Lecture 5. Characterization of Persons.
5.1. The notion of a character in a work of fiction. The dichotomy of protagonists and antagonists.
5.2. Methods of characterizing persons.
5.3. Sides of typical behavior.
5.4. Dispositional aspects of personality.
5.5. Approaches to showing interpersonal relations in a work of fiction.
Ideas, events, characters, emotions and an author's attitudes are all encoded in the text through language. Eventually, a qualified interpreter should always take into account story characters as those who purport author’s ideas, values, and points of view.
5.1. Consulting a dictionary. Protagonist is defined as the main character in a drama or other literary work.
In ancient Greek drama, the first actor to engage in dialogue with the horus, in later dramas playing the main character and some minor characters as well.
A leading or principal figure.
The leader of a cause; a champion.
Usage Problem A proponent; an advocate.
ETYMOLOGY:
Greek
pr
tag
nist
s
: pr
to-,
proto-
+ ag
nist
s,
actor,
combatant
(from ag
nizesthai,
to
contend,
from ag
n,
contest,
from agein, to
drive, lead;
see ag- in Indo-European roots)
Usage
Note:
The
protagonist
of a Greek drama was its leading actor; therefore, there could be
only one in a play. The question for speakers of modern English is
whether a drama can have more than one protagonist. When members of
the Usage Panel were asked "How many protagonists are there in
Othello?"
the great majority answered "One" and offered substitutes
such as antagonist,
villain, principal,
and deuteragonist
to describe Desdemona and Iago. Nevertheless, the word has been used
in the plural to mean "important actors" or "principal
characters" since at least 1671 when John Dryden wrote "Tis
charg'd upon me that I make debauch'd persons ... my protagonists, or
the chief persons of the drama."
Some writers may prefer to confine their use of protagonist
to refer to a single actor or chief participant, but it is pointless
to insist that the broader use is wrong.·The use of protagonist
to refer to a proponent has become common only in the 20th century
and may have been influenced by a misconception that the first
syllable of the word represents the prefix pro-,
"favoring." In sentences such as He
was an early protagonist of nuclear power,
this use is likely to strike many readers as an error and can usually
be replaced by advocate
or proponent.
Cf. Antagonist:
One who opposes and contends against another; an adversary.
The principal character in opposition to the protagonist or hero of a narrative or drama.
5.2. Philological textual interpretation defines characterization of persons as an open set of techniques writers use to create lifelike characters. According to the method by which an author describes the personality of a character, we may speak of two types of characters:
1) flat characters;
2) round characters.
Flat characters are one-dimensional because they behave in predictable and standardized patterns. Skilled writers may purposefully depict stereotypes to serve as immediately recognized types or as foils to more fully developed characters. Some flat characters are nonetheless memorable, such as Mr. Bodiham in Crome Yellow by A.Huxley:
“In the midst of his brown gloom Mr. Bodiham sat at his desk. He was the man in the Iron Mask. A gray metallic face with iron cheekbones and narrow iron brow; iron folds, hard and unchanging, ran perpendicularly down his cheeks his nose was iron beak of some thin delicate bird of rapine. He had brown eyes, set in rockets rimmed with iron; round them the skin was dark as though it had been charred. Dense wiry hair covered his skull; it had been black; it was turning gray. His ears were very small and fine. His jaws, his chin, his upper lip were dark, iron-dark, where he had shaved. His voice, when he spoke and especially when he raised it in preaching, was harsh, like the grating of iron hinges when a seldom-used door is opened” (A.Huxley).
A.Huxley acquaints the reader with the clergyman by describing his physical appearance and voice. The repeated use of the word “iron” gives a fairly good picture of this man in the Iron Mask. The portrayal is stereotyped because the description is given in a tone of irony, even contempt, accurately delineating the features of a medieval inquisitor in the twentieth century preacher.
Cf. to father Ackels in John Updike’s “Rabbit, Run”.
On the contrary, round characters act according to complex and realistic patterns of emotion and behavior. They are fully developed and vivid. Their motivation, motion, and behavior are believable. What makes them true to life is their capability to surprise a reader in a convincing manner. Moreover, every round character as a rule is fully related to the theme of the literary work.
Outstanding writers are masters of characterization. Among them is Charles Dickens whose characterization is known to be one of his greatest gifts. In Oliver Twist, for example, he created superb individual characters of Fagin, Charley Bates, Noah Claypole, the Artful Dodger – all of them members of the first of the thousands fictional gangs to follow them. The extraordinary effect comes from “the mastery incorporation of the human characters into thir physical setting – a gang constantly on the move, slithering, squeaking and scuttling from one unoccupied, rat-ridden old London house to another”. [Wilson, 1972: 129].
Watching human behavior with an author’s play with human speech, human manners and above all human environment is the key to the apparent unexpectedness of fictional life. There are no limits in exploring the wonderful vitality of human activity.
Outward appearance. A character’s outward appearance is particularly important for making a personality. The central character, or a protagonist, occasionally possesses traits that that provide a contrast to those of a foil, a character who points up the strengths and weaknesses of his protagonist. Being in conflict, they demand for different way s of characterization.
In seeking to determine his characters, an author invents a specific variety of imaginary entities that can all be spoken about no less easily that real people. Otherwise said, an author thinks of such language techniques, predominantly word combinations, which not only create vivid characters but also unmistakably show his own positive or negative attitudes.
The connotation of words is of paramount importance to us for drawing a line between favorite characters and their opponents. The author’s evaluative remarks have the same impact on our understanding:
The outward appearance of a person depicts a person’s main, prominent features:
1) A person’s physique (including his/her constitution, stature and height)
E.g.: “For company we had a fat man and his fat wife in a poke bonnet, and a tall old drummer” (O.Hall).
2) Physiognomy (the cast of a character’s face, the facial countenance, looks of face/head/eyes/nose/cheeks, mouth).
E.g.: “Professor Dalrymple, with effort, disengaged is eyes the cigarette to meet the large features turned up at him in the contortion of amiability. His features were large and suddenly naked: the strong lips, the even white teeth unbarred, the thrust of the nose, the wide brown eyes in which swam flecks of gold, the heavy eyebrows where hairs arched sleekly out from some vigor in the root” (R.P.Warren).
3) Gestures and movement of the head (face, eyes), shoulders and arms, hands and fingers, legs and feet.
E.g.: 1. “Her husband set the tray on the little table, placed his long white thumb with its chalky nail on the siphon lever and pressed”.
2. She turned away her mouth but he caught it with a clumsy haste like a dog seizing a bird (H.E. Bates).
4) Gait (denotes a person’s specific manner of walking).
E.g.: “When she walked she carried herself like a ballet-dancer, not slumped down on her hips but held up in the small of her back”.
5) Posture (the general or specific position of a person’s whole body).
E.g.: “Next to Mary a small gaunt man was sitting, rigid and erect in his chair. In appearance Mr. Scogan was like one of those extinct bird-lizards of the Tertiary” (A. Huxley).
6) Carriage (the manner in which a person holds himself while walking or standing).
E.g. “It’s time we went to see if tea is ready”, said Priscilla. She hoisted herself up from the sofa and went swishing off across the room, striding beneath the trailing silk” (A.Huxley).
7) Attitude (a bodily position that expresses some condition of a person’s mind).
E.g.: “… The only person on the beach not caught up in it was the young woman with the string of pearls. Perhaps from modesty of possession she responded to each salvo of amusement by bending closer over the list” (F.S. Fitzgerald).
8) Voice (predominantly non-verbal kinds of utterances).
E.g.: “Mrs Wimbush laughed. Her voice, her laughter were deep and masculine. Everything about her was manly ” (A.Huxley).
The above mentioned features are not a mere set of words capable of being repeated in on separate occasions, but a particular characterization involving definite individuals and tied down in their in their interpretation by other characters and a reader to a definite time and place. Here is the example to illustrate the point:
“In her low deck chair Ann was nearer to lying than to sitting Her long, slender body reposed in an attitude of listless and indolent grace. Within its setting of light brown hair her face had a pretty regularity that was almost doll-like. And indeed there were moments when she seemed nothing more than a doll; when the oval face, with its long-lashed pale-blue eyes, expressed nothing; when it was no more then a lazy mask of wax… But across the dollish mask, like a gay melody dancing over an unchanging fundamental bass, passed Anne’s other inheritance – quick laughter, light ironic amusement, and the changing expressions of many moods. She was smiling now at Denis looked down at her: her cat’s smile, he called it, for no very good reason. The mouth was compressed, and on either side of it two tiny wrinkles had formed themselves in her cheeks. An infinity of slightly malicious amusement lurked in those little folds, in the puckers about the half-closed eyes, in the eyes themselves, bright and laughing between the narrowed lids” (A. Huxley)”.
The description begins with the perception of Ann’s attitude. The author glimpses her physique and physiognomy with special reference to her indolence and doll-like indifference. One feature of her appearance will be worked out later: Anne’s cat-like smile is to become her chief attribute, which conceals the girl’s true vulnerable nature.
5.3 Typical behavior. A character is mostly depicted in his visible action. Typical behavior includes:
- instinctive reaction;
- drives (drive for self-preservation, parental drive, etc.);
- needs (want of something);
- urge (a strong tendency towards some behavior or performance);
- motive (hatred, love, etc.);
- impulse (a sudden stimulus to action);
- some basic processes of sense perception (sight, hearing, touch, taste, sub-sensory perception of feeling tired, exhausted, cold, etc.);
- feeling and emotion (psychic processes a character is subjected to);
- mood (a balanced state of particular feelings which lasts for some time);
- understanding and thinking;
- intellect;
- thought (the process of thinking generally);
- intuition;
- knowledge;
- imagination and fancy;
- conscience (sense of duty, responsibility, guilt and the like)
In “Barselona” by Alice Adams one of the characters, Thad, is depicted as a person who always chases something. Running after a thief he behaves in a characteristic way: “Thad is running, running – so tall and fast, such a sprint, as though this were a marathon, or Memorial Drive, where he usually runs”. On the surface it looks like a kind of exercise. Chasing a thief with his wife’s stole bag, Thad is doing it for himself: it is something between men. His hunt is grossly exaggerated, but the man is genuinely pleased with himself. It I one of the moments to show his courage and triumph; the irony of the situation is that his wife’s bag contained nothing valuable. He is satisfied with himself, which is usual. So his wife decides to cherish his allusion. She thinks: “Men are always running, chasing something”. Thus a typical behavior of a lucky man is opposed to a typical behavior of a person down on his luck: a lucky person defends his right to success, while an unlucky person tries to take something form other person’s “feast of life”.
5.4. Dispositional aspects of personality. Dispositional aspects of personality are the integration of temper, capacity, habit, attitude, view or opinion, outlook.
1) Temper (an individual emotional state of mind).
E.g.: “He walked along, saturated in depression, as if in the midst of his martyrdom he had lost his faith” (F. O’Connor).
2) Capacity (intelligence, will, aptitude).
E.g.: “She the men preferred Effie. Her sister was a very gay person although she did not sing; she had never passed an examination in her life, but there was, in a strange way, hardly anything you felt she could not do. She had a character of a chameleon...” (H.E.Bates).
3) Habit
E.g.: “Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him” (F. O’Connor).
4) Attitude (the relatively stable way a character feels and behaves towards somebody or something).
E.g.: “She lived in a world of glass and also in the world of music. The music came form a 1920 victrola and a bunch of records” (T.Williams).
5) View or opinion.
E.g.: “And for the first time since leaving home there came ho her a pleasant moment – a sense of enjoyment in her adventure. After all, it was rather an adventure, and her life had been particularly devoid of it”. What queer lives some people must live, travelling about, having experiences!” (S.Aumonier).
6) Outlook (a person’s habitual way of looking at things):
E.g.: “The dear dean had given her endless advice, warning her earnestly not to enter into conversation with strangers, to obtain all information from police, railway officials – in fact, any one in an official uniform. He deeply regretted to say that he was afraid that France was not a country for a woman to travel about alone. There were loose bad people about, always on the lookout” (S.Aumonier).
In their integration dispositional aspects of personality make actions of a character relatively predictable, so that the development of a person’s character can be studied.
5.5. Interpersonal relations. There are also basic interpersonal behavioral patterns. Characters are typified in accordance with their differences in everyday language, outlook, intelligence, and knowledge. They can also differ in group dominance. Some characters keep themselves aloof from others. On the contrary, others seek out company, establish contacts, and make friends with people. Likewise, characters differ in the way they perform their actions, achieve success, and engage in numerous activities.
The analysis of interpersonal relations has to do with the choice between the actual and intended communicative signal. The distinction between the sender of information and the receiver is apparent in dialogue. Successful communication of characters depends on their recognition of the communicative intention and making an appropriate cognitive response to it.
In conversation there will usually be a purpose over a character’s desire to inform a fact; the conditions under which the communication of factual information is assumed to operate, so one and the same statement can be interpreted under very specific context-bound purposes.
E.g. “You don’t have to stay in here with me, Papa, if it bothers you.
It doesn’t bother me.
No, I mean you don’t have to stay if it’s going to bother you” (E. Hemingway).
It is evident that father and son understand the act of “bothering” differently. Father’s understanding is direct. The boy’s remarks are structured to imply something else. First, the cause of the emotion is expressed by a repeated to-infinitive clause. Secondly, the omission of “in” in the repeated use of “stay” generalizes the idea of being together under any circumstances. Thirdly, the word “mean” and the phrase “be going to” have an element of prediction, and so more definite about the boy’s intention to face what is to come by himself. Finally, by saying “you don’t have to” the boy takes his father’s authority of responsibility into his own hands.