DEFINING CHARACTERS

When we analyse characters in fiction we need to ask some key questions about:

· their relationship to the plot: do they play a major part in the events of the story or do they have a minor role?

· the degree tpo which they are developed: are they complex or are they one-dimensional?

· Their growth in the course of the story: do they remain the same throughout the story or do significant changes in their personalities take place?

The central character is called theprotagonist. Without this character there would be no story. The character against whom the protagonist struggles is called the antagonist. In many sories or novels he antagonist is not a human being. It may be a natural environment in which the protagonist lives, or society, or illness, or even death.

Other characters in the story may be called major or minor characters depending on the importance of their roles in developing the plot.

Round characters, like real people, have complex muli-dimensional personalities. They show emotional and intellectual depth and are capable of growing and changing. Major characters in fiction are usually round.

Flat characters represent a single characteristic. They are the miser or the jealous lover or the endless optimist. They are usualy minor characters. However, sometimes even the protagonist can be a flatn character if the writer wishes to focus on the characteristic he or she represents. Let us remember the miser Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”:

“Oh, he was a hard, clever, mean old man, Scrooge was! There was nothing warm or open about him. He lived a secretive, lonely life, and took no interest in other people at all. The cold inside him made his eyes red, and his thin lips blue, and his voice hard and cross. It put white frost on his old head, his eyebrows and his chin. The frost in his heart made the air around him cold, too. In the hottest days of summer his office was as cold as ice, and it was just as cold as winter.

Scrooge kept his office door open, in order to check that his clerk, Bob Cratchit, was working. Bob spent his days in a dark little room, a kind of cupboard, next to his employer’s office. Scrooge had a very small fire, but Bob’s fire was much smaller. It was very cold in the cupboard, and Bob had to wear his long whie scarf to try to kkep warm.

“Merry Christmas, uncle! God bless you!” cried a happy voice. Scrooge nephew had arrived.

“Bah! said Scrooge crossly. Humbug!”

“Christmas is humbug! Surely you don’t mean that, uncle?” said his nephew.

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Why do you call it “merry” Christmas? You’re too poor to be merry.”

Dynamiccharacters change as a result of the experiences they have. The most obvious exmaples can be found in novels which tell stories of young people who grow into adults, for example Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre or Archibald Joseph Cronin’s Robert Shannon in “Green Years” or “Shannon’s Way”.

Static characters remain untouched by the events of the story. They do not learn from their experiences.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 901