Web site. <http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/type/typologyov.html> He makes clear that this idea of "types" was extremely important to artists and critics through the Nineteenth Century. Explore his links until you arrive at the idea of the "secularized" offspring of typology. While most introductions to literary study do not talk about Biblical typology or Northrup Frye's five modes, almost all will discuss stereotypes in relationship to characters and characterization. The issue of stereotypes with respect to literary characterization again brings us to the idea of "types"--but this time not Medieval humors or Biblical types. Instead the whole relatively modern concepts of demographics and psychographics which attempts to portray large groups of people through a listing of shared features or behaviors creates a habit of thought which allows all of us to make composite and fixed generalizations of large groups. This process differs I think from earlier notions of social types (the gentry, the aristocrat or the serf) in that the stereotyper always rationalizes the idea on some level as being in accord with the "facts" of either experience or rumor. The stereotype itself always provides a mental image of "those people" over there and never of own community (though one can always be aware that others stereotype you and yours). Now that our popular culture is awash in characters that invoke our stereotypes, it is essential to talk about how literature sets itself apart from characters based on such formulas and TV templates. Most attempts at definition and description use the process of categorization to communicate characteristics. Many introduction to literature texts see the process of characterization as a process of making the literary characters defy their stereotypes (destereotyping). If a person acts counter to a stereotype, for example, they are sure to be surprising and fit the "round" designation. We must learn to separate out from our concept of processes of characterization (which, after all, is a matter of the words on the page and how they work) from ideas of personality, nature or even character considered as the qualities of a person. Characterization is an element of the discourse, a part of the writer's strategy or plan. Introductory text books suggest we seem to know characters because we can "see what characters do and hear what they say; we sometimes know what they think, and what other people say about them; . . ."( Norton Introduction to Literature 105). Janet Burroway in her book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, states there are "five basic methods of character presentation"--the indirect method, which is authorial interpretation, and the direct methods, which are appearance, action, speech, and thought (107).
When the narrator in "Fenstad's Mother" tells us Fenstad is "hopeful" and "didactic" and that he had "picked" these traits "up from his mother," this is indirect characterization of them both. Notice this term is used in the opposite manner of what you might think. The narrator is telling you directly, but Burroway calls it indirect because it does not come from anything the character does or says, but rather "indirectly" through the narrator's conclusions. The four methods of direct characterization Burroway mentions (appearance, action, speech, and thought) are based on our belief that people constantly give themselves away, or reveal themselves, in choices, deeds, thought processes, speech, and even in the visual impressions they make. What do the following passages tell you about Fenstad's mother? (You can locate the quoted passages in their context by using the Ctrl + F keys to use the find function on your computer.)
Do these passages show direct or indirect characterization? Each involves direct characterization because each involves details and actions of Fenstad's mother which seem to give us insight into how her mind and heart operate. These events are therefore considered direct evidence of her character. What remains is for the reader to infer and state to himself or herself just what adjectives best convey the inference. When a reader does that, he or she is coming to conclusions about the character being constructed. How can they be said to also involve stereotyping or destereotyping, if they do? If we have been told something that leads us to stereotypes, such as Fenstad's mother is termed "a lifelong social progressive who was amused by her son's churchgoing"--i.e. the stereotype of a liberal atheist, while Fenstad, on the other hand, is the churchgoing Christian (as his actions seem to imply), then when Fenstad's mother gives the girl the proverbial coat off her back while Fenstad is embarrassed and resists this act of charity, we are forced to reconsider if these stereotypes of them as so called atheist and Christian are adequate. When you set out to discuss characters in literature, keep in mind you will be presenting the conclusions you come to about them in the form of appropriate adjectives, but to do so is only the start since you will also want to compile the evidence for these conclusions in the acts of direct characterization the text presents--the appearance, action, speech, and thought of the character, as well as the indirect characterizations of the narrator's statements as well as statements of other characters. Many textbooks also introduce other terms for discussing characters: "existential" characters and "antiheroes." Both can be considered more recent ways to think about the main or protagonist character in literature. The existential character is not quite like the destereotyped character who surprises because he does not act consistently with the idea of the "type" which has been applied to him by reader and writer. Rather, the existential character seemingly chooses to defy upbringing, nature, or conditioning. In Grace Paley's famous story, A Conversation with My Father, their dispute is over the possibility that an existential character could satisfy. He seems to prefer a "simple" story about a character with a tragic destiny while she insists "She could change." Most of us tend to "believe" in existential possibilities for character. Another current term is anti-hero. Some might think that the prefix "anti-" means the character is something like the antagonist. Not so! Today we are so used to the idea of the antihero as the "hero" or main character, it is no wonder we are confused. The confusion starts with our contemporary idea of the hero. For thousands of years the hero was one who was superior in significant ways to ordinary people. (See Frye's descriptions above.) While he was not flawless, the hero was definitely one the reader looked up to for these strengths. And in past eras when literature was expected to reflect dominant moral conventions, there was certainly no confusion over the moral virtue of the hero. The hero made the right choices for the right reasons and, if he or she didn't, then the cause was lost. Today our "heroes" don't quite fit this profile. Instead they tend to be antiheroic or as Frye puts it "ironic." The antihero carries the burden of the conflict but does not seem in anyway superior to ordinary persons. In fact, he or she may be to some extent villainous in behavior. Not only does that not stop us from liking or admiring this darker or lessor hero, it may make us like or admire him or her even more--sometimes he/she is the outlaw hero. Almost always however, if the antihero is depicted as doing something immoral there is a good reason or, at least, someone who acts far more despicably, so that our contempt is channeled to that character. All this can be demonstrated in many popular culture heroes as well as literary ones.
|
|||
|