Methods of Characterization

2 basic methods:

1. telling -exposition and direct commentary by the author. Preferred by many older fiction writers. The guiding hand of the author is very much in evidence. We learn primarily from what the author calls to our attention.

2. showing- indirect, dramatic method, the author steps aside and the characters reveal themselves directly through their dialogue and their actions. Character analysis is shifted to the readeron the basis of the evidence provided in the narrative.

Most authors use a combination of the two.

Most modern authors prefer showing to telling, but neither method is necessarily better or more fruitful than the other.

The choice of a method of characterization depends on a number of different circumstances:

• the author's temperament,

• the particular literary conventions of the period in which he or she is writing,

• the size and scope of the work,

• the degree of distance and objectivity the author wishes to establish between himself and the character,

• the author's literary and philosophical beliefs about how a sense of reality can best be captured and conveyed to the reader, and, of course,

• the kind of story the author wishes to tell.

All these factors heavily influence the technique of characterization; collectively they determine why and how the author does what he does. And all these factors are worthy of consideration in the course of literary discussion and analysis.

Direct methods of revealing character – characterization by telling – include the following methods:

1. CHARACTERIZATION THROUGH THE USE OF NAMES.

Edward Murdstone (in Dickens' David Copperfield)

Roger Chillingsworth (in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter).

Both = cold-hearted villains; names suggest dominant or controlling traits.

Some names reinforce (or sometimes are in contrast to) their physical appearance:

Ichabod Crane, the gangling schoolmaster in Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, resembles his long-legged namesake.

Some names contain literary or historical allusions that aid in characterization by means of association.

"Ethan Brand", referring to the wandering lime burner who gives his name to Hawthorne's short story, contains an allusion to the mark or brand of Cain a legacy of guilt that the outcast Brand shares with his Biblical counterpart.

Some names are used ironically which characterize through inversion.

Foolish Fortunato of Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, who surely must rank with the most unfortunate of men.

2. CHARACTERIZATION THROUGH APPEARANCE.

e.g. the second paragraph of My Kinsman, Major Molineux, in which Hawthorne introduces his protagonist to the reader:

He was a youth of barely eighteen years, evidently country-bred, and now, as it should seem, upon his first visit to town. He was clad in a coarse gray coat, well worn, but in excellent repair; his under garments were durably constructed of leather, and fitted tight to a pair of serviceable and well-shaped limbs; his stockings of blue yarn were the incontrovertible work of a mother or a sister; and on his head was a three-cornered hat, which in its better days had perhaps sheltered the graver brow of the lad's father. Under his left arm was a heavy cudgel formed of an oak sapling, and retaining a part of the hardened root; and his equipment was completed by a wallet, not so abundantly stocked as to incommode the vigorous shoulders on which it hung. Brown, curly hair, well-shaped features, and bright, cheerful eyes were nature's gifts, and worth all that art could have done for his adornment.

– From My Kinsman, Major Molineux, Nathaniel Hawthorne [1832]

a "country-bred" youth

nearly empty wallet → nearing the end of a long journey

clothes → relatively poor.

clothes "well worn" but "in excellent repair," + stockings and hat → a loving and caring family has helped prepare him for his journey.

• The impression thus conveyed by the total paragraph, and underscored by its final sentence describing Robin's physical appearance, is of a decent young man on the threshold of adulthood who is making his first journey into the world.

The only disquieting note – a clever bit of foreshadowing = the reference to the heavy oak cudgel that Robin has brought with him. He later will brandish it at strangers in an attempt to assert his authority and in the process reveal just how inadequately prepared he is to cope with the strange urban world in which he finds himself.

Details of dress → background, occupation, economic and social status, and sometimes the character's degree of self-respect.

Details of physical appearance → age and general state of his physical and emotional health and well-being: whether the character is strong or weak, happy or sad, calm or agitated.

Certain physical attributes = certain kinds of inner psychological states:

Tall and thin= intellectual or aesthetic types who are withdrawn and introspective.

Portly or fat = laziness, self-indulgence, and congeniality.

3. CHARACTERIZATION BY THE AUTHOR.

The author not only directs our attention to a given character, but tells us exactly what our attitude toward that character ought to be.

Nothing is left to the reader's imagination.

Examples:

In that same village … there lived ... a simple good-natured fellow by the name of Rip Van Winkle. … I have observed that he was a simple good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity. … The great error in Rip's composition was and insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. ... In a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business but his own; but as to doing family duty and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.

– From Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving [1819].

It was one of the secret opinions, such as we all have, of Peter Brench that his main success in life would have consisted in his never having committed himself about the work, as it was called, of his friend Morgan Mallow. This was a subject on which it was, to the best of his belief, impossible with veracity to quote him, and it was nowhere on record that he had, in the connexion, on any occasion and in any embarrassment, either lied or spoken the truth. Such a triumph has its honour even for a man of other triumphs – a man who had reached fifty, who had escaped marriage, who had lived within his means, who had been in love with Mrs. Mallow for years without breathing it, and who, last not least, had judged himself once for all. He had so judged himself in fact that he felt an extreme and general humility to be his proper portion; yet there was nothing that made him think so well of his parts as the course he had steered so often through the shallows just mentioned.

– From The Tree of Knowledge, Henry James [1900]

There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her. And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew. Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart go hard. This troubled her, and in her manner she was all the more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she loved them very much. Only she herself knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody.

– From The Rocking-Horse Winner, D. H. Lawrence [1932]

General orientation of the character's personality has been fixed by the author who provides us with a given and then proceeds to construct a plot that illustrates such characters in action.

2 methods of indirect characterization by showing:

1. characterization through dialogue(= what characters say)

2. characterization through action(= what characters do).

Showing = gradual,not immediate, establishment of character; requires active participation of the reader and calls upon "intelligence and memory".

4. CHARACTERIZATION THROUGH DIALOGUE.

To establish character through dialogue is not easy.

Some characters are careful and guarded in what they say: they speak only by indirection, and we must infer from their words what they actually mean.

Others are open and candid; they tell us, or appear to tell us, exactly what is on their minds.

Some characters are given to chronic exaggeration and overstatement;

Others - to understatement and subtlety.

Dialogue - to reveal, establish, and reinforce character.

Analyze dialogue in a number of different ways:

(a) what is being said,

(b) the identity of the speaker,

(c) the occasion,

(d) the identity of the person or persons the speaker is addressing,

(e) the quality of the exchange, and

(f) the speaker's tone of voice, stress, dialect, and vocabulary.

1. What is being said.To begin with, the reader must

• pay close attention to the substance of the dialogue itself: Is it small talk, or is the subject an important one in the developing action of the plot? (the speaker insists on talking only about himself or only on a single subject = either an egotist or a bore; the speaker talks only about others = a gossip and busybody).

2. The identity of the speaker.

what the protagonist says - potentially more important (and hence revealing) than what minor characters say, but the conversation of a minor character often provides important information and can also shed important light on the personalities of the other characters and on his or her own as well.

3. The occasion.

seemingly idle talk on the street or at the supermarket has been included by the author because it is somehow important to the story being told.

4. The identity of the person or persons the speaker is addressing.

Dialogue between friends is usually more candid and open, and thus more significant, than dialogue between strangers.

The necessary degree of intimacy is usually established by the author in setting a scene or through the dialogue itself.

When a character addresses no one in particular, or when others are not present, his speech is called a monologue, although, strictly speaking, monologues occur more frequently in drama than in fiction.

5. The quality of the exchange.

real give-and-take to a discussion = the characters are open-minded.

None = one or more of the characters are opinionated, doctrinaire or close-minded.

evasiveness in the responses = a character is secretive and have something to hide.

6. The speaker's tone of voice, stress, dialect, and vocabulary. = his attitude toward himself (confident and at ease or self-conscious and shy) and his attitude toward those with whom he is speaking (warm and friendly or cold, detached, and even hostile).

Remember about possible irony in the speaker's voice = what is being said is quite the opposite from what is actually meant.

Dialect, stress, and .word choice = character's origin, education, occupation, or social class.

Problem of the character's reliability and trustworthiness.

Most authors provide clues.

When one character is contradicted in whole and in part by another, the accumulated evidence on both sides must be carefully weighted and examined.

One can also test reliability by looking at the character's subsequent conduct or behavior to see if what he does somehow contradicts what he says.

Appeal to the subsequent events of the plot itself→ whether those events tend to support or contradict the character's statements.

5. CHARACTERIZATION THROUGH ACTION.

Behavior is a logical and necessary extension of psychology and personality.

Inner reality can be measured through external event.

What a given character is revealed by what that character does.

Consider several events of the plot for what they seem to reveal about the characters, about their unconscious emotional and psychological states as well as about their conscious attitudes and values.

Some actions are more meaningful in this respect than others.

A gesture or a facial expression usually carries with it less significance than some larger and overt act but this is not always the case.

Very often it is the small and involuntary action that tells us more about a character's inner life than a larger, premeditated act reflecting decision and choice.

Whether the action is large or small, conscious or unconscious, it is necessary to identify the common pattern of behavior of which each separate action is a part

- on the basis of motive, the attempt to trace certain effects back to their underlying causes.

e.g. Robin Molineux's responses to the events that befall him provide a good example of character revealed through action. Robin's adventure is a journey of moral and psychological initiation, a rite of passage from youth to adulthood, innocence to maturity, and ignorance to knowledge. Ironically, the provincial capital that Robin enters is on the brink of a political revolution whose first victim is none other than the very kinsman whom Robin is seeking. For all his self-proclaimed "shrewdness", Robin and his cudgel are no match for the disorienting world of the city, whose crooked and narrow streets are incomprehensible to all but the initiated. Robin is not among the knowing. His country ways and naive-because-untested expectation leave him open and vulnerable to the world of the city, a world filled with danger, hostility, temptation, and elemental human violence. Through one event after another, including a meeting with a group of conspirators whose password Robin can neither understand nor return, Robin's ignorance, inadequacy, and lack of preparation are exposed. Taken together, the events of the plot, and Robin's response to them, reveal his essential character and prepare him for the climax of the story; his smug self-confidence is undermined while his confusion, anxiety, doubt, and sense of his own helplessness increase.