Understanding the Roles Characters Play in Literature

Every great story has great characters. But what makes a great character? The main character is central to a story and needs to be â€Å"round† or complex, with depth and distinctive qualities. A cast of supporting characters can be of various types—even â€Å"flat† or uncomplicated ones, who nonetheless help move the story along. Definition A character is an individual (usually a person) in a narrative  in a work of fiction or creative nonfiction.  The act or method of creating a character in writing is known as characterization. In British author E.M. Forsters 1927 â€Å"Aspects of the Novel,† Forster made a broad yet worthwhile distinction between flat and round characters. A flat (or two-dimensional) character embodies â€Å"a single idea or quality.† This character type, Forster wrote, â€Å"can be expressed in one sentence.† In contrast, a round character responds to change: he or she â€Å"is capable of surprising [readers] in a convincing way,† Forster wrote. In certain forms of nonfiction, particularly biographies and autobiographies, a single character may serve as the primary focus of the text. Etymology The word character comes from the Latin word meaning mark, distinctive quality† and ultimately from the Greek word that means scratch, engrave. Observations on Character In â€Å"Essentials of the Theory of Fiction,† Michael J. Hoffman and Patrick D. Murphy wrote: â€Å"If, in a sense, the  flat character  embodies an idea or quality, then the round character encompasses many ideas and qualities, undergoing change and development, as well as entertaining different ideas and characteristics.†(Michael J. Hoffman and Patrick D. Murphy, Essentials of the Theory of Fiction, 2nd ed. Duke University Press, 1999) Mr. Spock as a Round Character â€Å"Mr. Spock, my favorite character in ‘Star Trek,’ was James T. Kirk’s best friend and one of the most interesting characters ever written for television. Spock was a Vulcan-human hybrid who struggled for many years with his dual heritage before he finally found peace through acceptance of both parts of his heritage.†(Mary P.  Taylor, Star Trek: Adventures in Time and Space, Pocket Books, 1999) Thackeray’s Description of Lord Steyne â€Å"The candles lighted up Lord Steyne’s shining bald head, which was fringed with red hair. He had thick bushy eyebrows, with little twinkling bloodshot eyes, surrounded by a thousand wrinkles. His jaw was underhung, and when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had been dining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon. A short man was his lordship, broad-chested, and bow-legged, but proud of the fineness of his foot and ankle, and always caressing his garter-knee.†(William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, 1847–48) Narrator as a Character in the Personal Essay â€Å"[In a personal essay], the writer needs to build herself into a character. And I use the word character much the same way the fiction writer does. E.M. Forster, in ‘Aspects of a Novel,’ drew a famous distinction between ‘flat’ and ‘round’  characters—between those fictional personages seen from the outside who acted with the predictable consistency of caricatures, and those whose complexities or teeming inner lives we come to know. ... The art of characterization comes down to establishing a pattern of habits and actions for the person you are writing about and introducing variations into the system. ...The point is to begin to take inventory of yourself so that you can present that self to the reader as a specific, legible character. ...The  need thus exists to make oneself into a character, whether the essay uses a first- or third-person narrative voice. I would further maintain that this process of turning oneself into a cha racter is not self-absorbed navel-gazing. But rather a potential release from narcissism. It means you have achieved sufficient distance to begin to see yourself in the round: a necessary precondition to transcending the ego—or at least writing personal essays that can touch other people.†(Phillip Lopate, â€Å"Writing Personal Essays: On the Necessity of Turning Oneself Into a Character.† Writing Creative Nonfiction, edited by Carolyn Forchà © and Philip Gerard, Story Press, 2001) Details of Character â€Å"To achieve a fully dimensional character, fictional or real, a writer must watch people closely, much more closely than the average person would. He or she looks especially for anything unusual or distinct about the person or persons involved but does not ignore what is ordinary and typical. The writer then reports, in as interesting a way as possible, these poses, posturings, habitual gestures, mannerisms, appearances, glances. Not that the writer limits observations to these, but these frequently appear in creative nonfiction writing.†(Theodore A. Rees Cheney, Writing Creative Nonfiction: Fiction Techniques for Crafting Great Nonfiction, Ten Speed Press, 2001) Composite Characters in Nonfiction ï » ¿Ã¢â‚¬Å"The use of a composite character is a dubious device for the writer of nonfiction because it hovers in a gray region between reality and invention, but if it is employed the reader should be made aware of the fact early.†(William Ruehlmann, Stalking the Feature Story, Vintage Books, 1978)

Case Analysis Fate, Athena - 1490 Words

In the conclusion to the case which decided Orestes’ fate, Athena, offering explanation for her final decision, notes her inherent preference towards men: â€Å"There is no mother anywhere who gave me birth/ and, but for marriage, I am always for the male/ with all my heart†¦ I shall not value [Clytemnestra’s] death more highly than his† (The Eumenides, lines 736-40). This argument calls back to Apollo’s claim that children are not born from the characteristics of both their parents, but rather from their father’s seed: â€Å"The mother is no parent of that which is called/ her child, but only a nurse of the new-planted seed/ that grows† (The Eumenides, lines 658-60).Women are only the vessels, imparting no influence besides nurturement to their children. While this clearly biased justification eschewed the rights for her own gender, this reasoning worked within the consistency of Athens’ cultural frame. The case, in the canon of the play being Athens’ first trial by an impartial jury, was decided largely by the influences of the personal sexist biases held by most citizens in that society. The morally pure systems defining Greek democracy could only be seen as true if the moral inconsistencies derived from their cultural bias were ignored. The system of justice and democratic vote appealed to the higher ideals of human virtue, but humans inevitably let their own personal prejudices intercede. The American Declaration of independence sought, as it claimed, life, liberty, and theShow MoreRelatedThe Eruption Of The Iliad1558 Words   |  7 Pagesto Achilles. 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This reigns true in the case of the mythological tale of â€Å"Pandora’s Box,† in Hesiod’s Theogony . At the command of Zeus to punish mankind (after Prometheus fed the gods bones instead of food), the god Hephaestus crafted the first mortal woman as a gift to Epimetheus. She is showered with gifts, thus her namesake Pandora (â€Å"all gifted†), by the Olympians. Athena grants her the talent of weaving, Aphrodite bestows upon her grace and beauty, andRead Moretheme of alienation n no where man by kamala markandeya23279 Words   |  94 PagesEurydice takes her own life, leaving Creon to grieve alone. THEMES Major Themes Sophocles’ plays often deal with the specific struggle of a strong- willed individual against fate. In Antigone he depicts a resolute and heroic female protagonist, who pits her individual free will against the intractable forces of fate and against the irrational and unjust laws of tyrannical men, like Creon. Basically, the play centers on the conflict between the steadfast protagonist and an equally resolute antagonistRead MoreA View from the Bridge: Story of a Brooklyn Longshoreman6101 Words   |  25 Pages1930’s had a profound effect on Miller as he has intimated in his autobiography, but not solely for the pain of watching his family and community suffer. Growing up in the Depression meant a time â€Å"when it had been all but impossible to think of one’s fate apart from that of society† (Timebends 363). This is a belief that would stick with Miller and so many other working class men and women because it was linked to their survival. Through a seri es of economic depressions – 1870s, 1890s, and now the 1930s

Should Teenage Girl Be Allowed to Get Birth Control Without the Permission of Their Parent free essay sample

Billie Holiday once said, â€Å"If you copy it means you’re working without any real feeling† what she is saying that if you copy you have know feelings. Harlem Renaissance was a place to show people talent in the 1920’s. It started in the 1920’ s and ended 1930. It happened in Harlem, New York. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement. Billie Holiday, W. E. B Dubois, Ella Fitzgerald, and Bessie Smith were all there and others. Meanwhile, the re-development and gentrification of midtown pushed many blacks out of the Metropolitan area. As a result, African-Americans began moving to Harlem between 1900 and 1920 the number of blacks in the New York City neighborhood doubled. By the time the planned subway system and roadways reached Harlem, many of the countrys best and brightest black advocates, artists, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals had situated themselves in Harlem. They brought with them not only the institutions and businesses necessary to support themselves, but a vast array of talents and ambitions. We will write a custom essay sample on Should Teenage Girl Be Allowed to Get Birth Control Without the Permission of Their Parent or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The area soon became known as â€Å"the Black Mecca† and â€Å"the capital of black America. † Billie Holiday was a great jazz singer. Billie Holiday was born on April 07,1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and died on July 17, 1959. Billie Holiday was a jazz singer she made so good song called â€Å"what can moon light do† and â€Å"Strange Fruit† and other songs. Billie Holiday did a lot of things and had been through situation that no one knows her pain Holiday started skipping school, and she and her mother went to court over Holidays truancy. She was then sent to the House of Good Shepherd, a facility for troubled African American girls, in January 1925. Only 9 years old at the time, Holiday was one of the youngest girls there. She was returned to her mothers care in August of that year. According to Donald Clarkes biography, Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon, she returned there in 1926 after she had been sexually assaulted. In her difficult early life, Holiday found solace in music, singing along to the records of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. She followed her mother who had moved to New York City in the late 1920s and worked in a house of prostitution in Harlem for a time. Around 1930, Holiday began singing in local clubs and renamed herself Billie after the film star Billie Dove. â€Å"I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody business but my own†. â€Å"Strange Fruit† was a good song by Billie Holiday. Billie holiday is a good jazz singer her voice sound like a chipmunk. In â€Å"Strange Fruit she is talking about Africans-Americans hanging in the tress and blood falling from the bodies. † A quote from the song is Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Billie Holiday made this song because that is what happened in the old days and how white people treated to do colored people. â€Å"What a little moonlight can do† by Billie Holiday was a good jazz song. Billie Holiday Voice sound like a chipmunk . In â€Å"What a Little Moonlight can do is talking about one of her relationships that she was in. A piece from the song What a little moonlight can do to you, Youre in love, Your hearts fluttering all day long, You only stutter cause your poor tongue, Just will not utter the words, I love you, What a little moonlight can do. Billie Holiday made this song because she was in a relationship like the song. The Harlem Renaissance was deration of African American art, dance, poetry, and music. Billie Holiday contributed with many songs like her famous â€Å"strange fruit†. In this song Billie Holiday is talking about African-Americans bodies hanging from trees. Billie Holiday once said â€Å"One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head† she is saying that she was thinking about a song and it can to her.